I think you'd be better served to reduce it to it's most basic element....
A guy suffering from heat exhaustion stumbles into a gas station desperate for water, and the vendor recognizes his desperation and demands that he sign over the deed to his house in exchange for a bottle and/or using his phone to call for help.
It's true that it might send a signal to entrepreneurs to place terminals along desert roads that assist people in desperate situations for what would seem to be an exorbitant price (that would reflect the cost, the risks and a healthy profit margin), but that singular event of taking the guy for all he's worth doesn't in itself send the signal - it's the fact that vendors know there are likely to be people out there with a very high willingness to pay in the future and what matters is their perception of how future events will be treated.
If you could convince would-be entrepreneurs that they won't be capped in their ability to charge in the future you'll end up with a competitive provision for those types of terminals, at which point the price will be significantly less than 100% of a persons net worth. Whether "we" should insist on honoring the aforementioned contract that was signed under duress and at prices far in excess of the competitive equilibrium isn't so clear cut.
Quote:
Originally Posted by David Sklansky
This is called throwing out a quote that nitwits will bite on so you can logically destroy them with your rebuttal. That works on forums not populated by me. Because the actual question is whether people with money are more deserving of having things that they want only a little bit, (their sixth car?) as compared with poorer people having things they really need.(their first car). One can believe that the second case is wrong even if they totally agree with your quotation above.
But this is just general critique of capitalism and wealth inequality, not the effectiveness of the pricing model.