Wait, shortages of what, exactly? Everything that was short the last time? More? Only certain things?
Does it really matter what the cause was if the end result kept people from buying what they needed?
Yes. If there is a shortage of TP due to hoarding, that can be addressed (and has been) by stores limiting sales.
Actual shortages can also be addressed that way, or by fixing what the problem is. With TP I think it was clear that hoarding was the cause. Yes, it took some time to up the supply (which they were happy to do, who doesn’t want to sell more of something?) But the actual need of different TP was outweighed by the hoarding.
That’s why I pushed back earlier in the thread. I don’t want more hoarding just based on innuendo, or perhaps even companies planting rumors to encourage hoarding.
That’s how I came to buy 50lbs of flour. A local restaurant get permission to resell their “supplies” to customers. I couldn’t find bread flour in consumer sizes, and decided that since I was hunkering down and not grocery shopping, I’d rather have too much flour than too little. We’ve been getting a LOT of use out of that bread machine we never used…
If you subscribe to the novel notion that people can think about the consequences of their actions on others, then we can forestall hoarding-caused shortages by persuading people not to hoard.
Conversely, by telling everyone they need to have a year’s supply (!?) of TP before their neighbors twig to the impending shortage, you (any you) are actively causing the very shortage you hope not to see.
Of course a more cynical perspective is that Americans are collectively unalterably mindlessly selfish and they WILL create their own hoarding-driven shortage as sure as sunrise. So the only choice one faces is whether to hoard first or do without.
Clearly we have met the enemy and he is mostly us. Nobody can wreck the USA faster or better than Americans can.
Thanks for the chuckle.
Crises have given us endless evidence that this is not just the cynical perspective, it is the accurate one.
A year seems excessive. A couple months seems rational. And if you slowly and methodically build up to that, or buy from places that routinely handle bulk purchases, rather than stripping the shelves of your local supermarket TODAY!! I don’t think you will be inconveniencing your neighbors or retailers, either. That is, I think that if you have the space and money to do it, there is absolutely no downside, to you OR to anyone else.
For TP, I happened to have a couple months supply on hand at the start of the pandemic just because it’s convenient to buy it on-line in bulk, and for the past year and a half I’ve been doing that. I doubt my routine Amazon order of TP in January caused anyone any problems at all. I doubt the order that just arrived did, either. In fact, quite the contrary, when my neighbors were frantically looking for TP on the shelves, I wasn’t competing with them.
Yup. Because I had what I consider to be a reasonable stock of toilet paper in the house when the shortages first started occuring, I was able to leave the bits and drabs that appeared in the stores during the shortage for other people, and to wait until the shelves were routinely well supplied (if not always with familiar brands) before building my stock back up to what I consider normal levels.
And I also didn’t have to make extra trips to hunt for toilet paper, or add an extra load on busy delivery people, in order to find some when most shelves were empty.
The best way to reduce the chance of shortages is to have reserve stocks. While some of those reserve stocks should be in the distribution system, the most sensible thing to do is for everybody who’s got storage space and available funds to have a reasonable amount of everything that stores well on hand at home. That way, whether the problem is with the distribution system or at the product source, and whether it’s due to pandemic or storms or wars/terrorist actions or Facebook rumor, there will actually be less panic buying at the time of the crisis, and also fewer people driving around in circumstances in which not only they themselves but also other people are better off if they stay home (this isn’t only a factor with infectious diseases, it’s also true in storms and their aftermaths; fewer people on the roads means fewer rescue people needed to try to deal with the results and less traffic getting in the way of repair and rescue crews.)
There’s nothing to prevent people who did stock up from giving some to their neighbors who couldn’t, either.
Given the devastation from that derecho last week, I think it’s reasonable to assume that corn products will be scarce as well. I’d imagine that the manufacturers needing corn syrup will snatch up whatever remains and fresh and frozen corn will tough to find.
No, not really. Saying “each customer can buy only one pack of TP” helps distribute it more broadly than allowing unfettered purchases, but it is still a good way to make sure that every single customer buys one pack, whether they really need it today or not, because they’re all afraid that next week or next month when they do need it none will be available. Every customer buying a package clears out the shelves far quicker than one customer in ten or twenty buying some, even two or three packages.
At least here in Chicago, Restaurant Depot started selling directly to individual consumers - restaurant business was way down, and they had to do something to stay in business. That’s how we came to have 40 lbs. of dried Barilla pasta in the house. And boy, is it cheap if you buy it in large quantities like that! I think it came out to around $0.65/lb. We figured what the heck, we like pasta and have the storage space for nonperishables.
