Looting And Gouging

Along with the scattered reports of looting throughout the state of Florida, there have been over 8,000 complaints of price gouging during and after Hurricane Irma.

The complaints have been over water, ice, food, and fuel, but there have also been accusations of airlines, hotels, and even Disney hiking prices. Mickey isn’t a mouse, he’s a rat.

There were reports of gas being as high as eight bucks a gallon in Texas after Hurricane Harvey and up to $7.00 in Florida. There were additional reports of a case of water being sold for $99.00.

Some people, we’ll call them “assholes,” defend price gouging. They say it restricts people to purchase just what they need, thus leaving essential supplies for other people. There are also arguments that without price gouging then entrepreneurs and business people wouldn’t have any incentive to sell supplies during a hurricane.

One of the jerks at the Daily Caller, a website that caters to conservative assholes, was defending the hiking of airline prices. The jerk wrote, “Let’s accept that the lives of wealthier Floridians are neither more nor less valuable than any others. Indeed, Hurricane Irma is not the Titanic. But the evacuation of the largest number of Irma refugees is more important than ensuring that everyone has an equal chance at escape – not only to maximize immediate rescue but because minimizing the number of people remaining after the storm greatly eases the clean-up effort.

And if the goal is to facilitate the escape of the highest number, airlines need not apologize for raising prices, even sky-high.

It’s true that some Americans (mostly Democrats) value equality more than human flourishing, but their position is reprehensible. The goal should get the most people out of harm’s way, and if that means a greater percentage of them are wealthy, so be it.”

Only a Republican could write that shit. That guy would have been great at selecting people for the Titanic’s lifeboats. I don’t know if I’m more disgusted by his comments, or that I had to click on a link to the Daily Caller.

I am a bleeding-heart liberal and I can be naive about some things. For instance, I believe that corporate America should practice being good Americans and community citizens, and focus on saving lives instead of profits during a disaster. What a foolish and silly concept.

In the early 1990s, I was in an ice storm in Mississippi. Ice storms suck and Mississippi is the last state that can handle an ice storm. I had a neighbor who I had never spoken with. I was not interested in getting to know the guy, and he probably felt the same about me. I just didn’t have a reason until the ice storm. Do you know when you finally talk to that neighbor you never had any plans of ever talking to? When his tree has fallen across your driveway. We not only talked, but we chainsawed that shit together and got it out of my driveway. He was very nice about it, though of course, it was his tree.

That’s what neighbors do. They help during disasters. I’m sure if it wasn’t his tree that he still would have helped removed it. Corporate America, airlines, hotels, 7-11, and Disneyland need to stop being dicks and assholes and try to be good neighbors.

And whatever you don’t. don’t go to the Daily Caller. It’s like Breitbart Lite. It’s got all the stupid and lies, but only half the racism.

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