Yesterday some dude posted a video to shame apparently Indian gas station owners charging $10 a gallon around the Hurricane Helene disaster area. The lolberts answered with rebuttals that free market pricing is the best rationing mechanism in a time of scarcity.
People are saying that the gas station could ration gallons per customer and keep the same price, and the lolberts are saying this is communist price control.
I'm not really sure how much merit is held by either position since I've never really thought about this with respect to a disaster area. Clearly the 1973 price controls were a bad idea, but this is a debate over what a private business owner should do after a hurricane. My gut feeling is that gas should be rationed by customer, not by pricing. But maybe the gas station is passing along supply chain pricing to a certain extent?
edit: Texas punished gas price gouging in 2019 after Hurricane Harvey.
Arguments in favor of capitalism and competition, in a general sense, posit that the economic "battle" will, through a sort of Darwinism, gradually create value in the system.
For example, a competitor, wanting to take some of the capital flowing in the system, will create a more efficient way to produce a good with less overhead, resulting in a lower price and have created a better process. Maybe he has a new machine... Value was added because engineers were paid to design it, a manufacturer made it, etc. The money moves to benefit everyone.
Free market capitalism doesn't work when an economy gets upended to the extent where no value can be found to be added to the system.
For example, during the ammo shortages, assholes had friends at Walmart call them when the truck showed up. They'd sweep all the ammo into their cart and immediately resell it for triple the price.
There is no value added to the system. The ammo availability is unchanged. Buying from Walmart for retail price distributes the same quantity of ammo, of the same quality, except it costs three times more... And that expense doesn't go into the supply chain, it goes in to the pocket of a completely worthless "middleman".
In theory you could do this with anything. Open up a grocery store in a small town and buy every single food item off the truck of the local grocer leaving their shelves empty and then sticking your own for double. It's unfeasible on that scale, but technically doable. There is no value. The supply chain doesn't benefit. The grocery reseller is introducing nothing to the economy.
And in this case, you will actively harm people because they can't get food.
Selling the gas you already had delivered a week ago for exorbitant prices introduces no value and actively causes harm.