What happens when you have price caps is that there is nothing to scare people away from buying something. Normally, if supply is running low then price will go up, which sees some people start to look for alternatives, reliving pressure on the supply. But if the price is fixed there is no reason to change course, even as the supply dwindles. This is formally known as a shortage.

We already do impose price caps during times of distress, known as price gouging laws. Toilet paper during early COVID is a recent example of what happens when those price caps come into force. That’s what a shortage looks like, and applying price caps more broadly would see that play out across many more goods and services.

What the original text missed is that the US also implemented rationing alongside those price caps to ensure that the shelves weren’t left bare. That is how they were able to manage the shortage. We could do the same, but I think you have a point that the wartime made it easy to claim it is a necessity: “There is a war, so we need to ration” is digestable. “Everything is going well, so we need to ration” is going to raise eyebrows and no doubt see a lot of pushback.