Free Price Gouging Essay Sample

“Price gouging occurs when, in the wake of an emergency, sellers of a certain necessary goods sharply raise their prices beyond the level needed to cover increased costs” (Zwolinski 347). In the majority of cases, price gouging is considered to be a bad thing and even immoral occurrence. As a result, most states have enacted legislation regulating or even prohibiting the process of price gouging. However, the fundamental question that needs to be answered is “Why is price gouging such a negative thing and why is it so widely condemned?”
When a company sets extremely high prices for particular products, this is referred to as ‘price gouging’. Some companies do so in periods of emergency or natural disasters when consumers are ready to pay any price in order to get what they need for their survival. Although it is obviously immoral to make money off other people's misery, there are companies that would never pass over an opportunity to make huge profits by doing well out of cases of emergency.
Another striking example proving that price gouging is a bad thing is the sharp rise in prices of necessary items, including items produced by pharmaceutical industries. Let us take a real-life example: “The drug, called Daraprim, was acquired in August by Turing Pharmaceuticals, which immediately raised the price to $750 a tablet from $13.50, bringing the annual cost of treatment for some patients to hundreds of thousands of dollars” (Pollack, "Drug Goes From $13.50 a Tablet to $750, Overnight”). Obviously, Daraprim price increase is not the only one and isolated cases of price gouging in the pharmaceutical industry. Chief executives and managing directors of pharmaceutical companies and corporations, state with one accord that they raise prices in order to stay afloat, but not to gouge patients, which is obviously not the reality. Nevertheless, price gouging in this sector might “force hospitals to use alternative therapies that may not have the same efficacy” (Pollack, "Drug Goes From $13.50 a Tablet to $750, Overnight”).
Price gouging may be acceptable when applied to luxury products and other top-end goods as in this case it does not hurt the majority of ordinary customers who normally do not purchase such goods. In the meantime, people who normally buy luxury goods, realize that they have to pay more for what they get.

Works Cited

Pollack, Andrew. "Drug Goes From $13.50 a Tablet to $750, Overnight." The New York Times. The New York Times, 20 Sept. 2015. Web. 6 Jan. 2016. <http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/21/business/a-huge-overnight-increase-in-a-drugs-price-raises-protests.html?_r=0>.
Zwolinski, Matt. "The Ethics of Price Gouging." Business Ethics Quarterly 18.3 (2008): 347-78. Print.