Supermarkets in my area have a near monopoly and don’t meaningfully compete anymore - they can charge whatever people will pay. It’s all owned by Kroger and the nearest non Kroger supermarket is a dozen miles away.
Grocery chains are notoriously low-margin businesses though. Maybe a few places are able to gouge, but as a whole, they cannot and still be low-margin as an industry.
If they doubled the price consistently, they would no longer be a low margin business. The fact that they are low margin is evidence that they are not gouging.
I think there's also a misperception of the public on a lot of items. Many of the dramatic price increases we see are deferred inflation from not raising prices (and subsequently eating the added supplier cost). We generally don't see steady 2-5% price increases every year, but rather large step increases every few years. Many of those step increases are catching up for the previous years where there was no increase.
FWIW, I'm not saying there isn't opportunism going on, but it's much less likely in low-margin commodity businesses.
How much are you willing to pay for the basic necessities of life, life land, shelter, food, water?
If the providers of those necessities possess a monopoly, either natural or through regulatory capture, humans will pay whatever they have to get those necessities. It is important for social prosperity to prevent extracting excess profits through monopolisation, either by destroying the monopoly or by taxing it and reducing other taxes on the individuals.
