re: Just once it would be refreshing for a Republican governor to oppose ‘Price Gouging Laws’

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Some people need resources more than others though

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Which is why price gouging is necessary.

246 people died from the storm and power outage. It was a life and death emergency.

Proposing that electricity isn’t a necessity in a winter storm because we can alternatively get 10s of millions of people blankets is patently stupid. You are being intentionally obtuse to defend a point that is ridiculous on its face.

It’s okay to both believe that markets are overwhelming the correct way to organize economic activity and that there are a small number of fringe scenarios in which they are insufficient to deal with crisis. I gave you a clear and indisputable example. You don’t need to pretend like you don’t understand basic logic. Just acknowledge this as a fringe case that breaks the normal rules and move on.

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When the freeze took down large chunks of Texas’s electric grid in 2021, natural gas spot prices rose from $3/MMBtu to nearly $1200/MMBtu

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Well, it sure would have helped if there wasn't a push to convert natural gas mid-stream from being powered by the gas flowing through it, and instead convert it to electric. You know, for climate change.

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The mutual reliance of the natural gas industry and electric power industry on each other
contributed to the breakdown. Rolling outages ordered by ERCOT frequently cut off power
supplies to natural gas pipelines, which further cut fuel supplies available to natural-gasfueled generators. While natural gas pipelines can obtain critical load designation,
protecting them from rolling outages, many pipelines had failed to submit the information
needed to their local power delivery company.10 At its worst, as much as 9,000 MW of
generation was sidelined by the lack of gas supplies, in part due to power cut offs at gas
pipelines. The 9,000 MW of generation capacity could have served an estimated 1.8 million
households.11

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When Helene hit, we had no price gouging rules put in place on fuel in our area that I'm aware of (then again, we didn't have power for a week or so and no internet for a couple of weeks).

It was great to see the gas station owners only letting people fill up their automobiles and limiting gas cans. They didn't let people hoard. The government didn't have to step in for them to do this. They also didn't charge $6/gal - they kept the price pretty close to where it was.

There have been a couple of settlements in late 2025 over price gouging complaints from Helene, but we didn't have it here. Maybe we were lucky.

Artificially low prices on gas without limiting purchases can create a shortage in a heartbeat.

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Price gauging is good, actually, because the incentive for profit causes suppliers to take risks to alleviate shortages during supply interruptions rather than simply wait out the dangerous situation.

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Bingo! After Katrina, Lowes and Home Depot threw up stores in a hurry to get in one the bonanza.

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Bingo! After Katrina, Lowes and Home Depot threw up stores in a hurry to get in one the bonanza.

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You're implying that, after Katrina, Lowes and Home Depot price gouged?

Instead, it seems they entered the market to produce inventory.

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You're implying that, after Katrina, Lowes and Home Depot price gouged?

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No I’m not. Lowes and Home Depot got in there in a hurry because they saw the chance at huge volumes of sales and great margins. They undercut any price gouging that was going on.

This is simple economics. There are supply and demand curves for every product. When a disaster occurs, demand goes up for some products and supply goes down simply because producers can’t get products to the blighted area. The more demand drives up prices the harder producers will work to increase the supply. So you have a choice, let the market respond in a free fashion and get the supply to rapidly increase, or limit prices and cause supplies to be lower.

This explains the deadweight loss that price caps cause

Anti-gouging laws are price caps. Beyond a shadow of a doubt, price caps cause a net loss to humanity. That loss is divided between producers and consumers in proportion to the elasticity of the supply and demand curves for each particular good or service.

Penrod is attempting to apply flawed logic.

I appreciate his effort, but it is flawed.

Those who lived in the immediacy of the post Katrina recovery know what went down.

Again…how long can you live without water?

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Right. But price gouging had nothing to do with it.

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Yes it did. Lowes and Home Depot were definitely charging more due to the high demand - just not so much more that it’s called “gouging”.

Did you visit the link I provided? Do you thoroughly understand the concept of deadweight loss? When you apply price caps you are limiting and lowering the supply curve, thus lowering the amount of the supposedly critical item that gets to the disaster area.