I have posted before about my opinion of hoopla concerning "price gouging." If it's a point you are interested in, read this article and then tell me:
If the price gouging legislation is good, how does one address why Raleigh had no ice?
If the government should have provided it, why didn't they?
Is the better solution to let individuals handle the shortage in the market, or for government to spend its resources making up the shortage the price controls cause.
Price gouging, and more broadly price controls, prevent people from getting what they want. Oil Controls led to gas shortages, emergency supply price controls led to emergency supply shortages.
A side note on the concept of market-based self-organization of society is this interesting essay: I, Pencil.
Thursday, January 11, 2007
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It's hard to do a lot of generalizing from this article. It's not clear how long Raleigh went without ice - the state/federal ice brigade may have shown up 15 minutes after the bust of the ice yahoos. So maybe Raleigh got all the ice it needed.
But, I'll assume this article stands for what it purports to stand for, that is, people needed ice, and couldn't get it (again, not totally clear from this article: e.g., did anyone die from lack of insulin? or did the casualties consist of ice cream?)
From a policy point of view, you have to ask 'what is gained from enacting this price gouging law?' And one area in which there are clear gains is in the field of morality. What a price gouging law says is 'there is a certain way you shouldn't treat your fellow citizens; here, that means you should take advantage of them in their desperation.'
One thing I like about this article is that it's explicit about what drives the 'free market': greed. I honestly often wonder how a Christian thinker can embrace such a system (the only rationale I can imagine is along the lines of just war theory).
So, again, on the moral front, this law says 'you shouldn't be greedy.'
So their are tangible gains to weigh against the people's temporary lack of access to ice.
And we would need to know even more (when did ice actually arrive via a lawful route?) to say which policy is better. If ice showed up from a legitimate source shortly after the ice yahoos were arrested, it's not clear that the market didn't function perfectly well even under the contraints of the laws that were enacted. If so, another gain would have been in terms of the money that remained in the pockets of those who weren't 'gouged.'
There was a shortage of ice, sufficient to have the local government asking for donations from other counties. This is the extent of the information provided, I agree.
But they wouldn't need to beg if people were allowed to sell ice for what it was worth in the affected areas.
Should the price of an apartment go up because it is in a desirable neighborhood?
Should my price of orange juice go up because of a fungus that strikes orange growers in Florida?
The key question is this: no one forced people to buy the expensive ice. They were willing to do so, and their existing options were expensive ice, or no ice. The Gouging legislation also had the effect of jacking up the price the people who managed to buy ice had to pay, by keeping other potential profiteers out.
The moral issue of "you shouldn't be greedy" is an interesting one, but until we legislate that everyone should worship YHWH, I'm not convinced that a moral interest is enough to justify a law. The only "tangible gain" I see is a rule telling people not to be greedy, and a punishment for violation. I see in it nothing at all to promote that change in the heart, or to lead an unregenerate man to Christ. What good, then, is the window dressing, unless it meets a true tangible goal?
Greed works. In this instance, profit drives people to take ice from where it will sublimate to nothingness in a freezer (preventing waste, as well) to where it is wanted enough that people are willing (under no coercion other than external circumstance) to pay it. Nothing prevents governments from supplying ice brigades, but we know from experience that governments are often slower to act than individuals - though they potentially bring more might to bear when they do.
Those who feel ripped off are under no obligation to buy ice, and can wait for the government to do its part. There is nothing preventing altruistic individuals from driving ice in as they would have before.
There were people willing to pay, say $10 per bag for ice (detail from article: over $8 per bag). We know this because they paid it, and others were lining up for it (suggesting that the sellers would have run out, and that the price was not - in supply/demand terms - high enough). If the government had been providing the ice, they would not have been willing to pay that amount. But I can tell you that they valued ice at a minimum of 10 times its normal value.
People can be irrational. They were willing to pay to get what these people were selling, and were happy to see them carted off by the cops. As they went home to spoiling food (as there is more than ice cream and insulin in the world), I wonder if they were more pleased to see the sellers carted off, or upset that they had no ice.
