What is the scope of goods and services that one may charge for? [closed]

Question

A comment on this site asks:

When you provide a service or add value you have a right to charge for it, no?

What is the scope of goods and services that one may charge for?

Answer 1

The range of goods and services that one may charge for is nearly unlimited. The default position is that people are free to contract for any good or service. This is a consequence of freedom of contract, and the fact that the right to dispose, in both common law and civil law, is universally understood as part of what it means to own a thing.

However, there are exceptions for illegality, unconscionability, or public policy. This explains the prohibition in some jurisdictions on sex work, the inability sell one's child, or (e.g. in Canada) prohibition on payment of consideration for being a surrogate mother.

There are also restrictions placed on the sale of certain goods or services where the government has regulated for the purpose of protection of the public (e.g. medicines, or physiotherapy, or legal services).

Restrictions also come from intellectual property law (e.g. a person who does not hold the patent to an invention cannot make the invention and then sell it without permission from the patent holder).

There is no requirement that one have "added value" in order to be able to sell a thing.