A toilet paper run is like a bank run. The economic fixes are about the same
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That's because stocking up in preparation for a crisis happens when there is no crisis and you buying a thousand rolls doesn't trigger other people to do it; they just shake their heads and mutter 'prepper'.
Panic buying something when the crisis has already started just means that uncritical people will also panic buy that thing and everyone, including you, suffers because now there are queues just to get in to the supermarket even if you don't want to buy that thing.
So it's only rational if you discount the rest of the system.
We had few days of intensive buying here in Poland last week but it is over now.
Eventually people are going to get tired of hoarding it...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/21/coronavirus-uk...
Also, supermarkets are imposing limits on goods to stop hoarding:
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/mar/18/asda-puts-r...
And the governemtn is relaxing trade rules so that supermarkets can work together to face the unfolding crisis:
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/mar/19/food-retail...
So in the UK at least, panic-buying is a thing.
Edit: and, btw, it's a thing that's hitting me hard because I refuse to go mad along with everyone else and hoard. Unfortunately for me, the government and supermarkets have plans in place to ensure vunlerable people have access to goods, but there's no such provisions for people who have just not gone mad yet. So I fear I might want for basic stuff as time goes by.
People are such shits when they're running scared.
There’s no shortage of toilet paper, but there’s plenty of idiots.
Yesterday I say a person who bought like a cubic meter of TP. What for? If we are indeed short of groceries for that long, you are going to die from starvation rather than inability to poo because you don’t have any toilet paper.
Radio hosts are pleading with people to stop hoarding and just be reasonable.
Fortunately, my wife is a soapmaker, so we won't run out of at least that.
There are limits being placed to combat hoarding and strict penalties against reselling on major marketplaces. Attempts are being made. But I don't think it's as simple as you suggest, at least in the U.S. (Which government? How do you identify the hoarders? Where is the line which continues hoarding vs. having sufficient stock?)
There was a case of someone hoarding massive amount of sanitizer with intent to resell, who then couldn't resell any of it. I hear the government compelled them to donate it (don't have a source, that part is just hearsay). But that's an individual case. At scale I think the problem quickly changes.
Unfortunately it is in shorter supply than toilet paper and takes generations to build up but only decades to destroy.
People need to set an example to their neighbours and friends, make it socially unacceptable to panic buy. It's not hoarding that is the problem it is is the unnecessary high rate of purchase. You could hoard all you wanted if you did it slowly in times when there is not a crisis.
Here in Norway we have a little more solidarity than most countries I believe but even here there was a one or two day period at the beginning when people went out to buy large quantities of toilet paper.
One chapter is titled "Attack Solidarity" and it describes how social solidarity in the US was eroded in the previous decades, resulting in a poor social state with almost no public health insurance, with no public higher education and so on.
But it's not just the US. This is happening in some other developed countries also (though hopefully not all, like you say). What is happening now in the UK, with the stockpiling situation, is absolutely the result of broken societal bonds that has led people to mistrust authorities and each other and adopt an attitude of "every man and every woman for themselves".
I should probably not blame people to be honest. They are acting like little shits, but they are right to believe that, if anything happens to them, nobody will take care of them and that they have to fend for themselves, in this selfish, greedy society that is governed by incompetent idiots.
1. Convince people that a certain action is morally wrong
2. Once 1 is accomplished, convince those same people not to do the action
We typically use law and consistent enforcement to solve these problems, because it's basically impossible otherwise.
What do you expect this would look like in reality, without laws and fines? Someone is seen buying 50 cases of toilet paper and loading into their truck. His friends or family, or a bunch of strangers at the supermarket, then shame him, telling him what he's doing is wrong. Then, he sees the error in his ways and decides to return the items? There's no way that this is a workable, scalable solution given the culture in the USA.
Generalization time: 1. People here are timid and avoid confrontation, and tend to not call others out on bad behavior, particularly family members. 2. Even if you do confront them, it is extremely difficult to convince people that what they feel justified in doing is actually wrong. 3. Even if you've convinced them that they're wrong, people don't respond to shame (either public shaming or private).
