Price Gouging Can Be a Type of Hurricane Aid
Everyday prices. Extraordinary circumstances.
Photographer: Joe Raedle/Getty Images“Price gouging” has become an issue again after Hurricane Harvey, both in the Houston area for food, water and tools, and in a broader region affected by gasoline supply cutoffs. Florida and Puerto Rico, with Category 5 Hurricane Irma on the way, may soon be seeing the same.
Although Texas and Florida have laws against the practice, a bigger deterrent is perhaps the wrath of the customer: We have entered an era when companies fear social media to an unprecedented degree. But I wish to suggest that price gouging, in spite of its obnoxious-sounding name, is usually the best of a set of bad alternatives. If you are inveighing against high prices after a storm, basically you are lining up with the interests of American big business, at the possible expense of storm victims.