“Price gouging,” anyway, is kind of an incoherent concept; there’s no fundamental reason of “fairness” that shortages shouldn’t be managed with price hikes. Yes, periods of shortage drive up profit margins. Higher profits are part of what brings new producers into constrained industries. And in a robustly competitive market, those profit margins get forced down as supply expands. Price controls inhibit that process and are a bad idea.

All of that said, Harris is trying to win a presidential election, and to win elections, you run on popular ideas. And the voters, in their infinite wisdom, strongly favor laws against “price gouging.” Evan Ross Smith, a pollster for the center-left Democratic research initiative Blueprint, shared a survey on X showing voters’ opinions on various proposals to fight inflation. The two most popular ideas for disinflation—lower interest rates and lower taxes—are in fact inflationary. The third most popular idea, and the most popular idea that wouldn’t tend to push prices up, is to “prosecute companies for price-gouging and price-fixing,” which Harris has said she will do if she assumes office.

The public demands action against “price gouging,” my objections to such laws are a political loser, and I should make peace with the fact that I won’t get my way on this issue. That is how democracy works.