[mhb]

You're arguing both that people respond to price signals and that they don't. Regardless of your dismissals, it is perfectly obvious that higher prices provide an incentive to supply more.

Anyway, what better way are you proposing to distribute goods?

[tablespoon]

> You're arguing both that people respond to price signals and that they don't.

Actually, I'm arguing that classical free market economics doesn't lead to the best (or even good) results over all scales. IMHO, advocacy for price gouging is sort of like insisting on using classical mechanics to model quantum-scale phenomena. Price gouging is properly understood as a market failure, in that some people respond to the price signals by doing socially counterproductive stuff (and the supposed socially productive stuff is mostly a chimera in that context).

> Anyway, what better way are you proposing to distribute goods?

Your question assumes I'd give one answer, when my point is it depends on context. In some cases that's dogmatic free market economics, in other cases it's literal central planning, but in most cases it's something in between. One thing is clear, though: crisis shortages are not the place for dogmatic free market economics.