Yesterday some dude posted a video to shame apparently Indian gas station owners charging $10 a gallon around the Hurricane Helene disaster area. The lolberts answered with rebuttals that free market pricing is the best rationing mechanism in a time of scarcity.
People are saying that the gas station could ration gallons per customer and keep the same price, and the lolberts are saying this is communist price control.
I'm not really sure how much merit is held by either position since I've never really thought about this with respect to a disaster area. Clearly the 1973 price controls were a bad idea, but this is a debate over what a private business owner should do after a hurricane. My gut feeling is that gas should be rationed by customer, not by pricing. But maybe the gas station is passing along supply chain pricing to a certain extent?
edit: Texas punished gas price gouging in 2019 after Hurricane Harvey.
So the other positive aspect of "gouging" is that it encourages other people to also sell that as it's so profitable to do so. If you owned a helicopter for example, at a certain price you would make money by filling bladders with fuel and flying them in.
I'm for "gouging" for no other reason than there's no other word to describe it without the emotive label of "gouging"
And for reference, here in Aus, fuel normally ranges from the equivalent price of $5.86 to $8.36 per gallon. Diesel is normally about 10 to 15% more expensive.
There's also a hard cap on the price where it just becomes more feasible to kill the owner.