Michael Eriksson
A Swede in Germany
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Price gouging, etc.

Introduction

I find myself mentioning “price gouging” in yet another text—that absurd politicians’ way of shoving responsibility for price inflation from themselves onto one group of victims. This moves me to write something a little more thorough than the typical few sentences on “price gouging”, and to address some similar problems.

In the big picture, there is a common problem with a disdain or aversion directed against market forces and individual choice, and/or an odd mentality that we all, businesses included, would have a weird anti-Randian duty to work for the common good instead of our own good, serving the government/state/whatnot like busy little bees serve a colony. (The weirder, as more self-serving/-favoring and Randian approaches, in the net, tend to leave society better or far better off than collectivism and the subjugation of the individual.)

Price gouging

Notes on terminology and scope

My writings arise from the rhetorical accusations of price gouging by various Leftist politicians, propagandists, whatnot, and their implication that it is a driving source behind price inflation. In this, the term has a broad and unspecific intent of roughly “Businesses raise prices more than they ‘should’!” or “[...] than is ‘fair’!”, or, viewed from a different perspective, “You pay too much at the grocery store because of evil, greedy capitalists!”, and this is the intent taken up here.

More narrow or more technical definitions can deviate from this, e.g. by imposing a criterion of very temporary crisis, say, that food prices might be doubled in the days after a hurricane landing. I might or might not address such meanings at a later date. For now, I merely note that portions of the below is often relevant in such more narrow cases too, including incentives and allocation.

I try to follow the convention of using “inflation” to refer only to inflation in the strict sense of an expansion of the money supply and preferring the more specific “price inflation” for an increase in the general price level. Note that there is often a causal connection from inflation to price inflation, but that it is not foolproof (especially, in the short term) and need not be linear. To boot, it can vary with what definition or measure of “money supply” and “price level” is used.

Main discussion

The accusation of price gouging has been raised on a great number of occasions and by a great number of politicians and/or Leftists in the wake of the politician-created price inflation of and after the COVID-countermeasure era.

This is usually fundamentally unfair, as the businesses at hand see themselves faced with increased energy costs, increased labor costs, larger bills from suppliers (who, of course, face similar issues), etc., that largely go back to political decisions, most notably relating to various aspects of the COVID-countermeasure era and failed or business hostile energy politics. (With a number of similar problems on a smaller scale, including continual increases in regulation and other burdens, often relating to energy.) Then we have various other problems, including loss of customers due to, say, lockdowns and “social distancing” rules. While the effects of these have been varied (typical grocery stores, minor; many other stores, major; many restaurants, very major), they have often cut into profitability and forced price increases. For the accusation to be taken seriously, we more-or-less have to postulate that businesses have a duty to keep prices down even at the cost of severely reduced profits or, even, losses, of a threat of unviability of the business model, of a lack of funds for, say, expansion and modernization, etc. (While, of course, any attempt to e.g. lay off workers or close certain business locations is met with similar rhetoric and propaganda about “evil capitalists”. Cf. the discussion of VW below.)

However, there is also an implicit angle of “market prices are evil”, which does more harm than good. Even aside from the ethical perspective that any participant in a free market (as opposed to e.g. a monopolist, cf. below) should be allowed to offer his goods and services at whatever prices the market is willing to pay, market prices bring great benefits when we move beyond the short term (and often in the short term too, for that matter). For a first view, read any serious introduction to Economics. I explicitly point to the benefits of better allocation and better incentives, however, e.g. in that a supply deficit (relative demand) is a lesser problem with market prices than without, because the market prices (a) make it more likely that the existing supply goes where it brings the greatest benefit, (b) give incentives to increase production, which will work to close that supply deficit. For a business to charge market rates is not price gouging—it is sound business and something to the benefit, not detriment, of society and the economy.

Based on the market angle, we might even raise the question whether there can, at all, be something like an “unethical” or “unconscionable” price increase that might, then, maybe, be considered “price gouging”. The answer actually often is “yes”, because of how often market forces are reduced or eliminated by (most often) government intervention. In such cases, however, we have a business (and often a government owned/controlled business!) that abuses a situation created by the politicians. Consider e.g. a railway or telephone monopoly (both were once very common) dictated by the government: With lesser fears of competition, loss of customers, whatnot, the holder of such a monopoly can often raise prices in a manner that amounts to abuse, and often in a form that rules out options that someone in a more competitive environment would consider, e.g. to cut down on internal waste in the hope of fixing the balance sheet through less expenditure instead of more income. (Of course, the government and taxes can be seen as the ultimate in this type of price gouging.)

