[viggity]

It's how I paid for my Christmas gifts when I was in High School. Wait in lines for xboxes, furbies, whatever the hot toy was that year.

Think of the guys who spent tens of thousands of dollars on generators, rented a truck and drove down to New Orleans after katrina. They got locked up (and their generators impounded) because they were "price gouging". As if the tens of thousands of capital and the dangerous work of brining the generators to market wasn't worth the 5x markup. The generators weren't doing anyone any good sitting in Kansas.

Surely you're not greedy, right? You work for the good of everyone and you benefit in no way, right? It isn't the benevolence of the baker that puts bread on your table. It isn't the benevolence of the brewer that puts beer in your fridge. It isn't the benevolence of the butcher that puts the bacon in the oven. Prices are signals, and they work.

[nitwit005]

> It isn't the benevolence of the baker that puts bread on your table.

Farmers are often very proud of the fact they're feeding people, and I'm sure the same is true of bakers.

Given how often people seem to donate crops and food, I doubt you'd much of support for charging the desperate high prices for food, even from the people who stand to benefit.

[rdtwo]

The generator guy simply got robbed by the guys with guns in the state. He was doing a public service my moving essential equipment to a place it was needed and was charging a fee.

[falcolas]

Certainly, you can see the difference between a butcher and someone who buys out the butcher to sell the bacon for 5x their investment, just because they want that money in their pockets?

> They got locked up

Good. They were taking advantage of the poor and needy who are living without their homes and public utilities. They were taking advantage of a crisis to line their fucking pockets. If they really wanted those generators from Kansas to be useful, they could have moved them and charged their costs. There's no need to extravagantly line their pockets - to be greedy fuckers - to provide a useful service to a disaster area.

TL;DR: I think that the scalper's "my pocketbook first, no matter the cost to you" brand of morality to be morally bankrupt, and utterly deserving of society's scorn (and more).