A large portion of capacity was prohibited by DOE and EPA rules from coming online unless the floor price was $1500/MWh. There's your absurdity.

This isn't a greedy capitalism problem, it's a govt manifested price hike and long term reduction in capacity, as part of the attempt to kill fossil fuels with no mature, viable, reliable, and affordable alternatives.

The fact checkers clouded this issue by claiming it "false", not because the $1500 floor price isn't true, but based on a manufactured straw-man argument that Abbot requested the DOE waiver instead of ERCOT. And a few other equally ridiculous (but expected) "fact checks".

Ignoring the rest of your argument, 9000 is six tomes 1500 and there are nine million values in between (assuming costs have a resolution of tenths-of-a-cent). There was a bug, and the decision to feed the maximum value into the computer system to keep the lights on makes sense. But to think that should be the real cost doesn't.

Even that "excess" capacity was capped by what capacity still exists, so economic truths and results where demand exceeds supply still applies. And regulations basically mandate that power distributors/wholesalers must buy it if they need it and are able, no matter the cost.

They aren't allowed to make a judgment call that $7k is affordable but $8k is too costly, and just shut off power to their customers.

There were still govt effects limiting supply and mandating purchases, even at those prices.

And that's not an accident of policy; that's the intent, in artificially manipulating markets in support of agendas they can't outright mandate.