Price controls work perfectly well as long as the government implements the necessary policies to backstop the market, whether that means nationalizing the supp

Price controls work perfectly well as long as the government implements the necessary policies to backstop the market, whether that means nationalizing the suppliers and eating the difference in cost or subsidizing private companies. Venezuela and North Korea just don't have the foreign currency reserves required to do that. Tons of countries like China and the United Kingdom have energy price controls. Rental price controls are everywhere around the world, both good and bad implementations abound. Lots of countries have put price control on agricultural staples like rice and wheat. It's a relatively cheap way of guaranteeing social stability since the difference between the market price and the set price is relatively small and predictable per person, except in emergency situations like the world experienced with Russian gas and Ukrainian wheat. The best governments squirrel money away for rainy days like that, so that the price controls don't fall apart.