Plato’s Solution to Price Gouging

As the 2024 campaign season heats up, inflation remains a central issue — maybe the central issue. The two candidates, however, have very different explanations for what caused it, and very different prescriptions for addressing the issue. 

Vice President Kamala Harris blames at least a portion of inflation on price gouging, and she has proposed a federal ban on the practice in the food industry. Among other elements of her plan, she seeks to promote greater competition and block mergers of giant grocery store chains. Harris has insisted that “big corporations can’t unfairly exploit consumers to run up excessive corporate profits on food and groceries.”

Former President Donald Trump, by contrast, has also promised to reduce prices, though he has not blamed inflation on corporate greed or price gouging. In fact, he has attacked Harris’s concern about gouging as nothing short of “full communism,” which has led him to dub his opponent “Comrade Kamala.”  

Such debates aren’t new. Price gouging is a practice that extends all the way back to Antiquity. The ancient Greek philosopher Plato prohibited craftsmen from “setting a greater price” than the actual value of a good, condemning them for trying to “take artful advantage of laymen.” Yet for him, the solution to such a problem went far deeper than limits on prices or more competition. Instead, he proposed a wholesale rethinking of Greek culture, which aimed to make people better citizens. That prescription holds lessons for the today’s ongoing political debate around prices.

The ancient Greeks had a word for the disposition underlying price gouging: pleonexia. It roughly translated to “greed,” but there was something more to it. It was perceived as a kind of illness. Those in its grasp experienced an insatiable lust for things that could never be acquired in adequate amounts. No amount of money, power, or adulation could ever satisfy Greeks suffering from pleonexia.

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In the Gorgias, Plato compared the souls of those suffering from it to leaky jugs — the more water poured into them, the more someone needed to keep pouring. There was no end in sight. In the Laws he lamented that some of his fellow citizens wanted to “gain insatiably.”

Plato formed these ideas from watching how Athenian society developed during his life. Centuries earlier, the ancient lawgiver Solon had sought to curb pleonexia by legislating against luxury and economic inequality. Yet, by the time of Plato’s youth, it had crept back into the city. Personal fortunes grew — as did the tensions between the classes — resulting in three consecutive civil wars even as Athens remained engaged in the Peloponnesian War against the Spartans.

The Athenian historian Thucydides took note of the growing and deeply concerning impulse among his fellow citizens to seek “quick satisfaction in easy pleasures” as they longed for “the pleasure of the moment.” He understood that there were major implications to this lust for luxury — both for individual relationships and the way Athens behaved as a state.

Athens began to disregard justice when dealing with neighboring territories. Athenian soldiers tore through Melos in 416 BCE, leaving devastation in their wake, justifying this campaign by arguing that “when one side is stronger, it gets as much as it can, and the weak must accept it.” So insatiable was Athenians’ greed that its leaders eventually made a massive strategic blunder. They decided to expand their empire by conquering Sicily — a catastrophic calculation that assured Athens’ ultimate defeat in the Peloponnesian War.

Pleonexia and price gouging captured Plato’s attention because of what it represented. He watched his fellow Greeks turning away from a common-good ethos in favor of individualistic egoism. Ordinary citizens were becoming more interested in their own affairs than in the affairs of the communities they inhabited. This was particularly true among the wealthiest citizens. The celebrated fourth century (BCE) Athenian orator and statesman Demosthenes observed that there was a striking contrast between "the splendid houses built by the wealthy” in the fourth century and “the simple ones with which rich men of the previous generation had been content.” 

In Plato’s view, those afflicted with pleonexia were willing to do anything to make even “small gains” from their fellow citizens. And this impulse threatened to do more than just hurt individuals or other territories. It loosened “the great ties of the community . . . that hold the city together.”

Over time Plato worried that gouging would promote radical economic inequality. That demanded a legislative solution because wealth corrupted “the soul of human beings through luxury,” while poverty “urges [the soul] to shamelessness through pains.” The result of those impacts would be to pit two radically opposed classes against one another, eventually fomenting another civil war.

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While Plato’s immediate solution to price gouging was a civil law against the practice, which enabled consumers to sue gougers for damages, his longer-range solution was cultural. To the philosopher, any serious solution to problems of this nature required addressing its root cause — pleonexia itself. 

Solving this deeper cultural rot necessitated “a continual supply” of educational “reforms,” which “out of a sense of fairness,” both debtors and the wealthy would embrace. The goal was to shame pleonexia itself. Plato envisioned all citizens learning at schools, religious ceremonies, homes, and even in the theater that seeking unnecessary profits at the expense of one’s neighbors was shameful. That would reinforce the norms most consistent with the state’s long-term success.

Economists have debated the causes of the inflation of the 2020s, as well as the proper remedies — with many doubting whether price gouging played much of a role and arguing that some of Harris’s proposals might be counterproductive. Yet, it remains true that Americans are no more moral than the Ancient Greeks were in this respect. And if gouging played any role — even a small one — there is ample precedent for doing something about it.  

Nevertheless, the best long-term solution may extend beyond the sort of law that Harris has proposed. The ideas of Plato rather suggest an effort to change our culture, one that urges Americans to think less about their own profits and more about what it means to be a good citizen.

David Lay Williams is professor of political science at DePaul University and the author of the new book: The Greatest of All Plagues: How Economic Inequality Shaped Political Thought from Plato to Marx.

Made by History takes readers beyond the headlines with articles written and edited by professional historians. Learn more about Made by History at TIME here. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of TIME editors.