I'm not really going to quibble with the notion that if one procedure provides significantly better results than another, then the former should be implemented. Nor am I going to say that I don't agree that a free market does a better job than a government of providing goods and services.
But, I do think the ethic of greed should be a real concern to a Christian thinker. A gain in "morality" isn't de minimis. Classic Christian thinkers like Augustine and Aquinas considered the law to have a role in teaching morality to people. This is not very different (if at all) from the notion that the Law was a tutor, leading us to Christ. So I do think that a gain in morality does, ultimately, point people toward Christ.
Law and policy have to be pragmatic, I think. But, my question for the economist is how far is too far? Under the principles articulated, nothing should be illegal - rather, we should just let the market sort it all out. To be more specific, if a group of cannibals wanted to eat people, and certain people were found who were willing to sell themselves to the cannibals, the market has no principled way to disallow such a thing.
Instead of allowing econ to shape law and policy, I prefer a natural law approach. I think of economics as one measurement of natural law, but not as the natural law itself.
Another way the ice situation can be analyzed is this: the market has spoken, and people prefer to live in a place with anti-gouging laws than in a place with ice. Laws to can be conceived of as commodities being sold on a market (Public Choice Theory, I think), and in this instance, the cost-benefit analysis led where it did.
Summary of what follows.
*Ice cream? Give me a break.
*Offering ice for sale at $10, or even $100, made not one person unwillingly worse off.
*Under the circumstances, ice was more expensive than normal - significantly so. Therefore from both a supply side and a demand side, ice was worth more than $2.
*Taxes for public goods I do not consume make me worse off. Someone selling something I cannot or will not buy does not (at worse, I remain exactly as I was before).
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Upon further thought:
That people would pay $10 a bag for ice to cool their $4 ice cream for a couple days is almost absurd. A much more rational assumption is that, because Raleigh is a sweltering hell-hole in the summer (at least, it was last July) that ice was needed to simply cool off - by chilling one's water or other drinks. The prevention of heat-stroke is probably a legitimate need.
It is perhaps possible that "legitimate sources" would have sprung up to provide cheap ice, but there are several reasons why I doubt it happened. #1, while one component of ice is water (which itself may not have been accessible because of damage from the hurricane), the other is very scarce - the ability to freeze it. Power is out for many people - otherwise cooling themselves or their food would not be worth $10 a bag.
If we assume that a store has emergency generators and a freezer to make ice, there is still a cost/benefit consideration. Should they power their freezer, or only power their refrigeration for their stock of food? If they power the freezer, they will run out of power sooner for their food, potentially losing several thousands of dollars in inventory. Or, they can bag, say, 100 bags of ice (I consider this a generous assumption) to sell for at most $2 each.
Unless they are feeling particularly altruistic, I doubt they would choose to make ice, even if they could, under these conditions, because under these conditions ice is more expensive to make (the opportunity cost of making ice or saving your inventory, in this case). When price controls limit the price assuming that only pre-crisis prices are "fair," and the cost of making ice exceeds what it could be sold for, the market won't provide it.
In the news today: a cold snap has wiped out a reported 75% of the citrus crop in California this year. When prices go up - is this unfair? Is it "taking advantage of someone," or is it a normal result of constricted supply.
If the price gouging laws that prevent ice from reaching those that value it at $10 per bag or more are fair, but prices going up because a primary producer of citrus has experienced bad weather is also okay, where do you draw the line?
The ice incident is used because the author was in the midst of the crisis, but the same sort of thing happened after hurricane Andrew in Florida. People who bought generators, chainsaws, and other supplies in Georgia which people desperately wanted to buy in Florida were turned away because they were "profiteering."
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One other thought I had this morning. Why is my being taxed to provide for the education of my neighbor's child fine, when I am coerced into doing it - but the offering for sale (without any coercion by the seller) of things people want at a high price wrong?
