I disagree. If the market price of water in southwest Florida is $20/gallon, I might just take a few days off work, rent a U-Haul and drive a couple thousand gallons down.
Price caps have the opposite effect. If I own an ice company, do I really want to pay my people overtime and buy gas for my generator if I can't charge a higher price for my product to help cover my increased costs?
exactly. There are number of factors that go into the decision whether to make the effor to sell the water.
For the kumbaya crowd, consider the following:
Evil businessman owns a beverage company 500 miles away. He has 2000 gallons of water sitting in his warehouse.
He must take into account:
1. Cost he paid for the water initially.
2. Transportation costs to and from the location of disaster. Also costs while driving around the area.
3. Any costs of lodging overnight.
4. Labor costs of making a trip. If it's just him, he's skipping opportunities at home and has to have employees fill the gap. If it's employees, he likely has to pay overtime.
5. The risk that he could travel 1000 miles, pay his employees extra, and not sell any water, because someone has already filled that need.
Keep in mind mr. evil price-gouging business man likely has a mortgage and other expenses too - he can't afford to just give away something he was planning on selling unless he was doing rather well.
So he determines that he needs to sell the water for $4 a gallon to make a healthy profit. If push comes to shove, he can maybe sell it for $3 a gallon or so and break even.
Now the society of benevolent dictators and government officals get together. They decree that no one may sell water for more than $2 a gallon. Anything more would be gouging and just plain evil.
What does the kumbaya crowd think will happen? Will the businessman who has to meet payroll and pay invoices to suppliers on time drive 1000 miles to lose $1 a gallon on 2000 gallons worth of water? Or does he give them away and tell his creditors he was just doing the brotherly thing (and then lay off an employee or two to make up the loss)???
Or does he do what any sane business man would do- decide it wasn't worth his trouble and he can't afford to spend the time and effort to lose money and hurt his business and his employees?
And who benefits from this grand declaration that protects the innocent from gouging? It's not the suppliers. It's not the consumers who had to go without water because the red cross, phillip morris, and local supplies weren't enough because there was no incentive to fill the need.
The only people who benefit from this are the politicians and the kumbaya crowd who can bask in the glow of their own self righteousness and say "look at all the people we helped by eliminating price gouging" -- all while people are going without water and other things they need.
And that is what they claim for their superiority - their good intentions that can result in more suffering that they cure.