Worse, with the COVID-countermeasure era, we had cases like a vaccine oligopoly combined with attempts to make vaccinations mandatory—in other words, the customers must buy, and they must buy from a small number of government-appointed suppliers at the prices that these see fit to charge. Likewise, the COVID-countermeasure era points to another family of potentially actually illicit price increases, as when an incompetent government hands over excessive amounts of tax-payers’ money to various businesses by means of inflated prices. (As opposed to e.g. ill-advised subsidies, which are a problem in their own right, but which are hardly on topic.)

Of course, I cannot rule out that the COVID-countermeasure era and the ensuing price inflation contained complementary price gouging (in addition to “natural” price increases). However, if so, this was only enabled by the politician-caused price inflation. Without the price inflation, any attempt to hike prices excessively would have stood out like a skyscraper on the prairie; with price inflation, it is a skyscraper in Manhattan.

Upwards price fixing

Interestingly, farmers (other groups might exist) often see something reverse based on the same type of moralizing argument, e.g. in that it is not “fair” that farmers get so little on the market—ergo, we must fix prices for farmers so that they get more than the market would deliver. (Alternatively, but off topic, the same type of reasoning can bring other types of support, e.g. farming subsidies.)

This moves in the overlap between portions of the discussions of price gouging (above) and wages (below). Correspondingly, I will not go into detail, but I note that this too does more harm than good outside the farmer’s themselves, and that many of the problems that farmers have can be solved without engaging in price fixing. Note, e.g., the immense government-imposed obstacles and costs that U.K. farmers have to struggle with, as evidenced e.g. by “Clarkson’s Farm”.


Side-note:

With farming, another angle is to what degree a country might benefit from being highly self-sustaining in terms of food, with an eye at e.g. the risk that a war cuts into imports or makes imports too expensive. Such concerns might or might not create an independent justification of some type of artificial aid to farming. Here my target is the more moralizing, anti-market, anti-capitalism rhetoric used by the political Left, unions, and whatnots.


Wages, salaries, etc.

Various types of remuneration for work (I will use “wage[s]”) seems to be another area exempt from both market forces and individual merits. In some cases, this is fairly obvious, as when a union-negotiated tariff uses criteria like length-of-employment for wages or dictates virtually flat rates based on position. (And, again, we have issues like incentives to not work hard and well and to not improve one’s own skills. Depending on details, there might even be incentives to prefer an illicit Monday off in order to get back into gear after the weekend. Etc.)

However, there are plenty of more subtle examples that implicitly show a similar disregard for differences in performance, markets, and whatnot.


Side-note:

Because most cases that I have encountered have been centered on women feeling mistreated, an alternate or partial alternate explanation is that this is Feminist populism and agenda pushing. Throwing a wider net, it might also be a more generic “grievance industry” at work.

However, for this type of grievance approach to be tried, there must be sufficiently many who are willing to ignore worthwhile criteria, including actual ability and market forces—be they among the grievance-claimers, judges who prove themselves useful idiots, journalists who give it a pseudo-justification by publicity, whatnot.


For instance, there is an ongoing problem around U.K retailer Asda, where women are suing for more pay based on what men performing completely different tasks are being paid. (No one is forcing these women to work at Asda, or in their current position, by pointing a gun at their heads. They signed up voluntarily to work at a certain rate. If they do not like it, they can quit and go elsewhere, go on a strike, or switch to a more “male” job at Asda. The implications of the lawsuit are ridiculous, leaving both market forces and individual preferences aside.) Worse, I seem to recall that some similar lawsuits had actually already had success (but kept no links).

For instance, the idea that male and female tennis players be paid the same for winning majors regardless of who has what size of audience, who plays against what level of competition, whatnot, shows a fanatical take. As I suggested in some older text, the women should then hold their own tournaments entirely apart from the men, see how much these tournaments earn, and pay themselves whatever they feel that they can afford. (With similar remarks applying elsewhere, e.g. for soccer.) On the upside, they still allow the winner to receive more money than the runner-up, and so on.

