Sen. Ed Markey is having a little trouble grasping this whole capitalism thing. The Massachusetts Democrat claims in a new letter to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos that “corporate America has a responsibility to prevent profiteering,” which really isn’t the point at all. Making a profit is actually the exact function of a corporation.

The background here is the alleged “price gouging” on Amazon for face masks, hand sanitizers, and related products amid the rise of the coronavirus. Such a scenario is exactly the time, of course, when we want significant price rises in these items — because more people want them than there are enough products to sell. When demand rises above supply, price rises. (Yes, Markey, those first few pages of the Economics 101 textbook you apparently didn’t read are actually correct.) Far from an outrage, this is actually exactly what we want to happen.