The only thing that is preventing basic living essentials for costing more is whether the capitalist class feel like rising the price or not.

Shareholder primacy is upheld by the state putting every publicly owned company antagonistic to its workers and customers, id est, the public.

This means the companies are forced to charge what the market will bear, and it's the responsibility of the government to regulate prices to keep things affordable.

But this means lobbying by companies is an attack on the public. (It's highly profitable to bribe officials and should be illegal. It also means officials who take lobby money are traitors to the public, the nation and their office, whether or not doing so is legal.

So the justification for bullets is there, and has been for several decades. We're just not very good at seeing when we have nothing left to lose.