A trader, knowing there has been a poor harvest, raises the price of grain, breaking no law

No more evil than killing him to avoid starving when he does.

it kind of depends. it wasn't illegal until very recently. And your view of morality is also very modern - during the nineteenth century it was considered immoral to help the poor, and even worse to artificially meddle in a famine. Queen Victoria copped it from all rungs of society for donating just one thousand pounds to Ireland for famine relief in the 1850s. Economists at the time speculated that by giving them money - thus disincentivising them from solving the famine themselves - she'd extended the famine by months and cost thousands of extra lives. By their view, she was behaving immorally.

Hey, if you want to increase society's disorder by having starving mobs of peasants tear this trader off his wagon and throw him off a cliff, feel free to not legislate against price gouging.

This is simply expediency.

For this same reason we have bound succubi brothels for people who need to get off but can't actually find anyone willing to fuck them. Don't rape strangers who are just "asking for it", go rape succubi!

How does maintaining the pre-Crisis prices put his family and workers at risk? Money as a resource is not going to worth that much in most crisis scenarios and if it's for after wouldn't that imply that pre-crisis prices were already putting said group at risk?

Also no, Price Gouging has nothing to do with Supply & Demand, that requires consumers & sellers to be acting under rational thoughts, and the mental state a crisis is going to put you under is anything but rational.

You are aware peasants hid their crops right?

The only ones starving were the merchants

Because the price of grain he uses to bake his bread has increased too?

> illegal in most modern countries
Communism isn't modern user, and it's not good either.

It's not about him! Maintaining pre-shortage prices prevents the function of prices (solving the calculation/distribution problem) from working, which hurts the people who need bread most.

FFS. Economics 101 ought to be mandatory public education.

Locally it might, but in the types of scenarios this is trying to mirror unless this is a global crisis the actual cost of necessary goods to make your own product is unlikely as most modern food of medicine companies can rely on a far broader source for material then those adjacent to their retailers.

If we're going to care about that factor we're also going to have to admit it suddenly breaks away from the real world stuff it's trying to be an analogy of.

Shitposting isn't obligatory anywhere except /b/ and /r9k/.

That depends. What his motivation to do so? If he is raising to cover increasing costs, then of course he has to do that. If he is raising to take advantage of the population however then it's bad.

Dude, I'm a accounting major, I've taken several Economics, Macro and Micro.

Again, Supply/Demand requires rational thought, if a Crisis has happened that has destroyed your homes and is putting you at personal risk, you're not rational.

And not to mention prices only affect supply in the long run, and in the scenario that this is blatantly trying to be a analogy of, the shortage of local food isn't a long term issue, it's only one until sufficient aid from around has come.

Also you're going to have to explain to me how making it so that 90% of the population that needs food can't afford it, and that it'll all be purchased by the local rich who in their panic thinks they need all of it least they die when they only need a small fraction.

It'd be evil not to raise the price. Everyone knows that supplies are limited, so if you didn't adjust to the market you'd encourage hoarding and reduce access to food for everyone but a small minority. Better to have everyone go hungry than have a handful well fed while the rest starve to death.

unless he does it to explicitly make others suffer, such as raising the price far higher than anyone that goes to him is actually able to afford, it's probably lawful neutral.

During a Crisis what you need is to maintain a temporary price ceiling AND rationing, I.E. mandating that you can only sell X amount of a good to any individual.

Evil actions don't have to be motivated by cruelty. Usually they're just a result of people being selfish

selfishness is cruelty

It's absurd to expect market forces to resolve a humanitarian crisis. The appropriate response is forcible intervention and rationing or else you'll see a lot of needless death in the short term.

That said, insisting on pure market solutions because you believe it causes less harm overall isn't evil, it's just stupid.

is that a birote salado?

It's a survival trait.

surviving isn't selfish
are you a liberal or something?

At a certain point your survival is guaranteed damn well enough that seeking to further it at the expense of others is wrong.

Coordination is also a survival trait, and a part of that is ensuring that no one part of the group throws each other under the bus.

>until recently

Fucking barbarians, learnt nothing from glorious Rome.

Victorian society is some of the lowest points of humanity ofc.

This.

>Is this an Evil act?
No, that's basic supply and demand.

In most preindustrial societies the price of grain was legally fixed.

Exactly. It would only be an evil act if he also caused the grain shortage for the purpose of driving the price up.

>Capitalism cant be evil.

It's not evil, but it's not good either. It's neutral. The good act would be to keep selling at an affordable price, building up goodwill in the community and preventing food riots.

Which is what government is for, going back to the start. Ancient Egypt and Sumer basically got organized to deal with crises like bandit invasions and poor harvests. The gov. would buy up surplus grain in good years and sell it back at a standardized price in bad.

Depends on the intent.

