Business can't make more money by not delivering product. If demand and capacity were both the same, but prices were simply raised, things wouldn't be out of stock. So either demand increased, or supply decreased, or both - but simply saying "businesses wanted to increase prices" can't explain the shortages for things that are hard to find.

Even for most of the hard-to-find things, many of the hardest-hit businesses haven't significantly raised their own prices. E.g. in-demand new cars have dealer markups but largely haven't seen huge bumps in MSRP even when sold out like the Ford Maverick or Kia Telluride. PS5/Xbox/Switch prices have been flat. Apple device prices haven't seen any unusual spikes due to shortages.

There's the interesting question for the conspiracy folks: why aren't many of these businesses raising prices? Why is Sony letting resellers sell PS5s for over $100 over MSRP still (e.g. https://stockx.com/sony-ps5-playstation-5-blu-ray-edition-co... ) instead of meeting demand where it is?

Probably those businesses see the PR hit of big MSRP bumps as worse than the short term boost in revenue from capturing more $$$ from the high current demand.

If you mean, would companies take advantage of the situation to raise prices and increase margins, then yes of course they do.

If you mean, this whole problem wouldn't even exist if the businesses weren't trying to create it, no that is not the case. They were fully as greedy and deceptive before 2020.

It should also be pointed out that some businesses involved had, in fact, too low of a profit margin to invest in new capacity, so trying to raise prices and increase margins, while self-interested, isn't always bad from the perspective of the entire economy. If you want new capacity, it needs to have money put into it to make that happen.