You can have a democratic system of government and still ration goods during a crisis. Democracy and economic policy are orthogonal things.

> In the absence of a law structuring the sale, money is the best proxy we have for importance.

I strongly disagree under these circumstances. Prices are one benchmark of importance/value and are often useful as such. But Goodhart's Law comes here in full force.

In particular I would argue that when unusual things happen, the usual benchmarks and proxies we have deserve extra scrutiny, since often any discrepancy between a measure and what is being measured is magnified in abnormal times.

And right now times are quite abnormal. Now is exactly when traditional benchmarks of value should be re-evaluated to see if they are still useful under present circumstances.