> At first, the prices in the local market here were normal and people were buying hundreds of respirators and masks. One point here, which I think I establish

> At first, the prices in the local market here were normal and people were buying hundreds of respirators and masks. One point here, which I think I established previously, is that price movement provided no useful information to the manufactures. The most useful information came directly from institutional medical customers (who were the first to know), not retail profiteers working off of secondary reports in secondary markets. > As prices have been driven up (almost exclusively this profiteering and parasitic markup, big retailers have not increased prices), people've been buying closer to what they feel they need rather than trying to stockpile -- when the mask is $2, it's easy to grab 50 or 100. When they're $25 people are only buying 1 or 2. > Gross as it is, this is serving some good -- it's helping to distribute the available inventory over a wider population, instead of concentrating it with the few people that are stockpiling them or exporting them. However, the profiteers are stockpilers, and they probably stockpile more extremely than even the most aggressive personal-use stockpiler. For example, looking at it from a pure profiteering standpoint: it's good business if I can buy 1000 masks for $1 each and sell 100 for $20 each during the crisis, I just doubled my money. However, I just wasted 900 masks in the process, from POV of society. Profiteers are panic-driven speculators, and their economic interest is to make wasteful decisions (otherwise they're potentially leaving money on the table). When the crisis is over, they can just unload their (wasted) inventory at the normal price (for instance, by taking advantage of a retailer's return policy). Also, like TeMPOraL noted, the profiteer's speculative buying could fuel the panic that caused those 100 sales of $20 masks. The signal of empty shelves may be false, or falsely magnified. It's kinda like cornering a market, in that regard. You also assume people are willing to deal with the profiteers. I don't think that's necessarily the case, especially at a 500-2500% markup. For instance: I'd refuse to buy from a profiteer out of principle, and either live without or use alternatives. This kind of profiteering is a pretty clear market failure, not an example of the market providing benefit. It's a failure just like government warehouse steering essential supplies away from first responders and the public and towards government elites.