DISASTERS do not change some people. Even global ones.
Sadly, in such emergencies, they become pandemic profiteers. Last week, the Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Ministry began investigating a private hospital for price gouging following a complaint.
The hospital is alleged to have charged RM11.20 when it should be RM1.50. And that too not for the face masks the patient used, but for those worn by the hospital's nurses.
The complainant paid RM201.60 for 18 three-ply masks the nurses used. Shame has known no better occasion.
If the hospital gouges on this, what else it chisels? We leave that to the ministry's enforcement unit.
Dr Khoo Yoong Khean's advice to the doctors of tomorrow in The Malaysian Medical Gazette on Jan 30, 2014 bears repeating: "First, do no harm." We take it he meant harm in all its aspects. Harm can befall not only the body, but also the spirit. And our purse, too.
He continues: "The money and accolades will come at some point but it is the simple things, a thank you, a smile or a hug that will truly make you think you've made a difference.
And you will." The hospital must have given the gazette a miss. Now it has lost a chance to make a difference. Instead of a thank you, a smile or a hug, the hospital is stuck with a profiteering investigation.
As Warren Buffett says, it takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it.
Let's not be fooled into believing that the hospital is the only pandemic profiteer. There are quite a few.
When Malaysia imposed the Movement Control Order on March 18, face masks and hand sanitisers disappeared from the shelves. It may have been a case of panic buying.
Or it may have been a case of hoarding for sale later at a gouger's price. Hard to tell. But we know for sure some pharmacies were selling face masks at RM6 each, on the pretext that they were four-ply ones.
Disaster profiteers do find ways to beat the law. Shockingly, price gougers have friends in high places. Perhaps the most famous is American Nobel laureate Milton Friedman.
Despicable as it may seem, to him price gouging is good. There are others in his camp but all are free marketeers. Their argument is this: prices should not be controlled because they have a job to do and that is to get goods to people who want them.
We ask, what about those who need them? Like nurses who need face masks in pandemics.
The problem with free-market capitalism is that it lacks a moral content. We have no problems with profits. What we find offensive is profiteering. Economists should not surrender to the markets thus.
After all, markets are fallible human creations. And like all human creations, markets need to be regulated. Self-regulation is an illusion.
Nowhere is the market free. Not even in the United States where free-market capitalism has the largest number of defenders.
There, at least 34 states have anti-price gouging laws. No doubt, these are debated afresh in the US media every time a Hurricane Charley or Irvin makes a landfall.
Because "After Storm Come the Vultures", as a USA Today headline put it. People say self-interest is a human nature. They are wrong.
Another human disposition is: the desire to help another in need. Price gouging laws do that. Markets won't.