Comment by ajsnigrutin | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ajsnigrutin | Hacker News Reader

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Of course not... but most people don't have a pawn shop and don't mine gold.

On the other hand, with prepping, (just to point at a weird, funny case), a huge amount of people were without toilet paper this spring, both due to media panic and not having an extra pack in the basement, for "just in case" scenarios (for me it was my gf using it all, and me being too lazy to go to store that day, so I have two packs (20 rolls) just for that...).

Because people here (in slovenia) watch international news, they bought all the toilet paper here too, and it was hard to get it for like three days (luckily, slovenia is small, and distributon is not hard).

And toilet paper is easily replaced by a bidet or a shower... food isn't.

Toilet paper is normally bought in multimonth increments because it doesn't go bad and isn't that large. How often do you buy toilet paper in a year? Maybe two or three times unless you're extremely liquidity constrained or unable to transport an 8-pack. The prospect of a lockdown prompted people to buy toilet paper off cycle which disrupted the whole thing by having everyone buy toilet paper in a month, instead of 1/4 of people, and then the residential demand increased while commercial paper demand dropped. It's not as simple as blaming a media panic.

I buy it tw, three times a month. While i lived alone, once, maybe even less. I don't know how large an "8 pack" is, but buying 10 rolls in a package is normal here, and usually you buy one pack, together with other groceries.

Media panic made people buy 5, 10 packs (full carts), because they saw americans and australians do it, and other be left without, so they hoarded the stuff.

I don't know how big your place is, but I just don't have room in my apartment to justify keeping these kind of quantities of anything. My partner and I buy an 8 pack once or twice a month.

If you’re two people and you go through more than eight rolls a month, you may have a stomach problem.

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