Agree, the creepy charity is irrelevant. Trauma surgeons profit from severe misfortune. Relief workers take home a day's pay. I'm not sure what you mean by "leveraging" -- do you object that someone is making more profit than you approve of, or that they are benefiting from a misfortune, or the combination? This seems irrelevant: the question is whether gouging is right or wrong. Laws do not make it so. Extreme, and ridiculous. We don't need to refute a silly, four-word argument. If you designate the purpose of the argument as "to justify a vice" it is much easier to dismiss than if the purpose is "to increase the supply of urgently needed supplies during a disaster." But we should not argue about intentions, we should argue about results. Perhaps confiscating the goods would defray these expenses. But the law should also provide a deterring, punitive effect. Do you agree that both buyer and seller are necessary to complete a gouging transaction? If so, both are participating in an illegal act. Would you support prosecuting the purchaser in a gouging sale? If not, what will you tell the guy who was about to pay double for a generator so he can keep the freezer running? The negative consequence I first thought of was that 19 generators, trucked 600 miles into the disaster zone, didn't help the storm victims. Anti-gouging laws clearly limit the incentive to bring new supply where there is a shortage. This is not a cost of prohibiting gouging. It's a cost of meeting the emergency demand with a public program. If, indeed, the majority of Americans support this program, and they successfully elect politicians who promise to provide this program, and the politicians try to keep their promises, and the bad party does not interfere, and the budget is allocated, and the agencies are created, and competent, honest leaders are appointed, and the funds come through, and any unintended consequences of government competing with honest businesspeople are avoided, and clever beneficiaries do not connive ways to capture and hoard and resell the handouts, and a gaggle of contracting companies do not squeeze the program for every nickel, so at last everyone who wants a generator gets one, then, at last, the gouger will have nothing to do.we're talking about leveraging someone's severe misfortune for profit
Even Texas has anti-gouging laws
So it seems like a relatively extremist argument to say "Hey, free market, amirite?" as an attempt to justify unbridled human greed.
The only negative consequences that I can think of are the cost of enforcing anti-gouging laws
and the cost of government assistance programs designed to boost the influx of resources into areas of suffering people. But the majority of Americans, including me, have decided that we'll foot that bill.
Limited, not removed. Selling a generator for cost&transportation&reasonable profit isn't gouging.Anti-gouging laws clearly limit the incentive to bring new supply where there is a shortage.
It would never make sense to bring generators into the worst disaster areas. The optimal delivery point is just far enough to sell the generators on the outskirts of the storm damage. Instead of moving goods to the area of highest demand you would move them to an area of lowest barriers.
If cost & transportation & reasonable profit provide sufficient incentive for sellers to meet the demand, gougers will not be able to sell and get "unreasonable" profit, whatever that might mean. They might even dump their goods at a lower-than-intended price, if they are permitted to risk their own resources in bringing goods to the site of an emergency, hoping to sell for high prices. Who gets to decide what price is unreasonable for every product in every context? If nobody buys, nobody gets gouged. If someone buys, will you tell them they are not allowed to get the generator at that price because in someone else's opinion it is too expensive?