By offering ice for $10 per bag, the sellers made not a single person worse off. Those who chose to buy ice didn't have it before - and bought it willingly. Those who did not were in exactly the state they were before, yet you argue that by offering the ice for sale, they were "taking advantage of people in their desperation."
They did far, far less than funeral home operators, who charge very high prices with a legal oligopoly or monopoly power from the government, with fees just for receiving a body from the coroner running into the hundreds of dollars - taking advantage of people who are distressed by the death of a loved one.
To spend my tax dollars on what somebody else thinks is good for the community in a way I do not benefit - like the purchase of open space or parkland if I'd rather stay indoors - actively makes me worse off by coercively taking my money.
Yet we consider the first evil, and the second and third nominal to actively good. Why?
"Another way the ice situation can be analyzed is this: the market has spoken, and people prefer to live in a place with anti-gouging laws than in a place with ice. Laws to can be conceived of as commodities being sold on a market (Public Choice Theory, I think), and in this instance, the cost-benefit analysis led where it did. "
Only to the extent that people are aware of such laws, and to the extent that there is a wide enough dispersal of laws to allow people to sort themselves into the exact mix they desire. Otherwise, the gouging laws may be an inconvinience people choose to live with, and we have no way to tell.
I'm a comment fiend here:
Maybe I should say this: I don't find people selling something for what it's worth to be inherently greedy (with the connotation that they desire to harm people for their own gain).
They were motivated by the desire for profit, but I see their actions as no different morally than the man running the pharmacy, grocery store, deli, bakery, or coffee shop down the street.
"Greed" is often used in a very subjective way by those who wish to call the actions of another immoral. Conservatives often try and co-opt the word to show that even base motivations in the market often lead to good results. But assuming the basest motivations does not make it true.
To use the greed argument, you must argue that price gouging laws exist, not for the benefit of the people in the affected area, but for the moral benefit to prospective sellers - by removing my ability to go in and charge high prices, you make me a better person.
No one argues that. "We have to protect the consumer" is the refrain. But it is the consumer whose freedom to buy is harmed.
I'll try to respond to all this, eventually, but in meantimes I'd like you to try to respond to the common criticism of economics that it provides no principled distinction among actions. In other words, economics might be able to tell me how to get ice to Raleigh in the most efficient manner. But it cannot tell me why cannibalism is wrong. When economics tries to answer questions like 'why is cannibalism wrong,' is always ends up missing the point and instead telling you the best way to get cannibalism accomplished.
In short, economics cannot speak directly to issues of morality.
Economics and Morality:
Yes. Economics is at its core the study of the distribution of scarce resources in a world of limitless wants. It is not in itself a moral or immoral study, rather (ideally) a passionless assesment of how to see that the most stuff gets to the most people who want it.
There are a multitude of quasi-moral ideas like public goods and externalities, and it is a social science to the extent that it focuses on how people act and why, but it remains an amoral discussion of hows and whys, not shoulds.
Economics generally assumes that, if we have more honeycomb (or any other good) in the world, while holding everything else constant, it is a good thing. You may hear this addressed as Utility Maximization. But if increased honeycomb comes at the expense of open woodland, then there needs to be some mechanism for determining a balance between honeycomb and woodland.
The price is an outcome of this balance. If honeycomb is "too scare" (compared to the balance you would expect), the price will go up. The causes some people who have (or can obtain) open woodland to convert that woodland into honeycomb. The additional supply of honeycomb causes the price to come down, until the point is reached where the cost of giving up open woodland isn't worth the price you can get for the honeycomb.
Prices as such are simply amoral in this example.
The profit incentive / greed that drives the model is real, but so too are the ambitions, lusts for power, pride and other evils in the world that drive other models. If we are to compare systems, we must compare true system to true system - not greedy capitalism to idealized Geneva. But that is outside the discipline of simply trying to find a balance.
Economics will tell us that limiting the supply of a drug through prohibition leads to a higher price that those who simply MUST have it are willing to pay. This has the real consequence of enriching those that choose to flout the law until they are caught. Which is better? It doesn't say. But it does tell us that actions have predictable consequences.
