Let me ask all of you free market guys one question. Why isn't it OK for a station to charge 5 times the normal rate for gasoline if they are the only ones who happen to have any available at the time?
It is ok for them to do that. It’s unappealing to most everybody but it serves a purpose and does benefit everybody in the long run. When gas station xyz sets prices as high as the market will bear they’re sending a message to market actors that a product is scarce and profits are available to producers of that product. Setting prices as high as the market will bear is something that happens every day in a capitalistic economy and most of the time we don’t even think about it. Without those price “messages,” our economy would look like Venezuela or Cuba.
