Smarmy? Maybe. Sarcastic as the day is long? Brand me. I'd prefer we be specific, rather than swim in a pool of varying interpretations of price gouging, especially when those interpretations don't conform to the current standard that governs the behavior of men (law)? Take note; I'm not defending the pimp here. I just don't get offended and steer my boat into the rough waters of pure contradiction, when I'm FREE to abstain from dealing with that person. That encounter isn't a catalyst for a sudden switch in my ideology. It doesn't grant me permission to suddenly pole vault from conservative centered ideas, to blatantly hard left caterwauling for ideas that run counter to my conservative center (not accusing you if that needs to be said). No one is slaved to the transaction. No one. The person that enters a difficult situation with an eye on squeezing the most out of the lemon can certainly be considered morally reprehensible, and we tend towards disliking that person quite a bit. But, some kind of compass must apply here, and if that compass spins in circles and refuses land on anything but, "how I feel, when I feel it, and then I'll be fine...", then it's not a compass. It's some kind of politically bi-polar pile of chaos. The best mediator we have to gauge the existence of price gouging is law, not the 'as the wind blows' psuedo-notion that seems to have seized men by the nose ring.
The economic system we know as Capitalism does NOT explicitly exclude taking advantage of a situation. The person that has piss poor credit might get dragged across glass shards (financially) if they need a car, but when they hit that buy here pay here lot, and they hand over cash that amounts to 3 times the value of the car, they leave with a car. It is not a single sided, single benefit endeavor.
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You don't know what you're talking about. Claiming the current market is capitalism at work is absurd. Firearms and ammunition markets are highly manipulated. The current ammo shortage is a symptom of a highly manipulated market. Firearms and ammunition markets suffer at the whim of regulators. Regulators suffer at the whim of politics. Much of the angst in these threads is a reaction to the fact that these markets are being politicized. Any claim that profiteering in the extremes of these markets is just capitalism at work, is utter nonsense.
