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Comment by oh_sigh | Hacker News Reader

It's more like no one actually saw fire, but the back half of the theater snuck out and ran away because there were rumors of a fire. Authers saw this happening and had a chance to tell the people in the front of the theater that the whole back half had thought there was a fire and ran away, but he decided to just slink out the back and leave the front half to get burned.

I'd be ashamed to call myself a journalist if that was how I behaved.

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What if the act of telling people in the front half caused a stampede, which trampled five people to death, knocked a candle over, and burned the whole theatre down?

The thing about bank runs is that if everyone, everywhere thinks there's a bank run happening, this will actually cause the financial system to collapse. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.

But if most people don't think a bank run is happening, then the system can weather a few bad banks popping.

Rather like the recent runs on supermarkets. Everyone thought there would be a shortage of goods, and so they created one.

There was an actual shortage, though, because people's needs changed. Nobody wanted to go to the grocery twice a week when most of the variables of the pandemic were unknowns. Nobody needed commercial toilet paper, but everyone started needing residential toilet paper. Some supply chains for staples were disrupted. (Meatpackers in NYC all getting COVID...)

Many supply chains are still disrupted, relative to changes in demand, just try buying a GPU right now.

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