[spectramax]

Absolutely not. “Sharing resources” doesn’t work when there is not enough to share.

A civilized society works when supply and demand intersection determines the price of goods and services.

Governments should interfere for specific cases (life emergency, masks, etc) and there are laws prohibiting scalping for these commodities - rightfully so.

Your idea of government intervention would assume that government is a rational entity. The truth couldn’t be further from it. Bribes and political favors from large companies would leave everything worse than it was before.

Imagine you're a low volume medical instrument maker and you need a dozen STM32 chips for your life saving device. Scalpers make sure that these chips are available and ready to ship, albeit at a premium which the company is happy to pay for given the circumstances.

[pitaj]

Laws prohibiting "scalping" or "price gouging" in emergencies often makes problems worse by incentivizing hoarding and disincentivizing more suppliers from entering the market.

[QuarterReptile]

Price gouging laws target the products with most serious risk of shortages and guarantee shortages. I think back to the gas pipeline shutdown earlier this year, and how simply that could have been a non-issue if stations had been allowed to raise prices.

[chii]

The problem is one of optics - if life-essentials were allowed to be price-gouged, the local gov't officials get blamed for not instituting price control during the period of shortage. Even if the shortage would've been worse had there been price control!