For instance, the idea that wages should be subject to individual negotiation is anathema to many, even beyond union regulations. In particular, there seems to be no awareness of the risks involved in taking a hard line: If the one demands 10 grand more than the other per year, this might result in 10 grand more—but it might also result in a rejection. A worse consequence is that employers might find themselves implicitly forced to hand out extra money to existing employees when a new one is hired, should this nonsense be taken to its logical conclusion.

For instance, minimum wages very explicitly remove the value (up to a certain limit) provided by the worker from the equation—no matter how little value he brings, he must receive at least a certain amount of money for a certain time period. (To boot, often with disingenuous motivations, e.g. around someone having the invented “right” to a “living wage” or “deserving” to earn enough to feed his family—and never mind that he might be a teenager just looking to fill his CV with more than “went to school” or a secondary earner in a family just looking to cover a gap between expenses and the income of the primary earner.)


Side-note:

A particularly interesting point is that when the wages of some group are artificially pushed up, then the employer has an incentive to diminish the size of that group. (And, cf. elsewhere, might lack the money to expand, invest, keep its current size, whatnot.) A good example is the outrageously high minimum wages in California and their strong negative effects on the fast food industry.



Side-note:

It is also notable that if group A earns more than group B, group B always seems to demand more money for itself—not less money for group A. Were fairness truly the issue, however, the two would be equivalent and the latter more palatable to the employer. (But it might bring other complications like protests, strikes, or a flight to greener pastures among the members of group A. It also still causes a market distortion.)


Volkswagen

2024 saw a problematic situation for German car-maker Volkswagen (VW). VW wants to find some way of increasing profitability and keep the business successful by closing poorly performing plants, reducing the number of employees, and/or reducing the wage level in Germany. Not only are the VW workers and unions opposed, which is only to be expected, but there seems to be a clear attitude from the government, and large parts of the rest of society, that VW would have a duty to keep all current plants open and all current employees employed—and to hell with business prospects. (Whether this supposed duty would extend to operations outside Germany is unclear to me. And, no, this is far from the first time something similar happens.)

A particular nuisance is the unword “sozialverträglich”, which seems to imply whatever the user wants it to (very Humpty-Dumpty), but effectively puts strong limits on what is considered “kosher” for a business to do—especially, when it comes to layoffs. Here, it would not be “sozialverträglich” to close anything down; ergo, VW must not do so. (And never mind that this might be more expensive to society in the long run than if decisions were made with a focus on the long-term success of the business.)


Side-note:

I am not aware of a good English translation of “sozialverträglich” (nor a consistent and consistently used German definition). However, “sozial” is (unsurprisingly) close in meaning to the English “social”, while “verträglichkeit” relates to what is agreeable or can easily be tolerated, what is compatible with something else, and similar. Something like “socially agreeable” or “socially compatible” might work reasonably well. Certainly, these translations are no more vague and no less informative than the German original.

And, yes, the idea of “sozialverträglich” has much in common with what I write elsewhere on this page, e.g. about the claims around price gouging as an unfairness or how unfair it would be if farmers are not paid more than market prices.


Excursion on other issues with price fixing

Price fixing comes with other issues, including some strongly overlapping with the discussion of wages above. For instance, if the price of a particular product is fixed by the government, this gives minimal incentives to improve the product over time. If anything, chances are that any opportunity to save costs of manufacture will be taken, which can then cause a worsening of the product—especially, in terms of manufacturing quality. What if, say, shoes are sold at a fixed and below-market price, and this causes them to wear out so much faster that the customers end up paying more than before, simply through having to buy more often? Likewise, a fixed price reduces the importance of individual variation in production, because what matters now is to get the product done sufficiently cheaply and/or in sufficient quantities, while aspects like quality, design, innovation, additional features, or whatever might apply to the product at hand, matter far less than before. Indeed, with non-trivially below-market prices, demand is likely to exceed supply by a mile, which implies that everything not disastrously poor that hits the market is likely to be sold. Competition by means of price is, of course, far less likely to matter: Going above the fixed price is not allowed, while the room and the incentives to go below it are minimal.

Other problems or “problems” yet include the creation of black markets. For the suffering citizens and the overall economy, black markets might be a part of the solution to the politician-created problems, but the politicians are likely to be strongly opposed and to react by increasing the efforts to enforce the price policy, which costs more money, and such money always, ultimately, is taken from the citizens.

