Does market value of an item equal fair value? What say you.
Not sure if this is based on current events that I'm not following, but:
If by market value, you mean the market price, and by fair you mean if it's moral/ethical, then the answer is yes, as long as the price is not manipulated due to artificial circumstances.
Eg. Government imposed monopoly or scarcity, like USPS with envelopes, or pharma with gov approved drugs. The gov created the scarcity whether for good reason or not, but the scarcity can likely lead to unfair pricing. Or a stock trader uses a tactic to manipulate a stock price, the stock price may be market value but it can be "unfair".
According to my definition I disagree about people that take advantage during natural disasters, yes they are driven by greed but the economy has always been driven by greed. Furthermore, I believe that the greed ends up helping end shortages far quicker than the alternative. Eg. During Sandy, there was a huge gas shortage in NYC area, gas stations couldn't raise prices which would have disincentivized people that didn't need gas the most. Plus, people were filling to the max because they didn't know when they'll get more gas again which ended up exacerbating the issue. Meanwhile, during the weeks of the shortage, there was plenty of gas in nearby states that would've been brought over if there was financial incentive, it would have ended the shortage way faster. There also ended up being a black market for gas and those prices were much higher than gas stations, and yes those prices were “unfair”, but were caused by artificial scarcity.
