Having spent a lot of time explaining why we should allow prices to move freely during emergencies, I have found that people sympathetic to “anti-gouging” laws will sometimes concede the economics of the case, but raise ethical concerns. It’s not fair, they say, for the self-interested profit-seeking owners of gas or water to exploit people for their own benefit during a time of crisis.

As is so often true with ethical criticisms of market behavior, this argument is a bit of single-entry moral bookkeeping. After all, aren’t the attorneys general and politicians who support, pass, and enforce such laws also behaving in their self-interest? Aren’t they engaging in selfish acts of vote-seeking? And aren’t they also exploiting the crisis as an opportunity to engaging in grandstanding and demagoguery that they think will ingratiate themselves to thankful voters? And aren’t they seeking their self-interest in a way that actually worsens the crisis rather than helping to resolve it?

Even if one believes that private owners of resources are being “selfish” and behaving “immorally” in a crisis by raising prices, at least their behavior leads people to prioritize their use of increasingly scarce resources and creates the information and incentives that lead to an increase in supplies. Anti-gouging laws and all of the related grandstanding and foot-stomping by self-interested political actors don’t bring one more drop of gasoline or water or other desperately needed goods and services to the victims of natural disasters. Which group is really exploiting the citizenry for their own benefit?