Excursion on differences in preferences and their consequences

I often find myself annoyed over prices that strike me as “too high” for the reason that others seem to have different preferences than I do (their preferences cost me money)—and such differences in preferences are behind much of what can seem like misdevelopments on the business side, including “price gouging”, to others. In a simplified example, say that a market consists of a single business and ten potential customers, that one customer is willing to pay no more than 10 Euro for the product at hand, and that the other nine are perfectly happy to go to 20 Euro. Chances are that the price will be 20 Euro and that the one can take it or leave it: With nine customers at 20 Euro, we have a revenue of 180 Euro; with ten at 10 Euro, we have 100 Euro. Looking at profits (which is usually the interesting criterion) we see that this applies not only when the seller takes a loss per unit at 10 Euro but even when almost everything is profit. Take a cost-per-unit as low as 1 Euro and the second scenario leaves a very pleasing 90 Euro profit—but the first scenario gives us between 170 and 171 Euro profit, and will then still be preferred. A naive Leftist might now demand that the product still be sold at 10 Euro “so that everyone can have one” or at slightly above 1 Euro, because everything beyond a minimal profit is condemned as “greed” or, indeed, “price gouging”.


Side-note:

Costs are a complicated matter and the assumption of a fixed cost per unit is a great over-simplification. Ditto the lack of gradation based on how much of the full costs might be incurred for an unsold item.

In particular, the “between 170 and 171” above depends on how much of the cost is incurred for the unsold item, which can range from the full cost to nothing, depending on details.



Side-note:

Here we also see how beneficial it is to have free competition, low barriers to entry, etc. As soon as we assume two or more (non-collaborating) businesses that sell sufficiently comparable products, it becomes the more important both to look at the holdout customer and to consider the benefits of selling just a little cheaper than the competition.

For instance, if the one business sells at 20 Euro and the other at 19 Euro, all other factors equal, the nine will go with the latter, while they will go with the former if it drops its price from 20 to 18 Euro. Etc.

For instance, if someone sells four units at 12 Euro per unit, the revenue could increase from 48 to 50 Euro merely by going down to 10 Euro per unit to scoop up the holdout, and regardless of any further customers that were gained from the competition. (Whether this decision makes sense will depend on costs-per-unit. At 1 Euro, it would make sense; at 9 Euro, it would not.)

In a competitive scenario, we are also much more likely to see a fine-grained division of the market based on customer preferences, including through price–quality, price–feature, and price–prestige trade-offs. Above, e.g., we might see some buying a high-end product at 20 Euro, others a mid-range at 15 Euro, and the holdout a low-range at 10 Euro. (With a finer or coarser division depending on the size of the market and the number of competitors.)

A government-enforced cap at, say, 10 Euro could even end up doing more harm than good for the customers through stifling competition, reducing investments that could lower future prices, reducing product diversity, etc. (While it, at the other end, will definitely hurt the business or businesses at hand, can reduce employment opportunities, whatnot.) Similarly, unrelated government interventions that have side-effects like increased barriers to entry, can reduce competition and worsen the situation for the customers.


Of course, this is not limited to prices. What e.g. if there is some feature that most customers want, while a minority would prefer to see the feature removed in favor of another feature, a price reduction, or something else yet? What if the majority prefers a computer with a faster CPU and the minority one with more RAM? What if the majority prefers a car with lower fuel consumption and the minority one with a bigger trunk? Etc. (Here, too, competition and product diversity can come to the rescue.)

A great example is the infamous hotel mini-bar, with its equally infamous prices. (Indeed, it is only in the spirit of this text that I deliberately abstain from using the word “over-priced”.) If the prices are high, however, it is because sufficiently many guests make use of the mini-bar to justify that price level. Moreover, no-one is actually forced to use the mini-bar and no-one forces hotels to even install a mini-bar in the first place. Mini-bars merely provide an option that the guests can take or leave, depending on how they value cost vs. convenience at the time at hand. (Even someone who normally avoids mini-bars might make use of one if having arrived exhausted, late at night, hungry, and without the energy to leave the hotel for cheaper options—and be grateful for having the option.) If the prices are “too high”, it is the fault of the other guests.


Side-note:

This with some minor reservations, e.g. for someone trying to lose weight by eating less, who might now have a near-by temptation that would not exist without the mini-bar.



Side-note:

However, hotels do provide many cases of disputable or outright unethical business practices. With mini-bars, I have heard claims (but never seen it myself) that some hotels charge a poorly advertised and entirely out of proportion “storage fee” when a guest uses the mini-bar to store items purchased elsewhere.

