This is a topic that really confused me during covid times. As supply chains broke down the supply of lots of goods decreased while the demand for those goods e

This is a topic that really confused me during covid times. As supply chains broke down the supply of lots of goods decreased while the demand for those goods either stayed the same or increased. By the market clearing hypothesis, the price of the goods should have been increased in that situation, to curb demand down to the point where demand matched supply. However, this overwhelmingly didn't happen. Sellers didn't raise prices at all, or not nearly enough, and instead chose to just completely sell out of their stock so that none was available for purchase no matter how much someone would pay for it. Now I can understand not price gouging during a crisis. I understand this behavior for essential goods. But I saw this behavior across entire markets, even for goods which were as far from essential as you could get, even for luxury goods. Across the entire economy companies were choosing to just give up free profit and sell out of all their stock instead of raising prices to reduce demand. It kind of shook my confidence in things. I wondered if there was now so much bureaucracy across every level that we no longer even remotely have an efficient market. For example, a hundred years ago someone that owned their own small store could raise or lower prices by the day, or by the hour, whenever they wanted, however they wanted. But nowadays, how much control does a manager working at, say, a random Walmart have over their prices? How quickly can they change their prices? Do they even determine the prices of their goods or are they mandated at a corporate level? How many people would the decision to raise the price of goods have to go through, and how long would that take? Does the manager of such a store even care about such a thing?