>n practice, as has been seen with Covid PPE, the price "gouging" threshold is sometimes set below the cost of production (due to fixed startup capital costs),

>n practice, as has been seen with Covid PPE, the price "gouging" threshold is sometimes set below the cost of production (due to fixed startup capital costs), preventing production. If it was actually socially important you could just. . . pay for it out of the public funds as a form of emergency assistance or social insurance. Why enable retailers to gouge and exploit the most vulnerable people when you could just have everyone pitch in to fill the gap?