A common observation in my own hotel stays in Germany is that there is virtually always a bottle of water in the room (but outside the mini-bar). In some hotels, it is complimentary; in others, it comes with a fee of several-to-many times the store price—likely, because the hotels hope that many will assume that the bottle is complimentary and be tricked into an entirely unnecessary fee.

Another is that many hotels make the breakfast buffet/whatnot mandatory or add it to the booking per default, unless the customer very explicitly declines it. However, unless the guest gorges himself, he is unlikely to get his money’s worth, as the price for the breakfast is usually well above prices elsewhere. For those, like me, who prefer a small breakfast, it is certainly cheaper just to grab a cup of coffee and one or two sandwiches elsewhere, while buying food in a grocery store is a good option even for many with a bigger morning appetite. (Here, too, the problem is not that the hotels offer something that the customer can take or leave—it is that they try to force or trick him into “take”.)


The real problems begin when the majority is stupid, ignorant, outright mis-/disinformed, goes more by feeling than reason, etc.—which is often the case. This, however, is not a matter of “price gouging” or other unfair/unethical/whatnot practices, except in as far as businesses engage in, say, misleading advertising or other types of misrepresentation. If they do, this is both unfair and unethical, but it is also a problem in a different area.


Side-note:

Indeed, the purpose of modern advertising is largely to ensure that the prospective customers have a flawed view of what purchasing decisions are to their own benefit—yet another reason to be hostile towards advertising.

At the same time, I cannot recall the last time that I heard a politician from any party insist on higher standards for e.g. “truth in advertising”. (Likely, because there is less need for a scapegoat to take the blame for the politicians’ failures in that area. To boot, Leftist politicians are very often Keynesians and, therefore, as paradoxical as it might sound, in favor of as much consumption as possible.)


Excursion on disregard for legitimate business concerns

An overlapping issue is a societal and/or political disregard for legitimate business concerns, including that of limiting costs and of avoiding decisions that cause disproportionate costs. (In which case, businesses can find themselves in the paradoxical situation that they can neither avoid otherwise avoidable costs nor raise prices that, except for calls of “price gouging” and/or the establishment of price controls, would be raisable.)

Consider an employer that has a locker room with showers for its employees (e.g. because the work is very physical or because of a need to change clothes on the premisses). Until now, the employer has only had male (or, vice versa, female) employees and locker room, showers, and toilets are only present in one common-for-all set. Now a woman applies for a job that will require access to a locker room (etc.). Look at this from a business point of view and note how the employer has choices like:

  1. Turning her down in a blanket manner, which will risk an expensive lawsuit and one likely to be lost in many countries. (But note great differences in applicable laws.)

  2. Hiring her and requiring her to use the previously male-only areas in a “unisex” manner. Not all women would be willing to do so, new legal risks appear, and some third parties might get involved with charges of “sexism” or “discrimination”.


    Side-note:

    Such new legal risks can be e.g. a retroactive demand for a women’s locker room (etc.), e.g. objections from the existing male employees (and, no, women do not have a monopoly on objections in such regards), e.g. calls for damages because there was sexual misbehavior from a man towards the woman (or vice versa) in the locker room.


  3. Hiring her and finding some time-sharing mechanism to avoid inter-sex encounters in the areas at hand, which is likely to come with negative side-effects like delays in work and accidental encounters when someone forgets, is in a hurry, is delayed during a change of clothes, or similar.

  4. Hiring her and spending a great amount of money on construction work to duplicate facilities.

    (With the additional complication that construction takes time, which could leave a time period where the woman either was not available for work or force other compromises, e.g. the above “time sharing”, during the waiting period.)

In the cases that involve a hiring, note the need to consider factors like (a) the extra efforts not being necessary if, instead, a man is hired, (b) that this woman might be the only woman ever to be hired (as opposed to just being the first woman hired), and (c) that she need not remain in employment for long (e.g. because she does not perform sufficiently well or because she finds a more interesting job elsewhere). Depending on circumstances, we might even have to make similar considerations for deliberately short-term employment, e.g. some type of internship, which can make the cost for construction work even more disproportionate, while not necessarily insulating the employer from a law suit, should a female candidate be rejected.

