Almost all EU countries are in favour of having a limit (plafond) on the maximum price of natural gas because of the Russian situation. Germany does not allow this. Can somebody explain this decision to me?
Price limits will cause shortages. A company will only continue to produce if it can make a profit at a rate that is better than other places where it can put its money. If a price limit is set and a company can't make a profit, then it's better not to produce. Therefore, making the shortage worse.<p>You could say that the producer can't make more than x% profit. The problem with that is that in a volatile market prices move up and down, so a guaranteed profit makes the price worse for consumers since you are guaranteeing a profit for the producer, which is not the case now. Also, reputable producers will try hard not to look greedy in a market of shortages so they have an incentive not to raise profits more than what people would see as reasonable- may be 5%-10% not 50%-?%. They don't want the customer to be more upset than what they already are.<p>An artificially lower price will cause an increase in demand since more people will be able to afford the product. Given a product that's short in supply, the rise in demand will increase the shortage.<p>Politicians commonly advocate a limit since people intuitively think it makes the situation better, which in fact it does not.<p>The best thing to do is to let the market forces work rather than placing a limit.
They politician class is corrupted by Russian.
For few months at least once a week/two we see new leaks about another German politician with Russians connection exposed.<p>Same case with arms export German population wanna help, politicians not so much and bomb every export proposal(even with 70%/75%+ popular support which is extremely weird for democracy)
How can they enforce a price limit on natural gas? What is being done elsewhere is a subsidy to lower the <i>effective price</i> of natural gas for as long as the credit of the nation can afford to pay the difference. This completely removes the incentive from people to save gas that would come from letting it rise to meet demand. This is a strong distorting influence on the economy, it's a perverse incentive.<p>The same can be said of fossil fuels in general, they're been priced at the cost of extraction, not even a tiny fraction of their true value for 200 years. That pulse of incredibly cheap stored sunlight is entering its decline phase now, and I worry that humanity isn't ready to handle it.
I've read that it is being considered, though the issue is that it spooks the suppliers and ultimately there must be suffering to be able to make the most of the limited supply and to motivate exploring alternatives. If the government would just paper over the shortage nobody would change their behavior.<p>The same goes for climate change too, because the free market currently does paper over the environmental cost of production, nobody have to change their behavior, and soon our planet will be inhabitable.
How does having a price cap solve the problem of there not being enough natural gas. Seems like an invitation for LNG sellers to go to China and Japan instead of Europe.
I've seen the effects of "limiting" the price.<p>I started paying 0.17€/kWh which is way more than I used to pay but not that bad with all the current events. After limiting the natural gas price I started paying between 0.15€ and 0.2€ per kWh as a kind of subsidy to keep the price below certain threshold. So, yeah, I'm paying twice as much per kWh to keep the prices low.