A shortage of ice, generators, plywood, chainsaws, food, flashlights, etc, etc is a predictable (though overlooked) consequence of price-gouging laws. Economics doesn't tell us that $10 a bag is unfair for ice. It tells us that the best price is one where the supply of ice at that price equals the demand for ice at that price.
It tells us buyers always want it cheaper, and sellers always want to sell it for more. It tells us that when people lose the substitutes of in-home refrigeration, the demand for ice (and therefore the price) should go up so that supply will meet demand. It tells no one to buy, and no one to sell. It makes no distinction about whether a person wants the ice for insulin, or to make snowballs to throw at someone else, other than their willingness to pay as an indicator of how much they value it.
A free-market person will say this is best, because no government can match the knowledge of every person even in a city - their preferences, wants, and needs. But a free price mechanism will let those who most want something bid up the price unti they get it.
An institutionalist would probably argue that somebody buying ice at $1,000 a bag is bad if they want to make snowballs to throw at others, so the government must step in and make sure that only those who needs the ice can get it, trusting the government's ability to make a total (or at least satisfactory) census of everyone's needs.
“When price controls limit the price assuming that only pre-crisis prices are "fair," and the cost of making ice exceeds what it could be sold for, the market won't provide it.”
I accept that a “fair” price should be obtained both pre and post crisis, one that reflects varying cost to the seller at either stage. The spirit of an anti-price gouging law is that one shouldn’t be able to charge an unfair price, in which ‘unfair’ means ‘not reflective of the actual costs incurred in providing the ice.’
I also accept that a certain law might have unintended consequences which are ultimately undesirable and should lead to that law being repealed. Whether the NC price gouging law is one of those is not clear to me from this article.
“Greed works.”
To me, the only plausible justification for this is if it’s a lesser of two evils. Greed is sinful (e.g., Isaiah 57:17). So, for example, if I were the Governor, and I were put in the position of permitting profiteering for the sake of the innocent people in my City who needed ice, I could see accepting it. But free market thinkers tend to exalt greed, because, as you said, “Greed works.” But, obviously, functionality is not a cardinal Christian virtue, and functionality, on its own, justifies nothing in a Christian worldview.
“People can be irrational.”
Not according to the Market. Of course, I agree that people can be irrational. But the market assumes that people’s actions are ‘rational.’ ‘Rational’ here is used in a technical sense, meaning ‘in their own perceived best interest.’ However, as a Christian and as a general observer of life, I think it’s clear people do not always know what is in their best interest, are not always ‘rational,’ yet, the Market is always rushing off to do their bidding without a clue as to whether their bidding is good or bad.
“Only to the extent that people are aware of such laws, and to the extent that there is a wide enough dispersal of laws to allow people to sort themselves into the exact mix they desire.”
Which is only to say, as is an economic truism, that market theory only works insofar as you have “perfect” conditions (perfect information, competition, mobility, willingness and ability to pay, etc). But no market is actually perfect, although some may be closer than others. It’s not clear that the market for post-crisis ice in Raleigh is closer or farther from being a perfect market than the market for legislation. This is a specific question, not a general one, and so whether allowing profiteering in the Raleigh ice crisis would have been “good” or not does not lead inevitably to the generalizations that price gouging or price controls should all go out the window.
“They were motivated by the desire for profit, but I see their actions as no different morally than the man running the pharmacy, grocery store, deli, bakery, or coffee shop down the street.”
The difference is the fairness and/or reasonableness of prices. It’s a difference of degree, but so is everything.
“To use the greed argument, you must argue that price gouging laws exist, not for the benefit of the people in the affected area, but for the moral benefit to prospective sellers…”
No, you see, there are two sides to the coin. The prohibition protects the potential victim; simultaneously, it teaches people what is right and wrong. So it benefits all parties involved.
"This is not very different (if at all) from the notion that the Law was a tutor, leading us to Christ. So I do think that a gain in morality does, ultimately, point people toward Christ."
I disagree. The Law (in the sense that it was handed down by God) does in fact act as a tutor to point us toward Christ. But does every law by extension do so?
