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Comment by robjan | Hacker News Reader

Advising people to store food en masses is quite irresponsible. We have had rice, noodle, pasta, bleach and toilet paper shortages for around a month in Hong Kong caused by panic buying triggered by a rumour that there would be a supply disruption. We also went weeks where all of the fresh food was being bought out and frozen.

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This point of view is reasonable only if food disruption is actually very unlikely. If there were food supply disruption in Hong Kong, having a great deal of nonperishable and frozen food on hand would be a good idea for most residents, wouldn't it? The fact that rumors were enough to generate shortages for a month in itself confirms a certain degree of insecurity...

That's just how densely populated islands function. If you're a doomsday prepper on a densely populated island, your first step should probably be to move somewhere that's not a densely populated island.

Doomsday prepping on the "densely populated island" requires a great deal more wealth than it does elsewhere (also, offshore speedboats and firearms!), but one needn't be a doomsday prepper to react to credible rumors of upcoming food shortages.

The insecurity was just caused by people literally filling their trolleys with rice as soon as the store opened every day. The government keeps a huge buffer supply which can be released in the event of genuine emergency.

Why didn't the government use some of the buffer to smooth out this apparently artificial demand spike? That is what every other nation on earth uses its agricultural surplus to do.

Because there was no emergency and people weren't starving. It just became very inconvenient to go shopping.

Then it doesn’t sound like this was “quite irresponsible” as you claimed, either.

Assuming the pandemic will happen, people will buy in bulk and cause shortages anyway. So we are better off getting people to buy food sooner rather than later. This gives more time for stores to replenish stocks.

It's responsible to have built up the food supply over long periods of no shortage. Unfortunately the people who have that foresight are often called paranoid.

Sounds like the people who thought there would be a supply disruption were right, and the people who didn't see it coming are blaming the people who did see it coming.

No, sounds like there wasn't any "supply disruption", rather a "demand excess" from people who thought there might be one. Those are different things.

Bill Gates could cause a potato shortage if he started buying up all the potatoes in America. But that wouldn't be a supply disruption if farmers are still growing potatoes at the usual rate.

We can argue about the exact definition of the word "supply", but the bottom line is that when the suppliers are no longer capable of providing goods to stores, it's kind of pedantic to say "it's not a supply disruption!".

Okay but if Bill Gates says "there's gonna be a potato shortage!" and then causes it by buying up all the potatoes, it's a bit backwards to say "wow that Bill Gates is so smart, however did he predict the future potato shortage while those stupid poor people couldn't?"

Probably illegal for him to do it with onions though.

There was no supply disruption, in fact the supply increased. The shops just couldn't keep up with huge numbers of people buying more than they needed because they knew that panic buying was taking place.

The best time to panic is before everyone else does.

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