Even homeless people on the street will sometimes refuse free food, so the idea that sandwich-sellers can set any arbitrary price they want or people will starve is just not something that happens in practice.
Indeed, sandwiches are abundant and affordable.
Housing: Most voters are homeowners, with the shared incentive to increase the price of housing in their town through restrictive policies. This ignores the interesting conversation about whether NIMBY actually increases property values, but most people believe they do. They don't even have to be explicit about it, nor get 100% cooperation, but the emergent property is clear and shockingly consistent across US
Healthcare: There are many systems at play here, as an example: The AMA restricts the number of doctors who can enter the profession: https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/4561/does-the-a...
Education: Prestige de-facto limits the number of 'desirable' schools in the marketplace, and the high-prestige schools haven't grown nearly as much as overall enrollment.
There's no single top hat wearing, cigar chomping fat cat. Or even a smoke filled back room. But a variety of cultural and regulatory norms keep the dynamics entrenched. Which isn't to say that they can't be changed! But it won't be just the subtle nudge of Adam Smith's invisible hand.
But that competition isn't perfect. Right now, for example, there are very clear indications of price gouging with the excuse of inflation.
And it isn't even just with food. See the renting market for an example. People who had enough money to buy a house to rent it earn more money, and people who didn't spend more money because they need a house to live (and moving is a very high barrier for a lot of people).
But I think the most important example is jobs, mainly jobs with a low barrier of entry, which are mostly taken by poor people. People that don't have enough savings/time to get better education or to find for better jobs have to get whatever they can, so their employers have a lot of power to set low salaries: the employer can deal with an employee leaving or taking more time to fill a position, the employee probably needs a job quickly to pay the bills.
Do you know of people taking out second mortgages on their house or drowning in debt to afford Internet service?
The flip side of the equation is that if a business is to exist, it has to set a price that people are capable of paying. Yes, sometimes with supply constraints they can charge more, but charge too much and nobody will be able to buy, which means $0 revenue for the business.
how did you know that the cost of such a service is not way overpriced compared to the cost of production?
Are there really many ~sandwich providers~ISP that you can compare it to? Or are the prices just taken because there's no alternative, and that ~sandwiches~internet access is needed for living?
