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Comment by robomartin | Hacker News Reader

I agree with the points you are making. I will add that hoarding does increase the cost of producing goods. If the toilet paper manufacturer needs to produce at 10x normal capacity because people are filling their car with the stuff, they will need to increase staff, work more shifts and maybe even buy/rent/build more production equipment.

Does this double, triple or quadruple costs? Likely not. Yet costs do increase, unless the manufacturer does not increase production capacity to match demand. In which case supply dwindles to zero, with predictable consequences.

The point is: No factory or service provider operates with 10x production capacity they can turn on at a moments notice, that would bankrupt any business instantly.

Perhaps the law we need is one to control hoarding behavior or the rate of change. With that you avoid shocking businesses with unreasonable step changes in demand.

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> Perhaps the law we need is one to control hoarding behavior or the rate of change.

You know what would control hoarding? Higher prices.

Poor people not getting to have toilet paper is not an acceptable solution.

And what is the end result of empty shelves? Is that an acceptable solution?

I don't understand people who advocate for policies that almost guarantee empty shelves instead of a policy that would avoid shortages but at a higher price temporarily.

In my mind the higher price followed by a return to normalcy is a much better outcome for rich and poor alike than a complete shortage with nothing on the shelves.

A: No price controls, scalpers buy everything and resell at 1000%. Only people who can pay that much get it until the manufacturer ends up at 10x output, which can take a long time.

B: Price controls, at least some distrubution of everyone gets some, less incentive to hoard, stores still allowed to raise prices a little (just not a predatory amount detached from real costs) when the manufacturer does when ramping up production.

The shelves are empty in either case, the difference being a nonzero amount going to poorer people in B.

In your A: situation you are explicitly saying that the normal suppliers are not raising the price. I am saying that the best solution to this problem is for the normal suppliers to raise their prices so that scalpers are disencentivized and regular consumers are judicious in their purchases.

So you are forcing a false choice between your A and B scenarios.

A is what was happening in real life before B started happening. Suppliers aren't gouging on their own out of a combination of looking out for their brand and existing laws. The best scenario is clearly where nobody is allowed to price gouge. Why are you so insistent on $100 toilet paper being a good thing?

> Why are you so insistent on $100 toilet paper being a good thing?

Why are you throwing up straw man arguments? I'm not in favor of $100 toilet paper. I'm in favor of letting market mechanisms resolve supply and demand imbalances. Anyone who thinks that restricting price increases is required to prevent $100 toilet paper really doesn't have a clue as to how the market works.

True enough. However, this is only true if prices go up everywhere. If people can buy at Walmart for $1 and sell on Amazon for $5...

I am most definitely a free market person, yet one has to recognize controls are important in order to deal with degenerate or corner cases. One such case is when panic sets in.

I don’t know the answer. Not an easy problem.

>Perhaps the law we need is one to control hoarding behavior or the rate of change.

Aside from an authoritarian system of governance where all purchases are tracked, and one must only purchase their "allotted" amount of goods, how exactly would one control hoarding?

i hope you are not proposing such a dystopian future.

I suggest you google "rationing" because that's exactly what happened in during World War II.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationing_in_the_United_Kingdo...

Not just in the U.K., rationing was also introduced in the United States during wartime:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationing_in_the_United_States

I fully understand rationing, rationing is something done by Authoritarian governments, including the US and the UK...

So it seems you are infact proposing authoritarianism as a solution to the problem

Give up freedom for safety... wonderful. I see alot of that right now it is very sad

Just to make sure I understand your ideology: so you're saying the rationing that happened during World War II was a mistake?

I think shysum is making the case that the magnitude of threat represented by the pandemic != the same magnitude of that represented by WWII. Thereby seemingly endorsing that rationing now is unjustified.

I don't buy into it necessarily; temporary rationing seems an appropriate response so long as it is guaranteed to be temporary.

I can sympathize with his concern of embracing authoritarianism in exchange for safety; I do abhor the practice, but in this environment, rationing is by far the least intrusive measure in ensuring the widest swath of people maintain access to a minimum reasonable level of supplies.

If people want more, let them negotiate with the manufacturer for additional output after existing orders have been met.

A self-imposed limit per customer enforced by retailers should be sufficient. No need to start getting the government into the business of looking for hoarders.

>>A self-imposed limit per customer enforced by retailers should be sufficient.

That is NOT what people are calling for in this thread, I am fine with that

People are calling for Government imposed rationing and price controls

Mainly the price controls were the bigger mistake that lead to all kinds of problems still impacting the world today, in the US it lead directly the the formation of "Comprehensive" pay to include things like Health Insurance, and other non-wage compensations. This was very much a net negative for society (and the health system)

I saw a post on reddit where a costco was only letting you buy one (giant) case of TP per purchase.

https://i.imgur.com/m0Efz3E.gifv

There are obvious ways to cheat it, but it still means more people end up with TP. You don't have to go full police state to make the distribution of goods more even.

But that voluntary action by individuals, in the context of our discussion here we are talking about laws and government regulation, not voluntary actions by business.

It is perfectly fine for a business to choose to only sell 1 package per customer

It is not fine for government to mandate a business only sell 1 package per customer.

This was my entire point, people here are advocating for GOVERNMENT action when none is needed

I'm fine with the government limiting the number of packages per sale. No tracking required.

By the exact mechanism in the article above, penalizing price-gouging?

That does not prevent hoarding

The idea that people are hoarding right now simply because they want to resell the goods to others is moronic on many levels

People are hoarding right now because they believe they may be months with out a supply of the good, so they are buying in multiples of normal levels fully expecting they will use it themselves, not reselling

Well then good news, because it turns out you don't need an authoritarian government, just your local supermarket chain to decide that they'd prefer to retain their existing customer base:

1. https://www.reddit.com/r/australia/comments/fiag4b/handing_o...

2. https://www.reddit.com/r/gifs/comments/fiajl0/props_to_this_...

> i hope you are not proposing such a dystopian future.

I am not.

I don’t know how one might implement something like this or if it is even possible. Not an easy problem.

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