Common misconception among who? Certainly not free marketers -- the classical 19th century argument is that if prices don't equalize supply and demand, then yo

Common misconception among who? Certainly not free marketers -- the classical 19th century argument is that if prices don't equalize supply and demand, then you get unmet supply or unmet demand. Or, you get the state using force to compel supply or depress demand. Look at what happened after the Black Death. In Western Europe you get wage increases. In Eastern Europe, where the aristocracy thought this was unfair, you get serfdom. When John Stuart Mill (who first clearly articulated the idea of supply and demand) said that supply and demand should be allowed to determine labor supply in the West Indies, Thomas Carlyle declared that economics was "the dismal science", and called for bringing back slavery. Look at Diocletian's "Edict on Maximum Prices", which set maximum prices in response to currency debasement. Did it work? The consensus seems to be "no". The idea of inequality in bargaining power is Econ 101, which introduces a whole plethora of terms for the phenomenon -- monopoly, monopsony, oligopoly, oligopsony, market power, etc.