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Sounds less like price gouging and more like price fixing.




Yeah, funny how property markets always seem to have that same response.

I bet most of those same people would lose their minds if their favourite restaurant tried to double prices overnight. "Yeah we sold a lot of burgers yesterday..."


If a restaurant is so popular that they're often running out of food, it's perfectly reasonable for them to raise their prices.

popularity is irrelevant - the context is day-to-day. Prices change slowly over time of course, but that's different.

If there was less egg available for a given day, McDonald's [^1] don't charge more for a McMuffin, they sell fewer McMuffins

I'd argue AirBnb's approach here is more like Uber's surge rates. Which are clearly more extreme than anything taxi cabs did (bar the occasional bad actor)

[^1]: mcdonalds is stretching the "restaurant" analogy here, but they have a higher consistent turnover so seem like a closer comparison


Not during a famine

I’d argue that’s a better time to do it? People will eat less, conserving food.

That’s actually what happened around here, during inflation.

Restaurants are now double what they were, just a couple of years ago; even the cheaper ones.

The prices shot up, and have yet to back down.


I wonder how much "value" would actually be lost from the market if prices were simply fixed a month or two ahead of time to exclude those price shocks.



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