About the Colvin brothers and the ridiculous debate surrounding what they did and the response.
This is not an example of "free market" capitalism and, to the commies, this does not prove that capitalism is evil. This is just plain exploitation.
Free market capitalism is seeing an opportunity to provide a service in a vaccum, seeing a market opportunity and capitalizing on it. It relies on the natural laws of supply and demand and benefits both sides of an equation as fairly as possible.
Exploitation is creating or taking advantage of a situation primarily for the benefit or to the detriment of one party.
In this case, the Colvin bros went store to store across Tennessee and Kentucky cleaning them out of emergency supplies. They then turned around and sold those supplies for a 7000% increase. And, when they were caught being evil, they tried to throw capitalism under the bus with a flimsy ass story.
Let's do some math. You go to a store, buy 100 bottles of hand sanitizer for $1.085. The round trip cost $16 in gas. That a total cost of $124.50.
If you sold those yourself to people coming to your home at $2.17, you would see an instant return on your investment and a $92.50 profit. However, selling them for $20-$70 turns a profit of $1,875.50-$6,875.50. Even at a mark up to $5 a bottle, you would see a profit of $375.50, but they didn't do that. I fail to see how someone, anyone, can simply justify this as anything but exploiting a situation for selfish gain.
They claimed that they were taking a product from an area that they thought didn't need it and were supplying it to an area that did. That they were proving a service to the public. That is dishonest at best because the public is expecting reasonable prices for otherwise common goods. The public would be willing to travel at their own expense to purchase something that they couldn't find otherwise at reasonable cost. However, the general public is not expecting to pay $20 - $70 dollars for an item that normally costs $1-$2. The buy out and price hike actually limits the amount of people who have access to this good now, and THAT is no good.
As well, by doing so, by buying out all the supplies, they create a monopoly of sorts. That is antithetical to a free market. Without competition the market is not free. When people HAVE to come to you for the goods they need, you have a "captive market". And a captive market can be no exploitative but, let's face it, statistically and historically, that has not been the case. That is too much power for one to hold, and lost of opportunity for corruption.
So, no, those two, the Colvin brothers, do not get a pass under the flimsy excuse of "it was just capitalism", because that was not capitalism. That was 100% 7000% exploitation, greed, and selfishness. A free market can not exist in a vacuum and hoarding supplies creates a vacuum.
They got exactly what they deserved.
