Profiteering
Profiteering is a pejorative term for the act of making a profit by methods considered unethical.[1][2][page needed]
Overview
[edit | edit source]Business owners may be accused of profiteering when they raise prices during an emergency (especially a war).[3][page needed] The term is also applied to businesses that play on political corruption to obtain government contracts.
Some types of profiteering are illegal, such as price fixing[4][page needed] syndicates, for example on fuel subsidies (see British Airways price-fixing allegations), and other anti-competitive behaviour. Some are restricted by industry codes of conduct, e.g. aggressive marketing of products in the Third World such as baby milk (see Nestlé boycott).
Types of profiteering
[edit | edit source]Laws
[edit | edit source]Profiteering is illegal in several countries, including but not limited to:
- UK: Chapter 1 of the Competition Act 1998
- Germany: § 291 StGB (Criminal Code) – up to 10 years' jail maximum penalty
- Austria: § 154 StGB – up to 5 years' jail maximum penalty
See also
[edit | edit source]- Enshittification
- Hoarding (economics)
- Business ethics
- Price gouging
- Product sabotage
- Rent seeking
- Supracompetitive pricing
- Ticket scalping
- Usury
Example cases
[edit | edit source]References
[edit | edit source]- ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
- ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
- ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
- ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
Lua error in Module:Authority_control at line 153: attempt to index field 'wikibase' (a nil value).