It turns out that efficiency isn't the be-all and end-all of all of society! The objective is not necessarily to maximize efficiency/production/have costs be as

It turns out that efficiency isn't the be-all and end-all of all of society! The objective is not necessarily to maximize efficiency/production/have costs be as low as possible for every product under the sun! And of course there are duals to price controls such as production subsidies that can smooth things out. And policies that can otherwise influence things. Money is fungible, after all! And thanks to taxation as a general concept, the universe of people paying for all of this is not necessarily the universe of people buying it, so it's not necessarily "the consumers pay in one way or the other".