Well yes, if one hasn’t been in a coma the last six months, one notices that this is apparently the case, between hoarding during the spring and refusal to social distance after that.
As was stated up thread, though, you don’t need to engage in hoarding yourself, you can instead stock up over a longer time frame - between now and mid-fall ideally - and leave more product on the shelves at any given time for others who need it.
It’s sensible to put aside a bit when you know you can readily get it now but weren’t able to in March-May, especially if half the predictions about this coming fall and winter come true. This is why I’ve slowly been building up a stock of Sudafed and Bronkaid so when the trees that pollinate in the fall do their thing I’m not in the same situation I was this spring: trapped at home for several weeks and miserable from not being able to adequately control allergy and (mild) asthma symptoms due to neither being available by mail or grocery delivery.
Nevermind, forgot where I was.
No one here said “lay in a year’s supply of TP”. I happen to have had one in February, but only because for several years I would buy a year’s supply in January as a cost-saving measure. If the pandemic had hit in December I would have been scrambling like everyone else. At the time I bought it there were no shortages.
Honestly, just a 1-2 month supply should be plenty at this point. For anything.
Yeah, and this is a year that has had multiple crises for everyone I know.
^ this
The corn used for a table vegetable and that used for, say, animal feed or making corn oil or corn syrup are all very different varieties of corn. So a lot depends on what sort of corn was decimated. It’s possible that, say, corn syrup might be more adversely affected than corn-as a vegetable or vice versa. Or maybe the price of animal feed jumps leading to higher meat prices rather than corn on the cob shortages.
No, not really.
A good way to ensure that many people buy many rolls of TP, become hoarders themselves, is to have the shelves stripped bare by 7:30 AM each day for two weeks straight by hoarders. Now in the third week, you have two weeks of backed up demand, new people deciding to get into the fad of hoarding, hoarders back for a double dip.
The reality of bare shelves due to hoarders is going to be a lot bigger influence on behavior than fear of future supply shocks.
Of all the crops to be devastated, those are probably not the ones to worry about, istm*. Corn is massively overproduced and subsidized. Soybeans are mainly an export item.
*as far as shortages in America goes.
If every person who walks in the store buys a package of TP because they’re afraid of shortages, the shelves will still be stripped bare by 7:30 every morning, which means that other people who see the bare shelves will start getting up earlier so they can be one of the ones buying a single package at 7:15.
In a normal environment, relatively few people coming into the store will buy TP; most people shop for groceries at least weekly and often several times every week, but they don’t need to buy TP that frequently. Probably no more than one customer in twenty buys TP on any given trip. Once they see the “Limit 1” sign go up, every customer will buy their limit, which means the store is selling twenty+ times as much TP as they normally would. The shelves get stripped bare just as surely and very nearly as quickly as if you allowed one person to buy the entire stock. The more people see bare shelves and limit signs, the more people panic buy when any packages do appear.
However, a whole lot more people did get one or two packs each.
And most people, once they’ve got several packs, will stop getting extra; whereas the sort of person who strips the shelves is likely to continue to be the sort of person who strips the shelves. Especially if they’re doing it for resale.
They’ll see bare shelves just as much or even more so if the first few customers are allowed to take everything. It’s the bare shelves causing the reaction, not the limit signs.
Yep. The signs only go up for products where there has already been hoarding.
slash2k is ignoring the alternative scenario. Customers met with empty TP shelves for days on end aren’t simply going to greet the shelves with a shrug, then engage in Pavlovian buying habits once the signs go up and the product becomes available again.
I’m dubious. I think there was a lot of rubbing alcohol bought by people hoping to resell it at high prices. But toilet paper is bulky and low-value for that sort of play. I think most of the shortages of toilet people were not driven by “bad actors” but by a mix of actual shortages (due both to an increase in the demand for home-use and distribution issues) and fear-buying. And people who buy extra out of fear will keep doing so after the signs go down. Once burned twice shy.
And I think that widely distributed reserve stocks (everyone who has the resources stocks up extra now, in a non-panicked way, when supplies are okay) is the best way to avoid panic buying in the future.
Also, it’s only “hoarding” if you aren’t going to use it. That big box of TP in my basement is going to be used, just like the last two large boxes of TP were. Yes, I bought a new box when I still had half a box, and didn’t wait until I was down to the last week or two of supplies. But my purchase didn’t deprive anyone else of being able to buy what they wanted, and won’t go to waste.
More likely they planned to use that alcohol to make hand sanitizer then sell the hand sanitizer at high prices. As for toilet paper: