Hostname: page-component-6bf8c574d5-9nwgx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-02-21T01:41:48.187Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Dialogue on Price Gouging: Price Gouging, Non-Worseness, and Distributive Justice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2015

Matt Zwolinski
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract:

This commentary develops my position on the ethics of price gouging in response to Jeremy Snyder's article, “What's the Matter with Price Gouging.” First, it explains how the “nonworseness claim” supports the moral permissibility of price gouging, even if it does not show that price gougers are morally virtuous agents. Second, it argues that questions about price gouging and distributive justice must be answered in light of the relevant possible institutional alternatives, and that Snyder's proposed alternatives to price gouging fare worse on the dimension of justice than a system in which goods are allocated by a system of market prices.

Type
Articles
Information
Business Ethics Quarterly , Volume 19 , Issue 2 , April 2009 , pp. 295 - 306
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Business Ethics 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Alchian, A., and Allen, W.. 1968. University Economics, 2nd ed. New York: Wadsworth.Google Scholar
Axelrod, R. 1984. The Evolution of Cooperation. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Gaus, G. F. 2007. “Social Complexity and Evolved Moral Principles,” in Liberalism, Conservatism, and Hayek's Idea of Spontaneous Order, ed. McNamara, P.. London: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Gaus, G. F. Forthcoming. “Is the Public Incompetent? Compared to Whom? About What?” Critical Review.Google Scholar
Greene, J. 2007. “The Secret Joke in Kant's Soul,” in Moral Psychology, Vol. 3: The Neuroscience of Morality: Emotion, Disease, and Development, ed. Sinnott-Armstrong, W.. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Haidt, J. 2001. “The Emotional Dog and its Rational Tail: A Social Intuitionist Approach to Moral Judgment,” Psychological Review 108: 814–34.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hayek, F. A. 1937. “Economics and Knowledge,” Economica 4: 33–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hayek, F. A. 1945. “The Use of Knowledge in Society,” American Economic Review 35(4): 519–30.Google Scholar
Hayek, F. A., and Bartley III, W. W.. 1988. The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Horowitz, S. 2008. Making Hurricane Response More Effective: Lessons from the Private Sector and the Coast Guard During Katrina. Washington, D.C.: Mercatus Center.Google Scholar
Horowitz, S. 2008. Forthcoming. “Wal-Mart to the Rescue: Private Enterprise's Response to Hurricane Katrina,” The Independent Review 13(4).Google Scholar
Nozick, R. 1974. Anarchy, State, and Utopia. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Prinz, J. 2008. The Emotional Construction of Morals. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Rawls, J. 1971. A Theory of Justice, 1st ed. Cambridge: Belknap Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roth, A. 2007. “Repugnance as a Constraint on Markets,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 21(3): 37–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Snyder, J. 2009. “What's the Matter with Price Gouging?” Business Ethics Quarterly. 19(2) (April): 275–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zwolinski, M. 2008. “The Ethics of Price Gouging,” Business Ethics Quarterly 18(3): 347–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zwolinski, M. 2008. Forthcoming. “Price Gouging and Market Failure,” in New Essays on Philosophy, Politics & Economics: Integration and Common Research Projects, ed. Gaus, G., Lamont, J., and Favor, C.. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar