... but it could only be price gouging if for whatever reasons the market can bear a price well over the price required to continue providing the service.

In education rgar mostly consists "cost gouging" ~ upper administrators in particular setting up conditions in which they "have to" be given pay increases "so we can talk to big contributors as relative equals" (for instance) ... which then means that the conventionally necessary cost for the managerial overhead of the University experiences rampant runaway inflation over time.

And, yes, of course, there is rampant cost gouging of that kind in the production of quite a lot of Basic Needs.

Basic Needs are, indeed, especially attractive to both their producers price gouging, and also to some in-group deriving income from their producers cost-gouging, precisely because their price elasticity tends to be rather low.

Or, when the price of a luxury rises, you stop buying that luxury. When the price of a necessity rises, you stop buying some other luxury. Or, IOW, one way to get rich is to control the water supply during a time of drought.


I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.