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It's a question of personal responsibility: * I mug you, compared to being a bystander while you are mugged. * I hit you with my car, compared to being a pass
by ctrl-j 9y ago
It's a question of personal responsibility:
* I mug you, compared to being a bystander while you are mugged.
* I hit you with my car, compared to being a passenger in the car ahead of the one that hit you.
* I price-gouge you on a medication you need to live, compared to buying a laptop for my job instead of sending that money to buy food for someone half a world away.
Do you really not see the difference?
- harryh 9y agoSo called price-gouging is more of an inaction (failing to sell you the product you want at your preferred price) than an action.
- grzm 9y agoIn many of the cases people think of when referring to price gouging in pharmaceuticals (such as Mylan with the EpiPen, Turing and Daraprim, or Valeant and a whole host of products) it was a positive action on behalf of the company, raising the prices by multiples. Regardless of one's feelings of whether this is legal, moral, or otherwise, calling price-gouging in these cases "more of an inaction" is a misrepresentation.
- rayiner 9y ago> positive action The relevant inquiry isn't "positive action" versus "inaction" but causation. The bystander doesn't cause you to get mugged; he simply declines to prevent it. Likewise, raising the price on Daraprim doesn't cause you to get toxoplasmosis, it simply changes the terms on which the third party is willing to prevent the harm. So the proper analogy is standing by while someone gets mugged, charging him $10 to stop the mugging, and charging him $1,000 to stop the mugging. The guy who does nothing is still the worst.
- grzm 9y agoAgreed. I can see that my comment was a off-point. I tend to think of price gouging as the act of raising the prices, as opposed to selling at a price others may feel is unfair, and the latter rather than the former is what's being discussed here. Cheers.