I don’t.

Even if the masks were actually being used properly, people who need masks the most after the sick, are the people we pay the lowest, retail workers, food service, people who come in contact with extreme numbers of people on a daily basis.

Well paid tech employees can work from home, take 2 weeks of sick days and continue to make thousands a week.

These people will come into work even if they’re anything short of dying because they’re more likely to live paycheck to paycheck when we don’t pay them enough, and the free market has decided not to give them sick benefits that we all benefit from.

The free market is actually externalizing the issue to all of at this point. Don’t give workers enough sick days and keep all that profit, but then when the workers end up spreading the virus as a result of their boneheaded policies, the public will suffer, and the government will pay dearly.

Free market under true emergency situations won't work. As we see with masks right now and we are nowhere near a true global crisis. Why do you think governments went to rationing during war time?

>Why do you think governments went to rationing during war time?

I doubt it was to help individual citizens and families survive a crisis.

That was exactly the reason, if you don't do rationing in extreme events, people start to mass panic buy everything and then you would have people starving.

There's absolutely no "free market" anymore during panic.

I believe you, but is there a good example of a time when this happened and a bunch of people died of starvation? (I assume there’d be plenty of them, since rationing isn’t a very obvious idea.)

> That was exactly the reason, if you don't do rationing in extreme events, people start to mass panic buy everything

Which is what pricing is for. If people start hoarding then the price goes up and makes hoarding much more expensive. Not only that, it gives the people with a stockpile a financial incentive to put it on eBay and thereby make it available for distribution to other people. Unless they're prohibited from doing so, in which case they carry on hoarding.

That was exactly the reason. To not let the non-fighting part of the population die and keep the army in fighting shape.

It should be obvious that a better solution is some mix of the two, and that mix will change from time to time and under different circumstances.

You know what would the "middle ground" solution be? Government buying masks at those spike prices to give them away for free to people who need them. This way you get all the benefits: everyone gets a mask when they need one and producers get incentive to increase supply.

Now an interesting plot twist: Those masks not only do not protect against coronavirus (because the virus is too small, and can get through), they actually increase the risk of infection (because they serve as virus incubators, especially when they become wet)