When we complain about "price gouging," are we really cooperating with others, or are we saying we want something for ourselves? It seems to me that "cooperation" would imply actually, you know, "sharing" scarce resources.

1) I'm a fan of Robin Hanson...he's a brilliant dude, and just a plain nice character. As a professor at GMU, I've yet to take classes with him, but I will be doing so. At a party-thing, he just walked up to a bunch of students, and goes "Hi, I haven't met you yet." After introducing ourselves, he did the same, completely without pomp or arrogance. High quality guy.

2) Anyone worried about price gouging (and I used to strongly count myself in that category, and would applaud efforts by then-attorney-general-of-Florida Crist in his efforts to stop "price gougers" in the wake of hurricanes) should listen to the Econtalk podcast with Mike Munger on the topic. (Podcast here, and listening to the rest of the podcasts with Munger is, honestly, probably one of the best ways to cure economic ignorance (used in the traditional, lack-of-knowledge, sense, not the new way that's akin to 'stupid').

3) econthots...I'm intrigued by your name...what's your story dude?

whoops...

4) We've actually been talking about this in my class this semester...essentially, if you buy that our genes (and, apparently, with them, our deepest inclinations) haven't changed much at all since our hunter/gatherer days, it follows that we would be inclined to think like individuals would have in a small band (around 40 or so) that intimately knew and relied on each other. Unfortunately, these tendencies don't translate well when we're dealing with people we don't know at all, and can actually be destructive (see Munger's example of "and the people actually clapped in the above-mentioned podcast").

This is consistent with Hayek's comment in, I believe, The Fatal Conceit, that our dealings and interactions (I'm paraphrasing here) within our family would become--ah, heck, I just went and got the book. Here's the quote, and I'll probably be making it its own post, as it's so brilliant:

Moreover, the structures of the extended order are made up not only of individuals but also of many, often overlapping, sub-orders within which old instinctual responses, such as solidarity and altruism, continue to retain some importance by assisting voluntary collaboration, even thought they are incapable, by themselves, of creating a basis for the more extended order. Part of our present difficulty is that we must constantly adjust our lives, our thoughts and our emotions, in order to live simultaneously within different kinds of orders according to different rules. If we were to apply the unmodified, uncurbed, rules of the micro-cosmos (i.e., of the small band or troop, or of, say, our families) to the macro-cosmos (our wider civilisation), as our instincts and sentimental yearnings oftenmake us wish to do, we would destroy it. Yet if we were always to apply the rules of the extended order to our more intimate groupings, we would crush them. So we must learn to live in two sorts of world at once. To apply the name 'society' to both, or even to either, is hardly of any use, and can be most misleading (see chapter seven).

I call your attention particularly to the second and third sentences: "Part of our present difficulty....we would crush them."