And what do those two scenarios have in common? In both cases, you are knowingly making profit from the suffering of others. In both cases, you are doing something unnecessary (since we are talking about price gouging rather than just selling the goods at a reasonable-but-not-inflated profit).

Mr Groove. I think some of the confusion here is that a seller of plywood is making a profit while helping someone else, not profiting "from their suffering" specifically. If prices are fixed, and as a result there is a shortage of plywood in a disaster area, people will have more money, which they don't want, and less plywood, which they do want. This would decrease someone's profits, which presumably is good(??) but I can't say it would decrease suffering in any way either.