There's an interesting observation about audience selection in here somewhere. Your typical hacker tends towards progressive politics and attitudes, and would be likely to condemn price gouging. "Hacker News," though, is associated with Y-Combinator and disproportionately attracts the Valley-startup/venture-capital/exit-strategy subset of hackers, who tend a lot more towards Objectivist-libertarian profit-obsession, so you get what you see here.