HOARDING. - It is the total or substantial acquisition of the goods existing on a certain market in order to resell them later on advantageous terms or to use them later when they will be difficult to obtain.
Such a fact can occur in all times and with regard to every kind of goods, giving rise to the phenomenon of monopoly. Usually, however, it occurs in periods of real or feared famine (especially on the occasion of wars, social upheavals, etc.) and with regard to goods of widespread consumption and great necessity (above all raw materials and foodstuffs), producing the well-known phenomena of war or cyclical enrichment.
The social importance of the fact has induced all governments to intervene. Their action has developed in two directions: a) to prevent the arising of hoarding, either by withdrawing the goods in question from free private bargaining through obligatory requisitioning, or by ensuring citizens a minimum of them through rationing; b) to destroy it by striking the hoarder with very severe penalties. Experience has shown that such measures achieve their purpose when the authority truly ensures at least the indispensable, and proves truly inflexible in striking the great hoarders: two things which, unfortunately, have rarely occurred.
From the moral point of view it seems that a distinction must be made between hoarding for the purpose of profit and hoarding for the purpose of "personal or family cover"; moreover, in hoarding for the purpose of profit it seems that a distinction must be made between hoarding of indispensable goods and hoarding of luxury items.
The hoarding of indispensable goods for profit is condemned by morality. It violates not only the law of charity, which obliges each person to love others as himself, but also the law of social justice, which obliges each person to contribute to the good of all to the extent of his abilities. Less severe, it seems, must be the judgment for the hoarding of luxury goods or for hoarding for the purpose of "personal or family cover." In these cases, in fact, there is not that harm to others and that manifestation of egoism which is observed in the first case.
Bibliography2 works
Giovanni Battista Guzzotti