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Comment by EdgarVerona | Hacker News Reader

You neglected to mention that when people see fake headlines about toilet paper scarcity, there's a nontrivial percentage of people who see that as an opportunity for said arbitrage.

There's two kinds of hoarding happening here: fear-alleviating and profit-seeking, which allows the profit seeking form of acquisition to be possible. Several weeks ago, it wouldn't have been feasible for someone to scoop up the entire market. Profit-seeking acquisition is however both a self fulfilling prophecy for the fake headlines about insufficient production, and a means by which the people seeking these products to alleviate fear have their fears justified.

So is your solution "good on them, they're taking advantage of people's fears to help make the rumors true?" Just what price do you think toilet paper should be right now in stores?

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The Lottery ticket folks who see this as their one miraculous "opportunity" to become "billionaires" based on toilet paper, hand sanitizer, Lysol and powdered milk hoarding and selling individually on eBay at 10000% of retail.

All stores had to do was limit quantities, but they didn't.

I definitely agree with that. I'm totally in support of the idea of limiting quantities, and I do think that would be a rational solution in the face of these current extenuating circumstances.

Seems to me that it's unlikely the toilet paper producers are perpetually running at 100% factory output. Something tells me they will respond by increasing production. Why? Because they are seeing enormous sales currently. Of course they want more. With some of the supply chain troubles we are having with everything closing, though, the delay might be slightly longer. I highly doubt this shortage will last longer than a couple of weeks. Even if I'm wrong, I'll keep believing that... Because honestly, the fear people have is as bad as the illness at this point.

There's another benefit of the signal sent by high prices. It encourages the use of alternatives. There are many substitutes for toilet paper including other paper products and bidets.

"There are many substitutes for toilet paper including other paper products and bidets."

After coming back from a trip to India, an old housemate of mine told me that a huge part of the world uses their hand to wipe, and he decided to adopt the practice himself. He then warned me not to drink out of a cup he'd left on the floor in the bathroom.

I'm also reminded of a story I'd heard about an American traveling on a train in the Middle East, who'd offered to share some tomatoes he'd brought with him and divided up at lunch, when everyone else in his train compartment was sharing their food. All the other people were happy to share their own food, but none would touch the tomato sliced he offered them. He couldn't figure out why, but in retrospect he realized that it was because he'd touched them with his left hand, which in that part of the world was commonly used to wipe. So everyone would only shake hands with and touch food with their right hand.

I'm not sure how common such practices still are in the modern world, but if paper and bidets wind up in short supply, they're something to think about.

>After coming back from a trip to India, an old housemate of mine told me that a huge part of the world uses their hand to wipe, and he decided to adopt the practice himself

And you promptly moved out of the house, right?

That is a good point, and if that was an outcome of this situation that'd be great, as long as people who otherwise can't afford/can't find toilet paper can get their hands on them. On a personal level I think bidets are fantastic. I'm not sure why they didn't spread in the United States.

Also, why ducted A/C?

Be careful using things other than toilet paper if you're flushing it... Especially on a septic system. There are many examples of people doing this test with identical results. With alternate products, you are going to need a garbage near your toilet for your... Delicates. https://youtu.be/iX8ynvEl77I

If I owned a TP factory I wouldn't increase production. Consumption has not increased, this is a distribution issue. If I increase production now, I'll spend a bunch of money on overtime and then have to shut my whole factory down next month as the glut from all the hoarding makes its way through the system and everyone stops buying TP.

As a manufacturer myself my strategy right now is go full tilt increasing batch sizes because I may have a labor shortage in the near future and I know demand is high. If customers aren’t buying my products they’re buying competitor products. It’s also a great way to get storefronts to order more from us than they would typically because our competitors are low on inventory.

Worst case scenario I made too many products and I cut back on shifts next month and run a few less productions.

Shows what I know! Good luck, and I hope your company does fine next month too in the slow period.

the key here is that what you're making doesn't go bad, worst case is it wastes space in storage but you don't have to make as much of it later

Once the panic is over, there will be a slump in sales: everybody will be wiping from their own enormous hoard. They will not start going to toilet twice as often or start using twice as much paper. The real demand base line is 100% same.

Unfortunately we don't have the data, only the evidence of whether their capacity is meeting demand. Right now it's not - but we will see in a week or two. If it continues to not do so, it seems rational to believe that they have reached the level of capacity where it would become more prohibitively expensive to increase supply. And at that point, the industry is going to have to face either severe short term shortages or potential long term financial trouble for short term gain.

I hope it doesn't reach that.

>So is your solution "good on them, they're taking advantage of people's fears to help make the rumors true?"

My solution is we should do all that we can to decrease the latency that prices respond to supply and demand. It will help everyone.

>Just what price do you think toilet paper should be right now in stores?

That's not up to me to decide, because I don't presume to speak for the individual wants and needs for all participating suppliers and consumers, which is how a price is determined.

Increasing retail prices doesn't do any good, especially normal people who need one package of TP, limiting quantities does. That's a fairer way to solve it than treat TP like some damn Bitcoin.

To bgorman: (apparently I can't reply directly to you, there's some nesting limit in Hacker News [EDIT: apparently not? I see a "reply" button now where it didn't exist before? odd])

>I would much rather be able to buy one package of toilet paper for 50 dollars versus being able to buy zero for 5 dollars.

Yeah, because you have 50 dollars to spend on that. What's a person supposed to do who is only barely making ends meet? Do they forsake eating so they can wipe themselves? Underpay their rent? Go into debt so they can wipe their ass?

My point here is that this isn't an either/or situation. There's other alternatives, though some people won't like it.

Rationing - at least by stores if not by the government - is one that we don't like these days, but that has worked for us in historical times of trouble.

This law is meant to be another alternative. It's certainly not perfect - I'd have taken rationing initiated by stores over that - but it is an alternative to the "pay 50 for a roll or not have a roll at all" options.

>apparently I can't reply directly to you, there's some nesting limit in Hacker News [EDIT: apparently not? I see a "reply" button now where it didn't exist before? odd])

AFAIK it's an anti-flamewar mechanism. Successively deeper comments require longer cooldowns before replies can be made.

As someone who isn't hoarding TP, I would much rather be able to buy one package of toilet paper for 50 dollars versus being able to buy zero for 5 dollars. If people don't have access to toilet paper they will become hysterical. Raising prices is the obvious way to fix this. Less people will be willing to buy excess tp rolls if it costs 50 dollars a roll.

Eat less carbs, eat more fiber, don't overeat, and you'll have nicely firm occasional feces and you can rinse in the shower.

>Increasing retail prices doesn't do any good, especially normal people who need one package of TP

So raising the price on something doesn't reduce the number of "normal people" purchasing it? Are you honestly telling me that you don't think they are fundamentally linked?

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