Good intentions do not automatically yield good results. Pharisees who walked into walls rather than see a woman on the street did not in doing so get pointed to Christ. They rather enhanced their own false sense of holiness.
Pharisees who held that healing on the Sababth was wrong missed the greater picture of caring for the sick and poor. They saw the action (observing the Sabbath) but not the consequences (the misery of those in need).
Legislated morality does not lead to righteousness, when the problem in the heart is not addressed. Price gouging legislation to staunch the greed in the world is like holding back the ocean with a grain of sand. Better to simply tax 100% of earnings/wealth above an acceptable level, removing the ability to have the arbitrary "too much." But even then the government is tasked with allocating resources thus gathered, leading to even more ambitous (may I say power-hungry) men who try to administer it in a way that suits their own interests. And those who cannot earn more simply do not work, promoting sloth.
We do not end, and hardly address the greed of the world with such legislation and when we do - we open up other avenues for the evil. Is one greater than the other? Surely by punishing murder more severly than assault we cause some murderers to be assaulters - it is a trade-off we accept.
Can we similarly say that trying to outlaw greed, we end up accepting "lesser" evils? Or are they (greed, sloth, envy, pride)all on the order of roughly equivalent things the world still has anyway, which will be substituted for each other as the situation allows? If they are in some sense equivalent and we cannot actually reduce the overall level of evil, is the better path one that allows for more freedom or less? I argue more, because less requires some men to take the power over other men, and giving an avenue for them to express their lust for power (while being unable to guarantee the betterment of the rest) is worse than allowing men to act for themselves.
Was Calvin's Geneva superior because it tried to run a theocratic state? Or did the law run so roughshod over grace that it wholly marred of Christ?
"No, you see, there are two sides to the coin. The prohibition protects the potential victim; simultaneously, it teaches people what is right and wrong. So it benefits all parties involved. "
How is someone who willingly buys ice at a price they percieve to be fair a victim, save to themself? It functions as... a protection from buyuer's remorse? Given the cost of even 100 people spending $8 "too much" for ice each, a $5,000 fine seems excessive. Is $4,200 the price of greed? If dollars can serve as a proxy for intentions, this would make the law here 16% protection, 84% punitive. Of course, this is when dealing with small sums. But in a crisis, people are unlikely to have access to their life savings, and I doubt even guys selling generators off their truck can take credit cards.
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"I accept that a “fair” price should be obtained both pre and post crisis, one that reflects varying cost to the seller at either stage."
Great. How do you determine that? And you need to reflect not only the physical cost, but the profit that motivates someone to sell it. How much time and energy must be accounted for to someone to drive 3 hours to sell ice? Because there is no way they'd do so simply to break even, save for purely altruistic reasons. And that would be a sign of market failure.
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"It’s not clear that the market for post-crisis ice in Raleigh is closer or farther from being a perfect market than the market for legislation."
A quick stab: how much longer would it take to learn the difference in the price of ice in a crisis, or to learn the complete difference in legislative code between Raleigh and another place in the same county, state, or country? A fair price only becomes confusing if it becomes a matter of "ought" instead of "will." Absent coercion, why is a price - any price - at which a seller is willing to sell, and a buyer is willing to buy, unfair?
Is there a limit to what the ice-buyers would have paid under the circumstances? $20 a bag? $30? Why did they manage to get it for less?
The market for legislation is a large and cumbersome thing that most people seem to ignore unless it suits them (cf. voter turnout at elections). Markets can be generally classified as more or less perfect by examining some key factors: key are barriers to entry and access to information. Sans price goiging legislation, there are no institutional barriers to entry in the post-crisis ice market. Anyone with a truck, car, or wagon can try to get some ice in, assuming they can get a supply from outside the area. PGL here makes the market more imperfect. Access to information is a good question. If somebody bought ice for $10 that a federal agent was handing out for free minutes later, the buyer would feel ripped off.
