Price Gouging, the Otherway, is OK
Posted by Andy on February 24th, 2006
Few people know that the State of Minnesota has set up rules dictating the minimum price gas can be sold at. Which of course would be lovely for people to know when they are cringing at the sight of 3 digit fill ups. But thanks to the big government over regulating state bureaucrats in MN, business owners can’t dare give consumers a break and sell gas at a loss, with out fear of huge fine from the state.
The Minnesota Commerce Department on Thursday announced plans to fine a gas station chain $140,000 for repeatedly selling gas below the state’s legal minimum price.
The fine against Midwest Oil of Minnesota is twice as large as any imposed on a company since 2001, when the state established a formula based on wholesale prices, fees and taxes to determine a daily floor for gas prices.
The price law was intended to prevent large oil companies from driving smaller competitors out of business, but some critics argue it fails to protect consumers.
Protectionism’s failures on display yet again. When you take free market consumer controls out of the equation, you remove any chance that consumer demand will dictate prices. Putting up walls around smaller, weaker businesses, just so that a bigger one can’t move in to an area, hurts the consumers.
So the next tim your watching those digits spin out of control, and you have it in your mind to go tear the clerk a new one, remember it was the state of Minnesota that set that price. As is becoming standard practice by government today, they try to fix a problem that would take care of itself, by taking away the ability to give consumers a break.
It is time for people to be given the freedom to buy or sell gas at the prices the markets demand, not what the legislature decries from on high.