I think that jacking up prices when your customers are between a rock and a hard place is wrong.
I didn't think about it much in the past but I probably would have felt it was wrong because it produced negative practical effects in a foreseeable way, while not thinking it was a violation of anyone's rights. If it was wrong I would have thought it wrong for consequentialist reasons, not for deontological reasons (in other words if it was wrong it wouldn't be because the action was wrong itself, but because the consequences would be bad, and you would know they would be bad, and you shouldn't cause such bad consequences if you could avoid it)
With more knowledge and thought on the issue, I don't think the consequences are bad. Higher prices when there are shortages encourages more supply and discourages use.
Something like drinking water isn't the best example of this idea. You need water or you will die relatively quickly (maybe you will last days, depending on your level of hydration and the humidity and temperature, but you won't last more than that). If you have some good scheme of emergency water rationing where you give each person enough water to survive while drinking, it might work better than rationing by price, for a limited period of time (and beyond a limited period emergency supplies will be brought in, and even if people don't have enough water for every activity they might want to use water for, they should have enough to drink.
But for things like gasoline, generators, non-drinking water (either water that isn't drinking quality, or perhaps drinkable water if the shortage is not so severe that there is any threat of not having enough water to drink, with the issue concerning possibly not having enough water to wash clothes, water lawns, run industrial processes, irrigate crops etc.) than I think that allowing high prices and profits, produces a net benefit to the people in the area where there is a shortage. It tends to cause use only when the use is important and efficient, and it will encourage supplies to be moved in to the area of the shortage. |
