[naravara]

> If your baby needs formula, and the supply is disrupted, the choices are generally, with price gouging, you wouldn't be able to feed your baby because the formula is too expensive, and without price gouging, you wouldn't be able to feed your baby, because you didn't get to the store while they still had it.

Not quite. With price gouging, even fewer people get formula because there is a strong incentive to hoard and withhold supply until the price creeps up. Supply can’t ramp up quickly enough in emergency situations. It’s too inelastic for such short time horizons.

So with protections against gouging, people with the supply are incentivized to get as much of it as they can and move it into people’s hands as fast as they can. Without such protections they’re incentivized to hold onto to whatever they can and trickle it out at a metered pace. You just end up creating a speculative bonanza, not any meaningful increases in supply.