If he's doing it to make sure he and his family survives, then he's at worst neutral.

If he makes a profit and helps others best as he can with some donations out of the goodness of his heart, he's good.

If he sees his chance to finally make a killing, and also uses the situation to 'donate' some bread to peasant in return for ursurous debts and bank slavery, then he's most definitely evil.

>55169635
>Muh gender fluid alignment system so I can be how I want when I want.

Supply and demand curves describe what the market WILL pay, not what it SHOULD pay. Just because demand goes up does not mean you must increase your prices. Its a choice which negatively impacts people for your own gain. Assuming you've run your granary at lower market values you dont NEED that extra money. Your putting your own excessive prosperity over others in a time of crisis.

>Is this an Evil act? I do not believe so, as it is Lawful
Evil and Law are not mutually exclusive.

If you had taken Economics 101 you'd know that "supply and demand" only works when you won't die if you don't get the product. If it's something you need to live then the demand curve is invalid and doesn't produce meaningful results (i.e., the intersection between supply and demand is the entire fucking chart).

You don't know shit about economics, stop posting.

I agree that the trader should be generous in this situation. It would be the good thing to do, and it's better to be good than neutral, especially in an emergency situation. Indeed, in this case a law should be passed to require it.

But not taking the most saintly option available isn't necessarily evil. There are degrees, here. Donating some grain to the poor would be a good act. Keeping your prices the same would be a little less good, but still good. Doubling your prices would not be an act of kindness and generosity, but it would be reasonable during a shortage. Jacking your prices to the roof so people have to pawn everything they own just to eat would be an evil act.

In fantasy fiction evil is judged by the good. A good man would look down on such action. Do you refute that?

>Its a choice which negatively impacts people for your own gain

Wrong. This is Econ 101! The monetary benefit to the seller is wholly tangential.
Price ceilings aren't selfless. They give the seller the social status of appearing more moral (to economic illiterates) at the expense of producing supply shortages. If prices don't move, the people who want stuff more have to pay the same as people who don't want it as much, so they can't get what they need because there is a finite amount to go around.

>inelasticity makes economics not real
No, u.

Which one is he looking down on? The guy who increases prices by 50%? The guy who increases prices by 10%?

Yes, there's a level of gouging that's evil. But does your worldview not include neutral acts? Everyone's either a saint or a demon?

>breaking no law
you do know that historically, prices of things like grain and bread were set in stone by law as industry protections, right? Either by guilds or by government, but the idea of setting any price you individually want for any essentials was unheard of until after industrialization.

You've proven that you don't know what you're talking about when you interpreted "supply and demand only applies in certain situations and not in others" as "economics isn't real".

Here's a hint: economics doesn't begin and end with "supply and demand", it's actually something complicated enough that you can't sum it up with three words. Then again, I bet if your Orange Lord and Savior told it to you, you'd beleive it without questions.

"I'm not evil. I'm lawful neutral. Maybe even good."

Depends on the harm the trader believed he would cause and what he would stand to lose if he didn't

it's a very stupid act because the people he's gouging are liable to kill or severely injure him. There were riots in Rome over the size of loaves of bread in the middle ages, and grain has been the subject of countless peasant revolts before then.

The neutral act would be to go from doing nothing, to doing more nothing.

I agree. I know, alignments are just a quick and easy way to describe personalities, morals and motives, but they fail to take moral relativity into account. Killing a person might be an evil act, but killing an evil warlock about to shatter the heavens is definitely a good act. What if, unbeknownst to the player, the warlock just wants to free mortals of the tyranny of the gods? So much comes down to information the player might not have, making alignment of acts and people completely meaningless

Basically, if you run a business, you're probably at least a little bit of a shitlord.

So you base the Good and/or Evil of an act on what the character knows, rather than what the omniscient DM knows. This ain't rocket science.
If the character knows their knowledge base is full of holes, has enough time to spare that it would be reasonable to fill those holes, and still does not fill those holes? Willful ignorance is legitimately Evil, since you're choosing lower effort over a better chance of doing the actual right thing.

>Is this an Evil act?
No. That is not even close to how it works.

But why? You provide a good or service, in exchange for currency which you also need to support yourself and actually have food and shelter, and probably also provide employment for other people so they too can get money and resources for themselves and their families. And I'm the long run, by being able to provide a good or service for other people this allows people to specialise in other fields and do other work thus allowing for more efficient use of resources and time/energy to learn skills and improves survival and quality of life for the whole.

Business is the sole reason why things like modern medical care, grocery stores, and pencils can even exist. Is providing a good or service, while also expecting to be allowed the chance and ability to obtain goods and services for yourself in exchange so wrong?

