> You can either increase total happiness, or concentrate it to the powerful. The nasty, invisible catch with price caps is that this outcome you've described

> You can either increase total happiness, or concentrate it to the powerful. The nasty, invisible catch with price caps is that this outcome you've described is an idealized one. It's possible to get neither as you make whatever you're trying to regulate functionally unavailable to anyone. How much bread do you think bakers will produce if a loaf costs $1.20 to make, but politics dictates they cannot sell for above $1 each? In such a scenario nobody gets any bread except what the bakers make for themselves. It's also possible to try to increase total happiness and actually just wind up concentrating it to the powerful. This is what rent control has done in San Francisco. It's dangerously easy to confuse goal and outcome in policy-making.