Now, none of these choices are very good and legitimate dissatisfaction can occur with any choice. (For instance, even if there is no lawsuit in the first case, we have to note that the result is to some degree unfair towards the woman, because she was not judged on her own merits.) The problem, however, is a blanket reaction from many, especially Leftists, that the employer would have a positive duty to hire the woman, take the construction costs, and not say one word in protest. (In some cases, assuming that she was otherwise the best candidate; in others, regardless of the other candidates, exactly because there previously only were male employees and/or “because diversity”.)

At the same time, the rejection in the first case (should that route be taken) is not rooted in immediate discrimination based on sex (a usually illegitimate criterion) but on discrimination on costs and/or other disadvantages that truly can affect the bottom line of the employer.

I leave unstated what the correct solution is, but I caution very strongly against the type of blanket reaction mentioned above—the employer has a legitimate business concern and this legitimate business concern must be given due weight and due respect.

Excursion on non-government actual price gouging

As noted above, something that might more legitimately match the label “price gouging” is often caused by government intervention. Further, examples of actually unethical business methods are given.

Unsurprisingly, then, something that might be labeled “price gouging” (or, without that label, still show similar problems) can also exist without government intervention. This, in particular, when market forces are otherwise artificially disabled (e.g. through cartels), customers are deliberately mislead or otherwise tricked, or the situation of the customer is abused in a manner that goes beyond the reasonable.

For instance, we might have an apartment currently rented at the market rate, with the implication that the landlord has nothing to gain from replacing the current tenant with another tenant also paying the market rate. (But he might have something to gain if someone else can be convinced to pay above the market rate, if he has some other intended use, say, own living, if he has some other reason to prefer another tenant, or similar.)

The current tenant, however, often has an over-average incentive to keep living in that specific apartment, e.g. that a move will increase his distance to work, that he might have lived in the apartment for decades and would feel uprooted elsewhere, or that he might have just a year or two to retirement and would prefer to find a new apartment and move once retired and having more spare time. If in doubt, moving brings costs, stress, and efforts that can easily be the equivalent of several months rent.

Let us now say that the landlord takes a “ten percent more per month or you are out” stance. Chances are that many would agree (at least for the time being), giving the landlord a surplus over the market rate of ten percent per month. If, however, the tenant chooses to move, the landlord gains nothing, and might even take a loss, as the next tenant might not be ready to move in by the time the original tenant moves out, as there might be renovation costs, whatnot. (While the original tenant, of course, has additional costs, etc., for the move.) The landlord might even recant, as he is better off with the old tenant and without the aforementioned costs and loss of rent.

At an extreme, we might even have scenarios where someone moves in at a certain rent and, as soon as he is settled, receives that “ten percent more per month or you are out”, in which case the original rent offer will usually have been outright fraudulent.

(Note how this moves on a very different level from the conclusion that the current rent, unchanged for years, would be ten percent below the market rate, followed by an attempt to bring the rent up to that market rate.)


Side-note:

While I am opposed to rent controls and similarly strict measures, such scenarios is a reason why I favor some degree of restrictions on rent raises. (Maybe, that raises beyond the market level can be cause for scrutiny by the local government and/or challengable in court. Maybe, that raises within the first two years of the original contract signing are only allowed in exceptional circumstances.)

Likewise, they are a reason why I do not favor “at will” terminations for rented apartments, much unlike with employment.


For instance, assume that a taxi driver brings an old lady home, that the old lady finds herself short on cash and unable to pay the full amount, but that her husband is in the building next to the cab and merely needs to be notified of her arrival in order to cover the discrepancy. Assume further that the taxi driver charges the lady an outrageous amount to use his cell phone to phone said husband, while refusing to let her out of the cab and while refusing to himself ring the doorbell. (I once encountered this scenario, with reservations for exact details and my memory thereof, in Swedish news reporting. I do not remember the amount charged for the phone call, but it was truly outrageous.)

Here, as the event took place in the days before flat-rates became common, it might have been justified to charge the actual cost of the call or some guestimate thereof, but to over-charge in this manner is indefensible. The situation might even be viewed as extortion.

Considering the presumably low cost of the call relative the fare, the issue of good-will, and the cab driver’s own interest in resolving the issue, I might even have assumed that a non-shady cab driver would offer the phone for free—even without a flat-rate and even aside from free-of-charge possibilities like ringing that door bell. (But I would not see him as obligated to do so.)