background information
In the end of January of this year, Peru was plagued by a large flooding. About 3000 people became homeless and a considerable amount of tourists were stuck in the region of the famous tourist attraction Machu Picchu. Due to this the region ran out of food and the ATM’s ran out of cash. Some of the hotel, shop and restaurant owners saw a profit opportunity and raised the prices, while others offered free food although they were also in uncertainty about when and how the disaster will expire and how their future economic perspective will be after the disaster. This made it impossible for a lot of backpacking tourists to rent a room, therefore they had to spent the first hours outside. The local government did what it could and it gave shelter to the tourists. Helicopters shuttled the large number of stranded tourist to a town from which they were able to take the bus to safer places.
In these situations, when you are separated from the outer world, it is important to help each other, locals and tourists. I consider the question: Is it immoral that some shop, restaurant and hotel owners raise their prices, while there is such a disaster going on? For them, tourism revenue is the only source of income and if they do not make money they cannot foresee in their necessities. Additionally the collapse of the tourism industry is a quite foreseeable factor to occur. But does this give the owners the permission to make money out of this disastrous situation, when some people are injured or just cannot afford it?
Off course not! Especially in such situations people have to help each other, therefore, in my opinion, the owners of the hotels could better lower their prices. It is immoral to higher the prices, since a considerable amount of the tourists are backpacking. In general these tourists do not have much money. You should help each other in difficult times!
Eline
3 comments:
In my opinion the situation is more complicated and saying that you shall help each other in difficult times seems like a good, but unrealistic solution.
As long as I fully agree that rising prices during the natural disaster is immoral and should be punishable, giving food away for free is a different problem. In this case the morally hard case is present. There is a good moral reason to give food away to the people that need it, but there is also a good moral reason not to give food away for free. These people have families and are morally obligated to take care of them and feed them. If one gives food away for free, this obligation becomes impossible to fulfill. Therefore, in my opinion, the situation is not so clearly unequivocal.
Looking at previous arguments I do agree with the previous comment that the case is not as simple as claiming this positive duty. I am also of the opinion that raising prices in a natural disaster for the sole purpose of making more money in such a difficult time is immoral. But I do not agree that there is a morally hard case present in the case of giving away food.
This is because according to in terms of the sacrifices required by a duty, we have seen that it can require substantial monetary sacrifice but it does not claim that you are required to give all your food away. On the contrary, morality must ensure a normal life. In other words, morality requires you to first foresee in your basic needs and then concern yourself with others. We could at most say that giving food away for free would be a hard case but not a morally hard case.
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Since humans are self-interested, we cannot judge that the people who did not give food away are immoral. They have moral reason that they also need the food for their family due to the uncertainty of the disaster. However they also have good moral reason to help other people to survive in the disaster. Therefore I do agree that this is a morally hard case.
For the people who raised the price during this disaster are morally wrong. They made some tourists in a difficult situation since they have limited money with them and no income during this period. Therefore it is not permissible for the owners to raise the price in such uncertainty disaster.
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