Illegal in Minnesooooota
Imagine applying this to other things. For example, sex. Providing sex for free or too low a price would be illegal. High priced hookers could lower their prices at will, while crack whores couldn’t make a decent profit… OK. Maybe Dvorak’s right. I need to get laid.
Midwest Oil Fined For Selling Gas Too Cheaply
The state imposed a $140,000 penalty for what it called “willful, continuing, and egregious” violations of the price law.
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.
This is the ultimate in sad… pathetic, in fact.
Laws tend toward the stupid anyway. You can drink the booze of your choice straight from the bottle here in the streets of St. Louis (Mo.) but it is a crime to drink that same booze out of a brown paper bag. Oddly it does in fact specify “brown paper bag.”
Here in Wisconsin we have a similar “minimum markup” law. It’s intent is to protect mom and pop shops from the predatory pricing of the large chains.
Hold on just a minute. I live in Minnesota and believe it or not, there’s a good reason we have this law. Let me explain. There was a time before this law and what was happening was that big corporate gas stations would come into a town and sell gas at a loss just long enough to put all the local stations out of business. Next, they would jack up prices as high as they could, well above normal profit levels. Of course the local stations couldn’t afford to compete with these tactics. Anyway, it caused a big problem and reduced competition so the state stepped in and now the state sets a minimum gas price each day based on wholesale gas prices. It’s really not a bad system and it does work most of the time. Our gas prices in Minnesota are generally lower than both Wisconsin and Iowa.
Price fixing always has unintended consequenses. This is just one example.
I’m from Minnesota and I say if we can set a mininum price then we should also set a maximum price.
“I’m from Minnesota and I say if we can set a mininum price then we should also set a maximum price.”
Price caps is how you end up with gas shortages.
The Republiikans would love to do away with this law so that the big oil companies could move in and take over, Bravo to MN for not allowing this and stopping Bush’s fat cat friends.
Gee, where are the Microsoft haters when you need them? Oh, commies, how soon you forgot…
Remember the arguments against Microsoft including media player, or internet explorer, in Windows. And any other arguments against MS for predatory-ness.
You can’t have it both ways. Well actually you can, but it smacks of major hypocrasy to me. And major craziness to businesses. When they price low, are the benefiting consumers, or are they predatory?
I suspect another reason you can’t give gas away for free is that the government couldn’t collect a tax from a product which costs the consumer nothing.
Did you also know that products like milk have a minimum sale price as well?
I live in MN. I am used to being bent over. Gotta finish college and get the hell outta here. England is sounding pretty nice. Or maybe Aussieville………..
note to gwendle…….england is worse than ANY place in this country. It’s nothing but an extreamly high priced nanny state where everything is regulated, including speech.
Now aussieland would be cool.
I think almost all states have a minimum price for milk to *protect* the dairy farmers. Who aren’t mom and pop anymore, but huge corporations.
It no longer matters which party is in power, the multi-nationals and others are protected by both. Remember, Enron happened with Democrats in power, so did WorldCom. The Democrats and the Republicans are both sleeping with big business in a happy 3 way.
There are many examples of government fixed prices that not only benefit the consumer, but are envied. The best example to come to mind is the Canadian Drug pricing. Not one drug company doesn’t want to do business in Canada. They are all too happy to be there. A lot of drug research and manufacturing takes place in Canada, even though the companies are headquartered in other nations.
Any company prefers to know what their costs and prices will be. It is called stability. Knowing that all the competition has to compete the same without predatory action makes for stability in the market. When predatory pricing is removed, then quality becomes a more defining factor.
Sure this angers a lot of free marketers, but which is more important. Their hurt feelings or competition in the market place.
Lou
There is no comparison between price stabilization and Micro$oft predatory practices. Micro$oft was / is using their size to eliminate the competition to further their monopoly. Minnesota is trying to maintain the competition for a stronger marketplace.
What M$ is guilty of, Minnesota is preventing. M$ sells their software for many times its worth. Because there is no competition, they have not improved any of their products. If the open source community had a fraction of the money M$ overcharges consumers for, ALL the open source products would be immensely better.