Stores and manufacturers aren't actually charging increased prices in the majority of cases here. It's people buying out those stores and selling. If manufacturers don't see the increased prices the Econ 101 logic breaks down.
They should be charging increased prices. They should have charged increased prices the moment demand went up (like Uber surge pricing). That would have snuffed out the speculators right quick.
One reason they don't do this is because of the attitudes illustrated in the comments here. People irrationally believe that surge pricing in this case is wrong and the negative response by their customers outweighs the benefits of surge pricing. I believe that attitude about surge pricing is wrong and it is one reason why we end up with shortages. It is a terribly self-defeating attitude that exacerbates the situation.
The issue isn't manufacturers, and only retailers in that they failed to implement a purchase limit per customer given news of a pandemic.
You want the maximum number of people with enough supply to get by. Not to have large swathes of the population to go without because someone decided to usurp the logistics network in search of price gouging opportunities.
In order to do that, people will have to get cash. Cash has a far more tangible effect in terms of inspiring frugal spending, and it may not be a bad idea to get cash out of "the system" anyway.
If not, simply vet the card making the purchase. This isn't novel or groundbreaking. Way back when, you'd have a Government issued ration card I believe. Though I'd think a voluntary program implemented by The practice of private ledger keeping, while out of vogue, is still quite practicable. All you have to do is talk to people. Of course, if you went balls to the wall laying off cashier's, you may be in for a bit of a bad time, but hey, shareholder haircuts happen. Price of doing business.
This is not even the slightest bit untread territory.
People are businesses; businesses are people. It's not illegal to go into business as an individual and there's no special magic about stores and manufacturers that doesn't apply to arbitragers.
My point is the suppliers ie the actual manufacturers of toilet paper aren't seeing the increased prices so in an econ101 model they're not increasing supply capacity prices are just going up for consumers.
