livedarklions

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At what time scale? You can starve to death a lot faster than the food supply increases.

mstateglfr 

To recap, you think the argument that good tires are getting expensive is TOTALLY false, but for that argument to be totally false, you must search around and luck out on finding sales as well as buy from another continent?
I posted earlier in this thread that I found a pair of GP5k tires for $88 on Amazon earlier this year, and that was an attempt to help show that good tires can still be purchased for what I consider to be a very reasonable price. But even I find your point to be funny and meaningless. If I have to either search around for deep discount sales that clear out current inventory(Vitesse as an example), or I have to purchase from another continent, then yeah- good tires are getting expensive. That doesnt mean there arent deals to still be had here and there, but it does mean they are getting expensive.


Also, insert here the Inigo Montoya meme about a word not meaning what you think it means- TOTALLY.

Wildwood 

I think when cheap tires are still cheap and good/excellent tires can be found by avoiding certain vendors, then tires have not gotten much more expensive than a decade ago. That's my reality. Maybe I should not search for deals and pay LBS prices and American online retail prices, , and just complain. Complaining is so much more satisfying online (7 pages) than finding best price (few suggestions).

Head out of Sand Moment = everything is more expensive.

My 1st brand new sports car cost $3,000.
My parent's first house.....

My favorite comment is @tyrion in #4. He bought hundred dollar tires for a bike and would do so again after the riding experience. About $60-70 is my upper limit, but sub-$100 Dugast tubulars are a big interest.

edit: actually I believe in the 1 World Economy over the America First Economy. Tariffs are taxes.
re-edit: I also recognize that when one owns lots of bikes you don't panic when a tire wears out. Always time to find an acceptable price before you replace. Not typical.

smd4

So a farmer, who makes money by selling a crop, might be incentivized to stop producing the crop, so prices will go up on his non-existent yield?

Makes sense. Or cents.

Wildwood 

since this is a bicycle tire thread, complaining about prices - maybe we need to bring the rubber industry back on American shores. . I vote More Rubber Trees.

yes, farmers in USA (and maybe elsewhere) often get paid to not grow certain crops. Besides, when I fly over farm country, I see millions of acres fallow. Maybe entitlements for Ag should be cut from the federal budget; would they plant more?.

pdlamb

Cut agriculture subsidies? What are you, woke?

CliffordK

They weren't that bad.

I had a bike shop, I think in Italy, that sold me several lightly used sewups with flats for a couple of bucks for all of them.

All I had to do was patch them and they were good as new.

Others I got for free.

Lots of lazy people in the world.

Wildwood 

thank doG

more rubber trees...for cheap bicycle tires, local production, buy local. Support your farmer's market.
free enterprise, but govt pays Ag entitlements to farmers (corporate and smaller accordingly), not to grow?


Awoken is accurately informed and wanting equal application of Constitutional laws for all people in our borders. Requires no activism, maybe voting. Who's not wanting to be correctly informed with real Constitutional equality for all, thus = awoken?

mods... this thread should be closed, ... yesterday. Thank you. Or moved to Politics, where it would (could?) be more interesting than protracted tire price whining.

CliffordK

I think most of the tires I ride are made in Europe. Not local, but that may also contribute to prices being higher than similar tires made in China or Taiwan.

Do any American companies make bicycle tires?

striker65

Replaced fat tires, 4" x 26" at Christmas got one tire for same price as two last time I replaced them. Previous set was in 2018.

livedarklions

So I actually went through the entire page, and I'm struck by the near unanimity among the states that have sucjh laws that this is an emergency measure (a couple of states don't mention "disaster" or "emergency"). If we want to treat this as Econ 101 stuff, it's an attempt to cope with localized transient market failures induced by disruption in transportation and/or manufacture.

You're wildly overstating the case that the term "gouging" doesn't have a meaning. We can agree that the tire price increases aren't that, but I think your assertion that allowing people to charge $20 per gallon for drinking water is a good solution to a temporary shortage is Chicago school taken to an absurd degree. . We do actually have governments for a reason.

Koyote

Is $2 per gallon "gouging"? $3? $4? Any such threshold is arbitrary and subjective.

And still no one has explained how it helps people (especially in an emergency) to dramatically limit any incentive for resources to flow to those who most need them. Likewise, only one or two posters seem to recognize that price ceilings won't actually prevent high prices, as goods will sell on the black market for whatever prices people are willing to pay. (Do you really believe that, after a devastating hurricane, local authorities are going to be enforcing 'price gouging' laws? I sure hope they have better things to do.)

I think Maelochs , who went silent after being asked a pretty basic question in post 149, is sort of a poster boy for the people in this thread who want to deny reality -- which is that stuff goes to those who will pay the most for it. A lot of the time, for a lot of the stuff, I think this is a pretty lousy way to do it...But I'm reminded of the Winston Churchill quote about democracy. In modern times, we're stuck with capitalism. If we want to fix those problems, price ceilings are a lousy mechanism -- it'd be much simpler and more effective to simply ensure that everyone had enough money to buy the things they need and let the market do what it does best. But here in the US, extreme income redistribution seems about as popular as leprosy.

PS: This isn't "Chicago School." It's econ 101, almost anywhere it's taught.

PPS: By the way, we're now up to 163 posts, and still no one has shown us an example of any commonly-used tire that can't be purchased for <$100.

GhostRider62

Rubber trees in the USA? Is that a joke? There is a reason condoms and Foley catheters are made in Malaysia, besides cheap labor although Moncks Corner makes them with imported RM. Overseas can pollute at will, who cares about ethylene oxide in the atmosphere. I can't remember seeing a rubber plantation anywhere in the USA but that would not stop some from wasting money trying.

$35-40 tires are now $60-65, much like heating oil used to be $1.69 in October of 2020 and is now "Only" double that. (Yes, I know black chili is made north of Frankfurt from a combo of natural and synthetic). Anyone who thinks tire prices have not increased is living in another world. My car tires are over $400 now.

livedarklions

Laws draw arbitrary lines all the time--what do you think a speed limit is?

It does appear that these laws get enforced, I'm sure I can find lots more if I try:
https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov...rricane-harvey

Econ 101 also deals with issues of market failures. The typical emergency situation is when someone can temporarily exercise monopoly power. Allowing exorbitant pricing is a (really crappy) rationing method, but it won't cause the transportation breakdown to get fixed any sooner. It's just silly to assume that allowing people to charge $20 per gallon for water will make the bridges and pipes get fixed any faster. All it does is produce a windfall to the guy who happened to have the hoard of water.

Show me anywhere where I asserted that tire prices are too high or that there are $100 tires. I agree with you this isn't price gouging, but again, you dragged this into a side issue by making a bunch of ridiculous claims that there is no such thing as price gouging.


Funny you should cite Churchill here, you really don't see the irony there? Cough, cough, wartime rationing, cough cough.

cb400bill

This thread has run its course.

Closed.