What people do respond to is consistent incentives and consequences. If there's a good chance you'll lose money or go to jail for doing something, then people will think twice before trying it.
Haven't seen TP on a shelf in over a week, and I go to stores three times every two days.
Its (1) easy to make, (2) mostly produced in-country with no long, integrated supply chain and (3) relatively new (talk to someone over 80 who grew up rural, they probably switched from the sears catalog to toilet paper in their life).
One hypothesis is it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. The other is it's the defence of an intimate space.
Either way, it’s older than this crisis.
In short, toilet paper is a low margin, least-stocked product with difficulty in transportation. Logistics matters.
... oh, wait. ;-)
But seriously, I think there is probably no fundamental shortage of the ability to make more TP. When you drive through northern Wisconsin, you will see huge stacks of wood all over the place.
No one is going to build a whole new paper mill to cover for a 100-year event. TP is about the best example for inelastic supply and inelastic demand.
That's why it's so weird to me that people are buying so much. How long do people expect this to last? I'm guessing it'll be resolved within a couple months in most places, so what's the point in buying >6 months worth of TP?
Honestly, I think everyone with means should have 1-2 months of basic necessities on hand in case of emergencies (job loss, natural disaster, etc), especially for shelf-stable stuff like TP and soap. However, the time to stock up isn't when an emergency happens, but after an emergency happens (presumably your stock is a bit low).
One roll per week? That seems frugal.
180 pieces per roll x 36 rolls is 6480 pieces of toilet paper. (Guessing the 180, fairly standard-ish here in Australia).
Divide that by days in half a year 6480 / 182 = 35 pieces per day divided by 4 family members in the house is 9 pieces of toilet paper each per day.
(not wasteful) != frugal
In any case, using a lot of TP might be unfortunate, but it's hardly a sin.
Suppose a two-bedroom house has 200m² surface with the ceiling at 4m. And let's assume that it's possible to squeeze 25 six-packs of toilet paper in 1m³. That's a capacity of 20,000 six-packs (800 m³ house volume times 25 rolls per m³). Assuming of course the person is willing to stuff every last cm³ of their house with toilet paper maximising storage efficiency, which means throwing out all the furniture and living in their car, not to mention not being able to go to the toilet in the house, in the first place.
It's definitely doable. 20,000 six-packs per person, no problem.
I'm afraid it's going to take a while before people are at capacity.
Edit: of course, when I say "back-of-the-napkin", it's just a turn of phrase. We ain't got no napkins.
In that scenario, money would acquire the same value that toilet paper used to have before the virus. So toilet paper would be the new money and money the new toilet paper.
It sounds like the author's concluding that the fixes aren't the same. Daley says that the fix for the bank run is for the government to step in as a guarantor and provide the cash to depositors withdrawing, then says that that's not possible for toilet paper, and thus it should do a quantity limit ... with no further economic analysis except that it worked somewhere.
Those are, like, the opposite solutions. Government (or the central bank, in this case[2]) can easily loan money out of thin air, but it can't do the same for toilet paper. At most, it could commandeer suppliers or initiate its own manufacturing, which breaks the economic similarity.
Similarly, the solution for toilet paper (quantity limit) doesn't apply to the bank run case, as bank insurers don't do a quantity limit. Arguably, the deposit insurance maximum is a kind of quantity limit, but Daley doesn't offer it as such, and it's known in advance, and unrelated to customers' legal right to how much they can access, so is non-analogous in several respects.
Since no defense of quantity limits is given beyond (as above) that it worked once, the title is bad and the argument isn't well supported.
[1] For the record, here's what I see as the last paragraph so you know if I'm missing something:
>The second solution is to ration the commodity – putting limits on the amount a customer can buy. Imperfect though these buying limits are, they are feasible, as shown by the restrictions put in place by Australia’s supermarkets. https://www.afr.com/companies/retail/coles-joins-woolworths-...
