yeah, we lived thru that Fred, and it's apparent we are going to again as well ~RJ~
I don't see how commodity prices can be "too low". They follow the demand-supply curve, just like everything else. At the height of COVID-19, gasoline in my area went as low as $1.79/gal, now it's at $2.93/gal, all in response to the relative demand. It cost "X" to get something out of the ground, refined, and to market, whether it's copper or corn. The higher the demand, the higher the price, regardless of cost. Works in the other direction too; if nobody wants it, it doesn't matter how low you drive your production costs. This is all without taking substitution into account (think whale oil >> kerosene).
I agree, prices are what they are due to supply and demand. What I meant was, IMO, I would like to see more longer term planning for humanity, with sustainability taken into account instead of the 'party now don't worry about future generations' philosophy that dominates now.
In my experience, people use the term "sustainability" to mean either beggar the First World, or lock the Third World in perpetual poverty, or both. With the possible exception of carbon-based fuels, there is no way we're running out of anything, ever. Until all the water evaporates from the ocean basins and gets dissociated by UV at the top of atmosphere where the hydrogen then wizzes off into space, I suppose. Likely longer than we'll be around as a species.
In my book "sustainability" is about keeping track of all the unpriced or mispriced resources involved in the lifecycle of a product or endeavor, and ensuring that their net depletion rate is zero or low enough to be sustained indefinitely. Whaling as practiced during the 20th century would be a simple example of something that was not sustainable.
I was also going to mention the maritime fur trade, which very nearly drove the sea otter to extinction.
Well, let me be the first. I've canceled a major basement renovation project, as well as a lakefront cottage rewiring project. That's all the projects I've had in the pipeline that required large amounts of wire.
Did the customer cancel them or you?
I canceled them due to high prices. I don't care whether they are willing to accept the current prices. It would make me sick to my stomach to pay those kind of prices for wire. For the foreseeable future, I will limit my business to troubleshooting/repair jobs, service upgrades, and small jobs that require only small amounts of NM cable.
money is money
As long as the customer is aware and willing to go ahead, it doesn't bother me. If I shut down everytime a price on something increased I would have already starved to death! I didn't like gas going for $4 a gallon a few years back but I had to keep going.
But it sounds like the customer didnt cancel it, they just found someone else. IMO you should re-evalute this philosophy. It makes me sick to my stomach to see someone drive around a 70,000 pickup but lots of people do it and its none of my business.
I agree, but my big issue is that the sharp increase in material prices is going to really impact my overhead, one - liability insurance is based on gross receipts that includes materials, and won't hit until the audit. So until then I'm not sure how much the percentage of OH change it will be, historically been running a fairly tight margin for OH, and an up to 300% increase on materials is pretty significant. Guess got to reevaluate.
