I’m not defending price gouging (not informed enough to make a complete decision), but you should consider that libertarians genuinely believe that allowing “price gouging” (ie. having no price controls) will lead to better outcomes for every one, including more lives saved, rather than constructing a straw man about the free market.

This is fundamentally the problem though isn't it? Belief is a matter of faith, and so regardless of how much experience we have with these situations no amount of evidence is going to sway them.

I think you're being a little imprecise with definitions here. I did not use believe to mean "faith", but rather something more like "based on the evidence available, they came to the conclusion that this is the best approach". What other word would you use for this idea, if not believe?

As another example, if I said "I believe that man made climate change is going to be a threat to humans in the next 50 years", would someone really interpret that to mean "I have unquestioning faith in (previous assertion here)" (which is the definition of believe you've used)?

Prof that controlled marked fail is also everywhere: pretty much any government-run service.

Almost like Economy is a science: it keeps working even if you don’t believe in it.

How many of those successful products are actually being made in a free market, and didn't rely on government intervention somewhere along the way? Subsidies, grants, safety standards, etc

Similarly, plenty of government run services are great and cheap -- they start failing when free market evangelists start sabotaging them to feed these kinds of arguments

The free market theory, if we want to call it that, has always also carried the implicit 'in the long run' and this is what we're quibbling about. Natural disasters, pandemics etc are short term conditions that don't allow enough time for the normal market mechanics to come into play. This is the argument essentially.

Your belief in the markets is such that you cannot even allow for any instance where the free market is an imperfect solution and any kind of critique means that the person is anti market. I am not anti market. I simply do not consider the free markets some infallible system that works in every context.

This is not some rhetorical device meant to sneak in Socialism. It is in fact possible to recognize the efficacy of the markets, over the long run, but still recognize that there are contexts that require some amount of intervention.

I want to also comment on the following: "even if you don't believe in it"

I don't consider this something to believe in or not believe in. It's just a system, a tool, it has strengths and it has weaknesses. Sometimes it's the right approach, sometimes it's not.