I bought toilet paper on Sunday. It wasn’t because I was panicky; we were out. Well, we weren’t exactly out, we were down to six rolls. But in a house of nine, including three 14-year-olds and a potty-training toddler, six rolls is as low as I like to cut it. So we needed toilet paper. The only problem was, toilet paper is too cheap.

My wife and I once had a debate about “price gouging.” I’d always lived under the assumption that to raise the price of a product in a time of panic was a moral sin. But is it? She was reading a book by Thomas Sowell and went on to explain how the free market has a mechanism for correcting the kind of panic buying we are witnessing this week. It’s not price gouging — if that’s what you choose to call it — but rather, the fair market price based upon the supply versus the demand. In other words, capitalism.

We’re seeing this play out with products that on a normal week go largely unnoticed; toilet paper, soap, hand sanitizer, water (in America at least) — these are not commodities. The manufacturing plants of Kimberly-Clark, Scott, Georgia-Pacific, and a dozen others are still churning out toilet paper at a steady pace. The distribution centers for Costco Wholesale are massive, and stocked with hundreds of pallets that will find their way to your store just as soon as the trucks and barges can carry them there. You may have to wait a few days, that’s all.