Donald J. Boudreaux is a Associate Senior Research Fellow with the American Institute for Economic Research and affiliated with the F.A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University; a Mercatus Center Board Member; and a professor of economics and former economics-department chair at George Mason University. He is the author of the books The Essential Hayek, Globalization, Hypocrites and Half-Wits, and his articles appear in such publications as the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, US News & World Report as well as numerous scholarly journals. He writes a blog called Cafe Hayek and a regular column on economics for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Boudreaux earned a PhD in economics from Auburn University and a law degree from the University of Virginia.
Although such myths will never be completely slain, their baneful impacts can be reduced by sound and unrelenting economic education and public commentary.
The world would be a tiny bit less free and the economy faintly less productive without each of the many, mostly small, contributions to classical-liberal scholarship and to the sharing of liberal ideas with the public.
It is precisely when people are at genuine risk of actually dying for want of the likes of food, water, and shelter that the case against prohibitions on “price gouging” is strongest.
So-called “price gougers” actually increase the availability of needed goods and services in regions struck by natural disasters, an activity that causes prices in those regions to be lower than otherwise.