That is a very simplified way of looking at things. Running a business, especially a very successful one, elevates you above the average citizen, to the point where you control many of the factors of life that affect those below you. What youre describing is less business and more trade, where everyone is equal to some degree. In reality, the capitalists have much more pull over society than any other person, save government officials, and even that is debatable. And to say that modern medical care is a result of capitalism is just dumb.

What's with the recent surge of Squid memes?

It breaking no law is unlikely.
For most of history we had laws governing the price of basic food necessities such as grain, bread and rice.

All these capitalism apologists in here need to be killed

Is he knowingly profiting off people's suffering?

Then it is a moral evil.

Splatoon 2

>and to say that modern medical care is a result of capitalism is just dumb

Of course, comrade. Corporate investors, independent inventors, and privately owned hospitals, exchanging resources independently throughout a physical and intellectual ontology are meaningless next to the centrally controlled Stalinist-Lamarckian revolution!

You now realize aspirin manufacturers base their entire industry around providing strictly temporary pain relief, and make massive profits in the process.

Your question is moot, "Acts" themselves don't fall under alignment, creatures themselves ping as "Good" or "Evil" based on their nature.

Rome outlawed volunteer fire departments.

>If the trader were not to raise prices, he would be putting himself, his family and his business - and thus his own employees and their families - at risk, which would be an Evil act.

No, he would merely be leaving potential profit on the table.

Which would be an Evil act.

>yfw there is a McDonalds in Pushkin Square
Stalin, Lenin, Mao and Pol Pot killed more people than any other political or religious group in history and they still couldn't stop capitalism in the end. They couldn't even build nicer weapons. They lost the war and the peace.

FROM MY POINT OF VIEW THE NEUTRALS ARE EVIL

Im referring to advancements in medical technology and understanding dum dum!

And that's why we must send the neutrals to the gulags.

Yeah, effective use of resources has nothing to do with enabling research and development, let alone mass production!

Guy im not a communist, im just sayin that capitalism isnt perfect. no need to get mr sarcasm all over me.

>The good act would be to keep selling at an affordable price
No. That would be the chaotic act.
If you don't understand why it is, you failed basic economics and basic DND morality.
Or how pre industrial law worked.

It might be, but in a pre industrial society, there really existed no money as means of barter.
There is a reason tons of metal, Koku of rice, Rice, preserved meat, fresh blood, trees, fruits and other things are a medium of exchange.
But coins aren't, because they are often worthless fiat currencies, that might contain precious metals.

So to trade for bread, you most likely need to trade in food or livestock. And that means you are not buying one bread, you are buying months supplies of bread.
If you try to get services for a single bread, you will get lynced. Either by the law, the clergy, or by the locals if they don't like your shit.

>but in a pre industrial society, there really existed no money as means of barter.
Wow.

This thread has only proven that both the libertarians and communists need to fuck off and die.

>price gouging
Fuck off commie. The alternative is him not buying grain to not lose money so that no goods are exchanged at all.

Whats wow about that? If you trade Fiat, it means the local superpower is strong enough to make fiat valuable. Generally that is not the case.
Even in something like China, currencies is a bad medium of trade, because its hard to get your hands on it.

>Economics 101 ought to be mandatory public education
Ironic, since your own statements and ignorance make a case for that.

If he can put them that high there's either total famine or people have found a substitute staple and his product is now a luxury good

You wouldn't do well in Houston, user.

>be druid
>be level 3
>cast 4 goodberries
>feed 40 people for the whole day
>literally 100% profits

fuck you, smelly trader

>anti-inflammatory that can slow the progression of certain auto-immune diseases
>lets people work more and get paid more
>has benefits to heart health
>is not even a very profitable drug because anyone can make it and it's easy to make

You don't know shit about acetylsalicylic acid, bruh.

>of coursh we can beat capitalism! all we need is some magic, guys!

If you've got a logical refutation of the one thing every economist since Adam Smith manages to agree on, there's a Nobel with your name on it. Don't hold back user! Go for the gold!

It's what I produce, user. Do you know anything about producing, or are you a net drain on society?

You mean you're an owner of capital, unless you're just LARPing completely. You obviously know nothing about what it is you're supposedly making and are riding the shoulders of somebody else who actually came up with the process and built the machines.

I'm in quality control, so yes, I am part of the necessary evil of maintaining a society without producing anything directly myself. I'm not arguing against modern society,or capitalism I'm just calling you out on being a derelict know-nothing in your own field.

There is a difference between raising prices due to a drop in supply and price gouging. If the increase covers a spike in expenses, he's neutral. If the increase is all profit, he's evil.

>is not even a very profitable drug because anyone can make it and it's easy to make
>annual gross profit margin of 60% since the 80s, even 80% at points post-Bayer renaissance

I can see why they don't pay you much, but perhaps proles just don't need historical knowledge.

The profit or loss of the seller has nothing to do with the moral function of a price system.

