Yet sympathetic pricing isn't beyond scrutiny.
For that reason, most early examples of sympathetic pricing tend towards the short-term.
Unlike traditional "eco" or "ethical" marketing, sympathetic pricing focuses on the needs and-or values of the person paying, rather than the innate social or environmental attributes of what is being sold.
The new head of the energy committee, Jeff Bingaman, is a western senator sympathetic to price caps.
Unfortunately, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's chairman, Curt Hebert Jr., is not at all sympathetic to price caps.
St. Louis Fed president James Bullard told the Financial Times he was "sympathetic" to price-level targeting but added, "I don't think we're going to go in that direction any time soon".
The rulers of Europe could and did obtain annulments, for a price, from sympathetic popes.
Indeed, the measure was passed on a 2-to-1 vote, with William Massey -- the one commissioner who has been sympathetic to calls for price controls -- voting against it on the grounds that it would be ineffectual.
The documents shed light on a rarely public corner of Washington lobbying, where industry lobbyists join with grass-roots groups that offer ideological credibility and deep mailing lists of sympathetic activists — sometimes for a price.
Democrats have generally been more sympathetic to California's pleas for federal price caps on electricity this summer, when prices threaten to soar even higher.
