Venezuela seizes toilet paper factory to avoid shortage

>In reality, the government's ineffective regulation not only discourages investment, but creates incentives for people in the chain of production to take advantage of access to cheap dollars and sell them in the highly profitable black market. With "import dollars" reallocated to currency arbitrage, there is little money left to import the raw materials needed to make things that Venezuelans need.

The irony is, substitute "wall street" for "black market" and this is exactly what the US is doing, albeit on a slower, less aggressive timescale, and with marginally less ineffective regulation.

Venezuela is the happiest country in South America, according to the World Happiness Index published last week by the U.N. Sustainable Development Solutions Network. (http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/the-americas-blog/you-pr...)

The BBC article portrays a country reacting quickly and aggressively to "avoid any scarcity of the product". And US critics (who view Venezuela as an enemy for disobeying their ideology) are reduced to writing articles about toilet paper.

BTW, Krugman and even Greenspan actually advocated nationalizing US banks as a condition of the bailout. (They advocated selling the banks to private investors after cleaning them up. But we could imagine the US public owning the banks rather than wealthy elites.) A bit bigger than toilet paper. (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/23/opinion/23krugman.html)

Pravda was printed on such rough paper. Ach, how The truth hurts!

obligatory http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087747/ - the "USSR toilet paper line" opening clip from it (sorry couldn't find it with original english soundtrek) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GR0I3DgWXX8

What i'm genuiely wondering about is how Marx missed the "toilet paper effect" in Das Kapital while he was so true on the money with the rest of the theory.

Maybe the water isn't clean enough in many Venezuelan households.

You don't tend to see bidets in a lot of places, but you can basically spend $20 on a simple add-on to your toilet and go paper-free, if you want.

I don't know why I know this, but I'm pretty certain most of the toilet paper is produced from tree farms, not impacting on deforestation. Have a read in the annual reports, CSR reports, of toilet papers manufacturers such as Kruger, P&G, Kimberly Clark, etc. Btw, I spotted a flaw in the "hand + water " argument... how do you make sure the tap is clean after washing your hands?

It's reasonably common in southern Europe to have bidets in the bathroom for that purpose. You're right that they're uncommon in the US and northern Europe, though.

We use toilet paper to wipe our butts, not our hands. So we shouldn't get fecal matter on our hands to begin with. Though we still wash our hands afterwards.

How do you wash your butt with water? I wash my body parts (in shower) using my hands to rub. Should I apply my hands on butt at loo? Sometimes I do it, but that's only when paper doesn't do a good job. But then my hand is in direct contact with fecal matter and there's a good risk of getting it under fingernails too. Of course I wash my hands as well as I can afterwards, but regularly dirtying them that way does sound like questionable personal hygiene.

(I can't believe I'm discussing this on HN.)

No need for a throwaway account, seems to me - discussing hygiene shouldn't be a sensitive matter.

> If you had fecal matter on your hand, would you wash it, or just wipe it with some paper and call it good? Yep, never understood this myself.

Then I discovered disposable wet wipes followed by a bit of TP to dry off. The equivalent of wiping with a clean soapy cloth. Next best thing to a full cleaning in the shower and uses less paper-like material by far.

As a North American who enjoys discussing taboo subjects clinically and honestly, and in the interest of cultural understanding, I would explain it as:

Cleanliness standards for the hands are much higher than for the rectum area. For hands, not just water but soap is expected, after any work with biologically-suspect materials or surfaces (raw foods, places of illness, bathroom visits).

But for "down below," the paper-wipe is considered sufficient, with usual assumptions about clothing, bathing schedule, etc. The paper enables wiping until there's no trace (on the white paper) of any feces. The seated toilet (less common in other regions) helped spread open the rear cheeks; after standing any surfaces that were only-paper-wiped seem very nearly 'retracted' so as to not even be in contact with underwear. Within 12-24 hours, a full-body bathe and freshly-cleaned clothes are likely.

Still, those with predictable bowel movements may time them so they immediately precede a daily shower. In many bathrooms the sink is close enough to allow wetting toilet paper for part of the cleanup, and prepackaged moistened wipes are rising in popularity, and have long been used for messy-baby-cleanup.

Turning things around and looking at rinse-cultures, I'm probably not alone among North Americans in wondering:

(1) Doesn't the spray get droplets of feces-water mix everywhere? (Supposedly ideal bathroom hygiene is to close the toilet lid before flushing, to avoid sending a mist of toilet water into the air. Any forced-water rinsing seems to guarantee a mixed-mist reaches everywhere, including parts of the buttocks and legs far from the rectum that are never contaminated by paper-wiping.)

(2) Short of absolutely drenching yourself with multiple power rinses, how do you know you're "done" - that none of the remaining dampness is still fecal-contaminated water? (White paper provides a visual completion indicator.)

(3) My very rough impression is that fecally-transmitted diseases (typhoid, hepatitis, cholera, anything diarrhea-causing, etc.) are more prevalent in rinse-cultures. Are you sure that "a lot of South Asian countries" should be the "ideal way to wash" model, as opposed to the other way around? (North American practice would change very fast if there were evidence paper-wiping was insufficient to protect health.)

I wash my hand rather than merely wiping it because I'm going to use my hand to touch other things afterwards, like food.

Until and unless people are picking up food with their butts before eating it, the comparison is nonsensical.

"Too much" makes it rather tautological.

We can play the word game and throw political ideologies around like frisbees, but the real issue is price controls.

During the Hurricane Sandy disaster there were price caps on gas and the desired effect was to discourage panic buying, but the opposite occurred -- since suppliers had no interest in accommodating the authorities then supply dried up.

It's not a matter of the suppliers being greedy assholes about it, but there were real and higher costs associated with supplying gas to NYC and the surrounding areas. They just didn't want to take the hit to their pocketbooks and I don't blame them.

What also happened was the well-connected people were able to make arrangements for their own private supplies of gas, and those people included politicians, business leaders, and other wealthy people, but it was secretive and supply was restricted to them. The politicians were publicly attacking/shaming "scalpers" who were trying to sell gas at a fair price, meanwhile they were secretly making back-room deals for themselves.

What's the lesson here? Depends on who you ask and what you goals are. Instituting price caps usually results in suppliers losing interest and disappearing, which is probably what happened in Venezuela.

Oh, and a black market of gas emerged. There were iOS and Android apps for finding suppliers and becoming a supplier yourself. I'm usually the first to ridicule statements like "the market corrected itself" but it stands to reason that it applies here quite well.