If you look closely at the price-gouging debate, you'll notice that the arguments for and against price-gouging laws revolve around three ideas: maximizing welfare, respecting freedom, and promoting virtue. Not surprisingly, the opponents of price-gouging laws invoke these two familiar arguments for free markets. Proponents of price-gouging laws argue that any estimate of the general welfare must include the pain and suffering of those who may be priced out of basic necessities during an emergency. Second, defenders of price-gouging laws maintain that, under certain conditions, the free market is not truly free. So to decide whether price-gouging laws are justified, we need to assess these competing accounts of welfare and of freedom.