This is pretty weird if you know some economics. On a free market, there are only very temporary shortages or surpluses. Those conditions morph quickly into eq

This is pretty weird if you know some economics. On a free market, there are only very temporary shortages or surpluses. Those conditions morph quickly into equilibrium with raised or lower prices. The spring 2020 TP shortage illustrates this. Because if the pandemic, there were "profiteering" laws in effect that made price hikes illegal, so we got empty shelves instead. Pretty sure there are no such laws for tennis balls now. So what's going on? My best guess is that retailers don't want to take the PR hit of raising prices for something that should be resolved quickly enough?