The market for favorable legislation has many, many more barriers to entry. Moving is expensive if you were born in a place with unfavorable laws. Changing the laws requires the support of an electorate, or of the legislature, both of which are difficult grounds where only those already in the system generally care to tread. Information concerning legislation is expensive - I wouldn't be surprised if the ice-sellers had no idea what they were doing was wrong. There's a reason lawyers can command high prices, and it is their percieved expertise in fathoming this information.
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"Not according to the Market. Of course, I agree that people can be irrational. But the market assumes that people’s actions are ‘rational.’ "
Only in a perfect market. Most current economic theory allows for bounded rationalism, in which people are only generally (but not always) rational. In such circumstances it is generally worth assuming that people are rational in a given instance, because there are very high transaction costs for determining whether or not they actually are.
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"The difference is the fairness and/or reasonableness of prices. It’s a difference of degree, but so is everything."
That assumes that deli prices are reasonable, or are less likely to be motivated by greed.
My contention is that the deli owner (and even the clerk working there for $5.15 an hour) is motivated by greed. Greed of exactly the same stripe as the ice sellers.
Each wants to get the most perceived bang for the buck they can. The clerk would gladly jump ship to make $6.15 an hour if it made him better off, the owner would gladly charge more if it would make her better off, and the ice sellers would gladly sell ice if they think it makes them better off.
"Fairness/reasonableness" of prices is something that will probably generate a unique opinion with everyone you ask. Why, then, should it be set aggregately (with the gouging law generally interpreted as 5% being a cap on the increased price) instead of privately between individuals?
If I think $20 a bag for ice is a reasonable price to pay, and you think only $5 is and the seller decides to sell for $10 - what makes the price fair or unfair?
First, I'm not particularly concerned with this instance, the Raleigh ice crisis. Maybe on the balance of all factors, from morality to effeciency, it would be better to allow price gouging. But my primary point is that this determination requires value judgments. And economics cannot provide you with values. However, free market people often talk as if economics dictates a certain action or result. Best case scenario, what they've done is assume a major presupposition (more ice is better). Worst case scenario, they've imported the thorough-going materialism that economics is susceptible to, and are saying 'the material world is all that is to be valued.' For example, in the ice crisis, the article assumes that it was foolish not to get more ice to Raleigh, without considering the possibility that the state of North Carolina had made a rational decision that it preferred living in a place without price gouging, even if that meant sometimes going without.
Whether this is a good or bad decision is not something econ can address, yet free market types have a tendency to let their economics transgress the appropriate boundaries. As with any other science, you cannot derive a normative statement from a descriptive fact.
Law takes into account more than economics, and one of those things is morality.
Law does point people toward God in that it is a manifestation of God's law written on our hearts. It is common-place to point out that most cultures and societies actually share a remarkably similar set of moral values: murder, theft, treason, adultery, etc. This is evidence of the Natural Law, and Lawgiver, aka, God. So I do think that secular law has a role in pointing people toward God.
I agree that if two options are equally evil, and there are no other options, and one maximizes wealth, then you might as well choose the latter. But if put in that position, the Christian should have a distinct frown on his face about it.
More later...
"without considering the possibility that the state of North Carolina had made a rational decision that it preferred living in a place without price gouging, even if that meant sometimes going without."
I'd give good odds that the author strongly believes that those who came up with the price gouging law did not consider that the law would lead to sometimes going without.
It would be interesting to examine the debate from when the law was passed, but if the recent public debate over oil prices is any indicator, the odds are quite good that the debate was soley about punishing those that would dare to do such a thing with little or no thought given to the predictable consequences of such actions, or whether a large increase in the proce of commodities in a crisis is reasonable.
The use of the word "gouging" is itself an emotionally-charged word used to describe the seller as a vampiric predator, which shifts the debate from whether a citizen should have the right to buy commodities at inflated prices in a crisis. Personally, I see the debate in the latter light, not the former.
"My contention is that the deli owner (and even the clerk working there for $5.15 an hour) is motivated by greed. Greed of exactly the same stripe as the ice sellers."
