Suppose we take the gouging law completely off the table, leave nothing but notoriety and public choice.
It would not change a thing. Public opinion has been wrong before. If public opinion persecutes the free market in essential goods, then public opinion is wrong.
To all, I wish to apologize, not for my opinions (which are unchanged) but for the prideful and arrogant way I have gone about expressing them, sometimes personally insulting people, especially the person whose post I am bouncing this post off of. Even if he has been acting extremely hard headed.
I just don't see how you can be adamant about wanting to suppress (not influence, which tempests in this teapot will scarcely do, but the only effective thing which would be to suppress) public opinion, without sacrificing the free speech you supposedly hold dear.
However, ultimately I believe the current public opinion is right, but not for earthly economic reasons. Rather, it reflects something that God has written upon the heart of mankind. I think the post some time back by drlevy88 put it well. Economics is not the whole of mankind. Case in point, God's biblical prohibition on usury (some translate this as a prohibition on interest, period, but I won't get into that). One could argue from a strictly earthly point of view that such prohibitions only hurt borrowers by making credit harder to get. But God has a point to make: don't enslave your fellow man with debt.