text: Generally, yes.  There are exceptions though.\n\nOne of the principles behind capitalism is that buyers and sellers are able to freely make decisions about whether to buy or sell, and at what price.  If a seller raises his price, buyers should be able to buy less, or buy from someone else.\n\nIf a company has a monopoly, then the buyers have no choice about where to buy.  So there are laws and regulations about how monopolies can behave.  Examples of monopolies include power companies, and cable companies.\n\nSometimes in natural disasters, some sellers take advantage of the situation to raise prices of things like gas or water by huge amounts.  While some may argue that this is the principle of free markets, others feel that this is unfair to disaster victims who have no other options.  So there are "price gouging" laws in some places that forbid this kind of thing.\n\nAnd then there's price fixing, which means communicating with your competitors and raising prices together.  Again, this is seen as unfair, and so is illegal.  Some of the airlines were guilty of this a long time ago.\n\nThere are some other minor restrictions on pricing, but for the most part, aside from doing these things that are considered grossly unfair, businesses are generally free to price however they want.