Don't you think there's a difference between a 'reasonable profit' and an 'exhorbitant profit'? It all comes down to our own intuitive sensibilities, but so does the notion that 1 + 1 = 2. We have to trust our intuition at some point.
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"Fairness/reasonableness" of prices is something that will probably generate a unique opinion with everyone you ask. Why, then, should it be set aggregately (with the gouging law generally interpreted as 5% being a cap on the increased price) instead of privately between individuals?"
Because of concern about inequalities in bargaining power.
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Here is a thesis that I find completely acceptable: Policy decisions often reflect a failure to consider all of the consequences of a particular law or action; economics should be utilized to help policy makers more fully attend to the various possibilities.
I am not against free markets or economics; I only ask that its aspirations be modest.
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I accept that the greed of the merchant has to considered in relation to the corruption of the politician.
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That ethic of freedom in free markets seems to me to be their chief virtue, from a Christian point-of-view.
I'd consider fairness to be another virtue - not as determined by an arbitrary third party, but in that it regards (treats?) people equally. Adjustments can be made, but it regards people as adults who can make decisions for themselves.
That, to me, gives people a dignity that many other ways of regarding the masses do not. And I respect that, as well.
There's also a helping of humility - the humility that says the wants and needs of a city (much less a state or country) are very, very diverse, and that our attempts to control or administer them are likely to do more harm than good. It is easy to say "that doesn't make sense to me, therefore it is wrong." I think it is harder to say "that doesn't make sense to me, maybe it's because my understanding is limited."
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The aspirations of economics should not exceed its own limitations. So, too should the practice of law, or the creation of legislation. The lawyer may have trained in it, but is inherently no more or less ethical than a businessman by right of that training. And a legislator should understand them limits of their own wisdom and rely on the tools available more often than their own thoughts on a matter.
Economics is, as everything, limited by its own assumptions. One set of assumptions is that what makes me happy may not make you happy. What makes both of us may not make a third person happy. That something that makes all three of of happy may not outweigh the happiness a fourth gains when the opposite happens. That's why stuff becomes a proxy for "the goodness of the world." And so it says that if someone wants to buy goods at high prices, why should we interfere?
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Inequities in bargaining power are worthwhile when they exist, but the sellers don't have nearly the bargaining power in my mind they seem to have in yours.
What bargaining power do they have? Monopoly? Not in the absence of the restrictive law. Buyers with no alternative to buying? If we allow that nothing is an acceptable alternative, then we have to allow that prospective buyers have the very real option not to buy. They are not doing so at gunpoint, and if they were would not other laws (racketeering?) apply?
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1 + 1 = 2 is a demonstrable fact as long as we have a common definition of 1, 2, + and =. Intuitive? What does the word mean to you? And given recent research into how the brain regards prices, it's also reasonable that an excessive negative reaction toward a high price isn't as reasonable as our gut tells us it is.
Do I see a difference? Yes, but in this situation, the baseline cost of the ice (in this example) is reasonably well known. Their immediate circumstances are also reasonably well known, more so to the buyer than the seller (which in fact gives the buyer an advantage - otherwise the seller might be able to charge a much higher price).
I do not accept that the seller has undue power over the buyer. Therefore, the buyer should be able to decide if the crisis premium is reasonable or not. If so, buy it. If not, tell the seller to F*** off.
If the prices were hidden, or charged after-the-fact (now that you have taken and used the good, here's what I demand as payment), I would feel very differently.
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Again, I view the issue less as "protecting the citizens from greedy sellers" and more as "denying citizens the ability to buy at a premium in a crisis."
Do I see the inconstancy in proclaiming the humility of a free market (presuming my own lack of expertise as a more likely fault than the brokenness of the system) while proclaiming the brokenness of something I may not fully understand?
Sure do. But the market is a lot bigger and more complex than a law. So I consider the ability of a single person to grasp the purpose/reach/effects of a law written by at most a modest group of persons is less in question that the ability of a person (or small group of persons) to grasp the complexities of the whole strangely-organized-chaos of human society.
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