Following up on my post on price gouging and the poor, here’s a link to a story on Marketplace dealing with “price gouging” in Brazil. Except it’s not about ice in the wake of a hurricane, or about water bottles in the desert. It’s about hotel rooms for the World Cup games next summer.

Brazil’s president, Dilma Rousseff, has created a committee to “monitor” prices and prevent “abuses.” According to his chief of staff: “We will use all the instruments available to the state to ensure the protection of consumer rights, whether Brazilian or foreign.”

Tough words. And a touching sentiment. It’s a pity that Brazil’s government wasn’t more concerned about protecting the rights of its own impoverished citizens, or at the very least not literally bulldozing over them, when it evicted slum dwellers from their homes in order to develop new bus routes in preparation for the World Cup and the Olympic games two years later.

But of course Rousseff’s commission doesn’t have anything to do with preventing exploitation of the vulnerable. After all, who’s vulnerable here? We’re talking about hotel rooms for a soccer game, after all, not a basic human need. Buyers and sellers have more than half a year to adjust their plans in light of price signals. And, just like they always do, any legally imposed (or even threatened) price caps are going to destroy whatever incentives might have otherwise existed to increase the available supply by, say, renting out a spare bedroom.

The Marketplace story interviewed both me and fellow philosopher Jeremy Snyder about this issue. And Jeremy and I have a long-running debate about the morality of price gouging. But on this issue, we’re in agreement. The only objectionable thing about this situation is the Brazilian government sticking its nose where it doesn’t belong.