The massive ice storm that has shut down much of Quebec and eastern Ontario these past two weeks has produced the usual flurry of instant wisdom (It's Global Warming! We're Too Dependent on Technology!) and heartwarming lessons (Folks Pull Together in Times Like These!). But no sentiment was more universal than the indignation that erupted over reports that some local merchants were taking advantage of their neighbours' misfortune by raising the price of such sudden necessities as batteries, flashlights, and kerosene.

The Quebec Consumers Association has received hundreds of complaints of such "gouging": candles that used to sell for $1 a box going for a $1 apiece; $250 for a cord of firewood; even a convenience store that was asking 25 cents for a book of matches. Everything, it seems, that might be thought most essential in such an emergency, from gasoline to chainsaws to portable generators, has shot up in price, often to several times the usual rate.

A newspaper editorial slammed these merciless "ice vultures." On The National, a worried-looking Peter Mansbridge fretted over "victims of the storm who've been hammered twice -- first by the ice that left them powerless, second by people who've tried to profit from their needs." The Prime Minister, on a tour of the region and knowing a home run pitch when he sees one, denounced the profiteering as "completely unacceptable," appealing to the merchants to "show their social conscience." Those few storeowners willing to be quoted could only stammer out some thin excuse about having to pay higher prices to their suppliers.

Well, now. Whatever else may be the case, the one thing we know for sure is that there is not enough of these "essentials" to go around. Stores don't ordinarily keep many portable generators in stock, so when a week-long power failure hits and everyone suddenly wants one, the shelves are emptied within hours. The demand, in short, exceeds the supply, and will until either the power is back on or the retailer can order in more generators.

How, then, are these scarce goods to be shared out among the population?

One way is by rationing, as in wartime. Everyone could simply be alloted an equal portion, by law. But this is difficult to organize in the short term, and besides, you can't divide up a generator. Given that people have differing needs, moreover, even a successful rationing system must result in some people having less of a particular good than they would have wanted, and others with more than they know what to do with.

Alternatively, we could simply suffer through the inevitable shortages, leaving consumers to line up for candles and batteries like citizens of the old Soviet Union. But this is hardly just: to find you must go on stumbling about in the dark because the last flashlight in the shop was scarfed by your neighbour, whose lights are still on but who worries that his power might be cut off sometime in the future.

Suppose, then, we wanted a more sophisticated system of rationing, but were suitably aghast at the prospect of allowing merchants to charge whatever the market would bear. We might appoint some eminent person, a Price Equity Commissioner perhaps, to devise some suitable scheme, along the lines of "to each according to his needs." His or her first task would be to call together all those living in areas where supplies of essential goods were running short.

All right, he might begin, who needs these the most? At which point, a forest of hands would go up. How to choose? To test people's sincerity, the commissioner might think of asking: What would you be willing to do without in order to have this flashlight (or whatever)? Or, better: What would you be willing to give back to the community? Again, a forest of hands: A toaster. A rabbit. Six magic beans.

So the commissioner would have to come up with some means of comparing the value of these very different commodities on a common scale.

Fortunately, we already have such an instrument. It's called "money." In the end, he would award the flashlight to the person whose needs, measured by the value of what he was willing to give up -- or "pay" -- for it, were greatest. By forgoing the other goods the same money would buy -- and, by the same token, by limiting his consumption of the good he actually purchased -- the consumer is in this way forced to take account of others' needs.

Which is exactly what the "gouging" merchants are doing. Only instead of holding an auction, they simply post a price, and see who's willing to pay it.

They are, though they don't know it, performing the vital social function of allocating scarce resources among competing uses.. If it weren't for these "ice vultures," goods would be allocated in much more haphazard, inefficient and unjust ways. Which makes it more than a little unfair that they should be subjected to such abuse.