SemiConscious Dot Org

Cry a tear of compassion for the poor, maligned, misunderstood, Apostle of Free Markets that is the humble price gouger. These brave, selfless martyrs endure the slings and arrows of Nattering Nabobs, on both the Left and Right, who accuse them of exploiting the humanitarian tragedy of Katrina to raise prices astronomically.

Balderdash! As Libertarian reporter John Stossel helpfully explains, the charging of exponentially higher prices to victims of a humanitarian tragedy is not, as so many fools assume, the action of a predatory scumsucker, but in fact an extraordinarily compassionate act of grandmotherly kindness:

Politicians and the media are furious about price increases in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. They want gas stations and water sellers punished.

If you want to score points cracking down on mean, greedy profiteers, pushing anti-”gouging” rules is a very good thing.

But if you’re one of the people the law “protects” from “price gouging,” you won’t fare as well.

Consider this scenario: You are thirsty — worried that your baby is going to become dehydrated. You find a store that’s open, and the storeowner thinks it’s immoral to take advantage of your distress, so he won’t charge you a dime more than he charged last week. But you can’t buy water from him. It’s sold out.

You continue on your quest, and finally find that dreaded monster, the price gouger. He offers a bottle of water that cost $1 last week at an “outrageous” price — say $20. You pay it to survive the disaster.

You resent the price gouger. But if he hadn’t demanded $20, he’d have been out of water. It was the price gouger’s “exploitation” that saved your child.

It saved her because people look out for their own interests. Before you got to the water seller, other people did. At $1 a bottle, they stocked up. At $20 a bottle, they bought more cautiously. By charging $20, the price gouger makes sure his water goes to those who really need it.

Do you understand now? The price gouger is charging many times the normal market value for a product you need to stay alive and have no other source for—because he cares about you! He loves you, in fact, and he has kindly raised his prices so that those nasty water-hoarders will not buy up all the water and selfishly keep their own kids alive with it. And besides, if you didn’t want to pay through the nose for necessities of life in a disaster-ravaged city, you shouldn’t have lived in a place filled with poor black people who don’t vote Republican to begin with!

I think you all owe the price gougers an apology. Maybe if you say you’re sorry very, very nicely, they’ll forgive you and allow you to empty your bank account to keep from starving.

Behold the power of the Free Market! Glory!