So you’re saying having people not being able to buy water because the price has been increased is better than having people not being able to buy water because the store sold it all? Yeah, no good. Price gouging is the most distasteful form of profiting from a captive audience, because this audience is captive due to disaster, it’s punishing people for living in the wrong city in the wrong week.
“So you’re saying having people not being able to buy water because the price has been increased is better than having people not being able to buy water because the store sold it all? “
Strawman argument.
I have no idea why you phrase it that way, better for people not to be able to buy because of price or because of absence of supply. I thought the point was that greedy sellers are making obscene profits, in which case they must have set the price well enough. The real choice is between the shelves being g empty and having the choice to pay what you’d never pay under normal circumstances. But to answer your question, the former case is better because then more people, and the more desperate people, get more water.
“profiting from a captive audience”
It’s not as if the sellers of bottled water kidnapped people and locked them in a cellar. They are being held captive by God or Mother Nature, not the local convenience store. So long as they are being held captive it is to the collective benefit that supplies are rationed in the mist efficient and just manner, which is the free market.
“it’s punishing people for living in the wrong city in the wrong week”
No, it may be profiting off them being so situated. But God or Mother Nature or whatever is punishing them, not the guy who sells them water. Blame the storm.
This whole punishment line of reasoning I find distasteful. I can understand a heroin pusher being seen as punishing a junkie, but would you say a farmer is punishing the eating public by growing corn when corn futures are up? Or any enterprise punishing customers fulfilling a need when supply is lacking anywhere in the market? Probably not. It can’t be bad to take advantage of market conditions anytime because then we’d all be guilty all the time.
Oh, I see, it’s only evil if you do it in times of especially acute need. But I might remind you that the more desperate was the need the better a thing it is that the seller did. Possibly saving lives is nobler than satiating the munchies late on a Sarurday eve, or whatever is their usual sale. And why shouldn’t they profit from doing good? Because it should come out of the kindness of their heart? Why? Nevermind, let’s pretend there’s a reason. Okay, then goodbye profit motive.
As someone who buys in bulk when I can, I know that stores limit purchases on many items that are temporarily a good buy.
Our neighborhood store knows that we rich hoarders would clean out the shelf if we could, so they make limit rules to have the goods reach a larger number of their customers and get wider dispersal.