> Now Porky Pig gets greedy and raises the price of ham to $60. Now you have only $40 to spend on eggs, and (due to the Law of Supply & Demand) the price of eggs declines.
Pull the other one, it's got bells on. Supply and demand is a nice theory, but calling it a law is magical thinking. If I go to the store and say "please sir I'd like to buy eggs but I don't have enough money" they tell me to piss right off, this isn't candyland.
You piss off. And so do all the other customers who don’t have enough. Then the store has all these eggs left over and lowers prices because there’s less demand.
It’s not magic, and it isn’t candy land. But arguing that the law of supply and demand is pretty silly as there’s massive evidence of its existence.
Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent. Supply and demand is a great principle but you'll go hungry in the meantime. And if you're just poorer than your neighbors, the grocery store can jack up the price of eggs to cover the ones that spoiled because you couldn't afford them.
Don’t mistake your own experience with the entire market.
The market doesn’t care what happens to you. The market cares what happens to everyone. Of course you’ll go hungry. Supply and demand doesn’t determine how much you will pay or if you will eat. It just sets a price and maybe you can afford it and maybe you can’t.
The grocery store can’t jack up the price if people aren’t willing or able to pay that amount. They might stop carrying eggs altogether, but they are more likely to price at whatever the market will bear.
Where I live, almost all grocers are owned by one of two umbrella corporations, who appear to coordinate their prices. Similar story for farms.. It takes monopoly power to gouge and get away with it.
> Supply and demand is a nice theory, but calling it a law is magical thinking
Most government failures come from denying the LofS+D exists, or trying to repeal it. It works about as well as that state that passed a law defining pi to be equal to 3.0.
Pull the other one, it's got bells on. Supply and demand is a nice theory, but calling it a law is magical thinking. If I go to the store and say "please sir I'd like to buy eggs but I don't have enough money" they tell me to piss right off, this isn't candyland.