ELI5: Why is price gouging allowed at movie theaters, but not other places?

Yes, i realize that.

The issues is that the price gouging is inevitable anyway, because people are not naturally altruistic and will buy up all the cheap water (if costs are kept artifically low in times of high demand) untill its sold out, then just sell it at absurd prices anyway illegally.

Its perverse but the best defense against running out of the supply of vital to life goods is to “price gouge” or adjust prices according to demand.

This is not an issue where we can magicly force everyone hand economically. This is simply not possible, in particular during a disaster.

The bottled water example is definatly a tricky one to come to terms with, but the outcome of bottled water suddenly becomming absurdly valuable before and during a disaster is inevitable. There is no realistic solution to this problem. Are you going to have the national guard sent to every plave that sells bottled water to regulate its sale? Thats insane and logistially impossible.

The market will do what it wants with a limited supply of highly valuable goods.

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