ECON 101. Prices will remain at market levels as long as we have a shred of a free market remaining. That means, unfortunately, as long as people will pay the price, the price will hold or even rise. If we stop buying, the price will fall in response to that perceived decrease in demand.
If you were a retailer of widgets, and your livelihood depended on keeping your business open and making a profit, would you not raise your prices if your ability to get more widgets shrank? When you found customers willing and able to pay that higher price, would you lower that price?
Fellow shooters/reloads, calling people out for responding to "marginally-free-market" forces, tossing out terms such as "gouging" and "highway robbery" to label this response, is not going to change anything. If you feel better for having gotten it off your chest...well, there's something to be said for feeling better, I suppose.
If you don't like the price, and you have an alternative--perhaps, stop buying for a while--the slackening demand will force prices down. Retailers will not long hold prices at a level that keeps merchandise on their shelves instead of in your shopping basket.
However, if you continually pay the asking price, it becomes the market price. That encourages retailers to nudge the price up yet another notch, to see just how high you'll go. That's not wrong--that's business.