[2] Let's not break into the debate about whether the Federal reserve is private or not; it really doesn't matter for purposes of this topic.
If I may offer a brief moment of levity to relieve the tension of the moment, I must point out that if the government can print money then it can create toilet paper.
I cannot imagine a scenario where things have gotten so bad that we can't make toilet paper but our biggest problem is wiping our asses.
It's like, "Civilization is falling but at least I have a year's worth of TP!" !?
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There are all kinds of ways to clean your crack (bidets, showers) and making paper is pretty straightforward.
The internet is failing me, but the old "rag trade" was all about collecting old clothes and reprocessing them into new cloth and paper.
I have been unable to find TP at any store within a half hour's drive from my house for about a week and a half now.
The restrictions do not work, if not heavily supervised. And even then it’s still a gamble. People would queue again at another cashier to buy another pack of TP. I don’t think there is a solution, if actors are invested in gaming it.
Issuing ration cards like WWII would be an option also and that solves a number of the problems you mentioned, you could use the existing electronic benefits infrastructure for that.
You’ll never have a completely unbeatable system but you can go a long way to keep honest people honest. Even forbidding the resale of TP so people realize they are stuck with whatever they buy can do a lot of good - people wont buy eight thousand rolls of toilet paper if they know they’ll be stuck with it.
https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/0...
Reading the article title gave me an idea - raise the price to $20 per pack. Give each customer 2 coupons per week that takes $15 off one pack. Tied to a name / loyalty card or whatever.
The heavily supervise-ing can be a night mare. Local one data point, 16 yo self checkout 'watcher' yesterday was brought to tears with some customers demanding something be done about the person buying 12 packs of ground beef when the sign says limit 2.
I noticed yesterday some local cashiers are breaking - psychically and mentally/likely emotionally - yet they keep moving to keep pushing stuff down the conveyor belt and bag.
Most cashiers were not hired to be or trained to be security guards and prepared for the emotional battles that can come with that.
As a Bay Area resident, it is incumbent upon me to maintain, in perpetuity, several weeks of food and drinking water as well as various other life essentials. I owe this to my family and everyone in my community as we all live in a place where a tremendous natural disaster and accompanying social dis-integration could occur at any time.
Of course I have had my suspicious ...
Now we see that most residents of the Bay Area are barely prepared to make dinner tomorrow and have supplies on-hand for a day or two. They don't have contingency plans for the absence of water, electricity or gas and I suspect very few are certified and practiced in even basic CPR.
Shame on you.
There is going to be a day when even the grocery stores aren't open and the water isn't going to flow. Possibly for weeks. I plead with you to spend your quarantine time getting your shit together the way you've always been expected to.
One of the single most terrifying facts about our modern space-age-a-go-go society is that there is only about three days of food in the pipeline. If the food stops flowing for more than a week the only thing to eat is our pets and then each other.
That's some thin ice.
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But I'm speaking in generalities.
This particular virus is unlikely to take down civilization. Remember how few people it takes to farm these days, eh? Something like 3 people out of 100 are enough to make bread. It's going to hurt but we will survive.
However, this won't be the last virus.
The underlying causes are the teeming numbers of humans going out into wild areas and getting exposed to new contagions, combined with our casual global travel and transport networks (this virus went international almost before we (globally) knew it existed.)
We are going to have to reconfigure our civilization.
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"It may seem a ridiculous idea, but the only way to fight the plague is with decency." ~Camus
Sorry, but I'm missing the context to understand your comment. Can you explain? What is the tremendous natural disaster that compels you to maintain sevearl weeks of food and drinking water?
I'm mostly vegan and i do fast a lot, due to a slow metabolsim. But, I barely use 1 roll per 2 months. We shop for costco TP, maybe once per year, if that much.
Conclusion: people use a lot of TP.
But, yeah, vegan poop literally doesn't smell. Is that so surprising?
You eat like a rabbit and you start to poop tidy rabbit turds that barely smell.
The reason meat-eaters' shit stinks is the rotting that's happening in their guts.
And only douchebags hate vegans.