alt Hacker NewsIf you want to be "fair" for a necessity such as gasoline, you can have tradable rationing coupons. That way you are rewarded if you buy and use less gasoline, but the excess windfall due to the shortage is still transfered to you and away from the supplier. But even this assumes that gasoline is in fixed supply and there is no way of increasing its total production by paying more, which is not a very good assumption.
In a time of shortage, throwing more money at the problem usually won't increase supply. A shortage necessarily means that if you make more of something, you're guaranteed to sell it basically instantly, so there's already an incentive to increase production.
And it's not like the higher prices mean more money goes to the producers so they can invest in more production capacity. The price increase is spread out between every middleman in the chain untils there's almost nothing left. This could work only if the producers themselves are the ones raising prices, but then everyone else would still add their own cut, leading to even crazier price hikes, and also it's unlikely that extra profit would go to much more than lining the owners' pockets.
Additionally, demand spikes usually don't last, so any new production capacity you build will be a liability later, after the market settles down.