Amidst the continued spread of COVID-19, anti-price gougers have been hard at work on social media to expose the supposed moral tragedy of price gouging: greedy and exploitative sellers raising prices of necessary goods to massive heights when consumers need them most. Take the following tweet as an example:

This store in NYC was fined for price gouging. Was selling 8 ounce purell, which before all of this sold for $2.50, for $50 each, a 1900% increase (via @ninapineda7) pic.twitter.com/YAnCQv6X4j

— Darren Rovell (@darrenrovell) March 13, 2020

This tweet is meant to tug on our heartstrings so that we pour out our grievances for the every-day consumer and harbor anger towards price-gouging sellers. But is it really the case that this New York seller is just flat out greedy and exploitative? Or is it possible that this seller is performing a valuable market function by conveying an intense shift in consumer demand? Basic economics tells us to bet on the latter.