Creating more supply is hard. Jacking up the price is easier. Sure, someone will see the opportunity and undercut your inflated price, but you will have made your money by then and there will be a lot of collateral damage in the interim.

In what way does a higher equilibrium price cause collateral damage? Can you explain what collateral damage you're envisioning?

I would have thought: a lack of access to masks during a pandemic due to their in-affordability?

But who am I to question the wisdom of the free market…

If you don't let people price goods at what they're worth the buyer is decided by random chance and you get shortages instead. Is there really a human right for "the fastest buyers on eBay should get the goods"?

Clearly the old unit price was already profitable, or there would have been no supply rather than insufficient supply.

Rewarding this kind of greed also isn't exactly pushing society in a positive direction, longer term.

Do you see any downsides to government's setting prices? There have been a few examples of this in the 20th century..

> Rewarding this kind of greed also isn't exactly pushing society in a positive direction, longer term.

Call it what you want, but they're the ones making and providing goods we all agree are necessary :) money is the tool our society uses to incentivize more of that behavior.

Goodharts' Law applies to money too. Government action need not be as draconian as a centrally-planned economy to push incentives just enough to eliminate the worst excesses. How much is 'just enough' is, of course, up for debate. But the answer is not 0% just as it obviously isn't 100%

> Call it what you want, but they're the ones making and providing goods we all agree are necessary :)

Bullshit. The owning class doesn't make anything, and the actual workers won't see a cent of that surge pricing.

> The owning class

Ok lol. I see I'm not revolutionary enough.