a free market capitalist system,
In a free market capitalist system, high prices mean efforts are made to meet the demand. What we have is centrally controlled artificial scarcity.
If you refer to the 21 million BTC cap, it's decentralized scarcity based on proof-of-work (PoW) in a consensus system.
Any change to the 21 million cap in the source code would mean a BIP (Bitcoin Improvement Proposal) which must be approved by at least 90% of the miners and the
final most important decision comes from the community who have to upgrade to the new software version (which they most likely would refuse in this case).