False. Once your basic needs are met, all else is profligacy. In times of plenty this is excusable. In times of famine, it is sinful. To take advantage of hard times in order to widen your profit margins is evil beyond question. You may raise your prices to the extent necessary to support yourself, not further.

>taking five minutes to google something and citing a chemistry textbook
>thinking 60% GROSS margin on a drug that costs $5 a bottle is a big deal to a pharma company

Aspiring gets produced because the demand is high. People who don't know better buy Bayer but anyone can get the stuff for 33% less than what they charge, which cuts the gross profit margin to like 15-20%.

Bayer sells name brand recognition, not drugs.

In the age of google it's impossible for me to demonstrate to the entire board that you have no idea what you're talking about when it comes to economics or what you're larping about, but I'm drawing satisfaction from pointing it out to you anyway. Thanks for trying hard!

There's five people, and the baker has enough food for two people.

If he charges the same price as always, one of two things happens - the food is distributed approximately at random (whoever gets in line first), or the person who buys it resells it (scalps) to the highest bidder.

If the baker raises prices, then he earns that profit rather than the scalper, and he's incentivized to bake more bread - even if he has to work overtime or buy the ingredients at retail markups- because he's earning tremendous profits. Other bakers will see the high prices and also come in to town to get in on the action - gladly taking on shipping and other costs - until prices restabilize.

The entire point of capitalism is that it's the best way to allocate limited resources. You can't make there be five loaves of bread no matter what, so the best way to allocate them is to the highest bidder, as that will in turn cause more bread to be available.

One rich person might buy both loaves of bread, which would be bad, as that doubles the number of lives lost. So restrictions on what each individual can purchase are reasonable.

>There's five people, and the baker has enough food for two people.
Then 3 people die, unless your information is false, and its more like
>There is storage of food for 2 people, for the winter. Unless somebody hunts, or forages during this harsh season, 3 people will die of malnutrition and starvation
>The baker has already substituted flour with bark, and can't push it further, unless he wants to make non edible food
Remember: Money is irrelevant

Sorry for defending the greatest economic system ever tried and the single greatest force for good of the 19th and 20th centuries

>The entire point of capitalism is that it's the best way to allocate limited resources.
Capitalism assumes you are in a position of grand systems(low nobility with manpower for hundred at the least), and can engage in meaningful economic activity.
Which again means you are not in a system of limited resources, but limited time constraints.
So its suddenly no longer about resource allocation, but about allocation resources in a system of surplus. Which again means capitalism is meaningless on the level of a individual, because the individual do not have access to surplus of resources.

Which again mean: The activities of capitalism are limited by trade routes, resources, diversity in agriculture, means of preservations, technology. And all of those are affected by things like City States vs Feudalism, and even more so Industrialization.
So for there to be meaningful capitalism, it has to be coupled with Industrialization.

Capitalist apoligists are fine
Failing to understand the difference between Capitalism and Industrialization? Thats cancer on the other hand.
So is failing to understand why Communism(flat state production to deal with lack of surplus) failed to do anything productive once it hit its third generation of leaders, and collapsed within 5 generations.

Learn about economics. The high price of grain signals to foreign traders to rush in and undercut the seller. This brings more grain into the region and helps with the famine.

>ctrl-f 'intent'
>guess i don't need to be here, he's got it down.

Or he cornered the market within walking distance. Then again, upping bread prices 16x sounds like a very good way to end up on the guillotine.

Better that a man and his family might live, than another man enjoy an extra few hours, days or weeks worth of income for little to no extra work. Better to see the first man and his family in better health than to see the other man one or two trifle luxuries. If the merchant could benefit so much as to justify another man's starving, possibly to death, then it is hard to believe he was not willing to merely work a little harder to achieve those ends which make his profit benefit him so much by his own means. In which case, how could he be so lazy in the first place, yet still call his profit equal in worth to another man's great suffering?
And this is only weighing the merchant's profit against just one person or one family going without, when a famine would insist it is nearly a whole countryside, if not more.
Of course, food aught to be rationed out if there is such a dirth that someone will inevitably starve. And in defense of the merchant, there is no professional onus upon him to be capable of rationing food, much less executing such a plan. However, those who espouse free market as justification for greed without remorse have forgotten that free market causing humanity to flourish is predicated upon humanity striving for balance. A lack of understanding or forethought can bring everything crashing to a hault. Willfully giving away too freely can drive down value, and others can suffer greatly for it, and for something to become overvalued simply because those who hold and produce it are too miserly to part with it for what is a fair price for comparable resources or services is theother side of the same coin. They are undivorceable from eachother as consequences of man collectively being unfit to measure out his labors, whether by ability or by virtue. And while this coin is an inescapable consewuence of imbalance, free market is but one of many available courses we can place ourselves upon.