Analogy and Moral Reasoning

Essay

Analogy and Moral Reasoning
Suppose that you, your spouse, and infant child live in a small house in Galveston, Texas, which is situated on the Gulf of Mexico. Suppose a ferocious hurricane strikes Galveston, knocking out all of the power lines and closing the main highway to Houston. Luckily your house is spared, and you have enough food in your refrigerator and freezer to last for a few days. But without electricity, the food will quickly rot, and your supply of infant formula will spoil.
Desperately you race to the closest convenience store to buy a supply of ice, but you find that the store is charging $50 for a ten pound bag. It turns out that all the other stores are charging the same price, and there is no way you can pay this much, especially when you realize you will need several bags. So you race to the local Home Depot to buy a small generator to keep the refrigerator and freezer running. But you find that generators that were going for $200 yesterday are now selling for over $2000.
The phenomenon that you have encountered is called price gouging. There is no federal law against price gouging, and while several states have laws outlawing price gouging during an emergency, Texas is not one of them. People who support the morality of price gouging argue that a seller should be able to charge whatever he can get for a product, while those who oppose it argue that it is simply wrong to take advantage of people during an emergency. Develop as many arguments from analogy you can think of either supporting or opposing the morality of price gouging.