Well, not all people, of course. Just the ones who don't think like me. Like namby-pamby whiners up in Buffalo who are actually running to the city government complaining about "price gouging" at parking garages around HSBC arena during the World Junior Hockey Championship.
Higher-than-usual parking rates began surfacing Tuesday as ticket-holders — most of them from Canada — descended downtown for the World Junior Hockey Championship only to find parking lots charging up to $60 for the day.
"The mayor is upset, and when [the rates at privately operated lots] were brought to our attention yesterday, we set about looking at what options we had available to us," said Peter K. Cutler, the mayor's spokesman. "It's clear the best one is to go to the Attorney General's Office to ask through their Consumer Affairs Bureau to look into this."
For christ's sake, people have to toughen the hell up. As I explained yesterday, there's no such thing as price gouging when someone can't force you to give him your money. If you can't pay 40 to 60 bucks to park a car for an entire day within walking distance of the biggest amateur hockey tournament in the entire world, maybe you need to stay home. Or call a fucking cab. Let me know how much they charge to drive you around for 20 minutes.
Instead of being treated as the non-issue that it is, city officials are now hassling private businesses at the behest of spoiled little brats, most of whom clearly don't realize they wouldn't even be able to find a parking spot within a mile of the arena if parking lot owners only charged their any-other-day rate of $15. And if I had to guess, these are the exact same people who complain the very next minute that Buffalo's economy is so shitty.
Please don't mistake this post as an attack on Buffalonians. There are stupid people everywhere, and this hockey tournament is drawing a lot of Canadians and random tourists, too. I know, that was a low blow on all my Canuck friends. Forgive me, eh?
But seriously, I hope it's clear that economic ignorance isn't specific to any particular demographic or geographical location. Obviously there are a great many people attending this tournament who understand and accept price fluctuations that are the epitome of capitalist markets. And there are probably just as many fans who understand supply and demand and actually can't afford the inflated parking rates, but who find alternative transportation methods without pissing and moaning about it. It usually only takes a handful of craven pricks motivated to run to some politician or bureaucrat and hand him the power he so desperately seeks to wield over everybody else.
Here's a quote from Mark Croce, a parking lot operator who sounds like he could teach a class on supply and demand:
"If you charge a price and fill up the lot, then it wasn't too much because the market has a way of defining its own level. People make their own decisions of what the threshold is," Croce said.
"Some people will say [price] doesn't matter, because they want to park their car outside the front door. Others will want to park in the the Theater District, and jump on the free train. It's a free market."
Croce did great right up until the final sentence. Yes, he and other parking lot merchants are operating under a free market mentality, but we don't have anything close to a free market economy in the U.S. This, my friends, is instead a perfect illustration of fascism.
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