[Do nothing], and people will be able to get access to the critically necessary items, but it will be much harder and more expensive because there is low supply and high logistical difficulty.
[Pass laws forbidding/punishing sharp price increases in times of trouble], and people won’t be able to get anything at all, because someone erected an artificial barrier to trade.
This is a false dichotomy, evidenced by the fact that presently in the US we have laws against price gouging, AND people are generally able to access critical items in times of emergency.
You’re right to say that a law which defines price gouging in a rational, unambiguous way is inevitably going to fail. You can’t expect strict price ceilings, price increase percentages, etc to work. There are too many edge cases—what if prices really do increase that much, what if it’s not adjusted for inflation over time, etc. It’s the same as the pornography problem: how do you define the thing you wish to ban?
But: just because you can’t rigorously define an abstract evil doesn’t mean you can’t ban it. “I know it when I see it” is a perfectly suitable solution for banning antisocial vices.
Moreover, it’s important for bad things to be explicitly declared bad. The oversimplified, mimetic version of Option A is “price gouging is allowed”. You can argue that there’s no difference between banning it or not (which i disagree with), but even if there is no difference, there is a negative consequence to a widespread belief that “X (vice) is encouraged by society”.
This is a false dichotomy, evidenced by the fact that presently in the US we have laws against price gouging, AND people are generally able to access critical items in times of emergency.
You’re right to say that a law which defines price gouging in a rational, unambiguous way is inevitably going to fail. You can’t expect strict price ceilings, price increase percentages, etc to work. There are too many edge cases—what if prices really do increase that much, what if it’s not adjusted for inflation over time, etc. It’s the same as the pornography problem: how do you define the thing you wish to ban?
But: just because you can’t rigorously define an abstract evil doesn’t mean you can’t ban it. “I know it when I see it” is a perfectly suitable solution for banning antisocial vices.
Moreover, it’s important for bad things to be explicitly declared bad. The oversimplified, mimetic version of Option A is “price gouging is allowed”. You can argue that there’s no difference between banning it or not (which i disagree with), but even if there is no difference, there is a negative consequence to a widespread belief that “X (vice) is encouraged by society”.