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Comment by colechristensen | Hacker News Reader

The rational way to behave is to not live roll to roll, so to speak. A well stocked pantry won't have trouble in a scare because... well it will have stock.

Few things suck so much time away as having to go out for X because you've run out.

In other news I've got fourteen pounds of beans if anybody wants any.

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> The rational way to behave is to not live roll to roll, so to speak. A well stocked pantry won't have trouble in a scare because... well it will have stock.

Just-in-time manufacturing succeeded because supply chains became reliable enough that factories didn't need their own stockpiles. If you're out in the country and you have a big pantry then sure, stock up, but those of us living in the city may not have space. And even if you do have space, if everyone realises they have no stock and decides to buy up a month's supply, that has pretty much the same practical impact as hoarding.

"Hoarding" is just a smear word on building an emergency buffer just-in-time. Or, JIT supply chains extend all the way to end-consumer, so let's not act surprised that a spike in demand due to perceived risk increase breaks everything up the chain. This should've been conpensated for in the chain.

no, "hoarding" in this sense isn't a smear word on a buffer, it's buying 4/5/6x your normal buffer, to the point that people who haven't hoarded are now starting to be left without. I have a 48sqm apartment with 2 adults and a dog. we only _just_ have enough space for 3 weeks worth of all supplies. we're now running low on the things that people started panic buying a month ago, because of hoarding, not because of buffering.

> I have a 48sqm apartment with 2 adults and a dog. we only _just_ have enough space for 3 weeks worth of all supplies

I have a 44sqm apartment with 2 adults, an infant and a cat, and we've managed to fit a month's worth of supplies in a single wardrobe. I don't think space is a problem (weight is, OTOH).

Suddenly stocking to up to 6 months of everything? That's hoarding. Building a month's worth? That's a minimum if you want to stay safe in case you and your family get quarantined, and your normal buffer should be around that anyway, regardless of the pandemic.

If everyone who didn't have a stash before is suddenly stocking up for a months supply of everything, you get shortages. The right way to build up your supplies is slowly over time.

Indeed FEMA is now asking that folks only buy a weeks worth of groceries: https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/03/23/coronavirus-new-guide...

Over here in Germany the recommendation has always been to have supplies for 10-14 days at home. Seems like a more reasonable number than a months worth - especially for city dwellers.

That's indeed the right solution. But it needs to be enforced by the stores - as many do now, with per-customer purchase limits.

> the recommendation has always been to have supplies for 10-14 days at home. Seems like a more reasonable number than a months worth - especially for city dwellers.

That's a nice recommendation for a calm time, but a bit short for the pandemic. If you get quarantined, you need to stay put for 14-21 days. Add a bit of padding to account for undersupplied stores (and to add a margin for error), and you arrive at 1 month's worth.

We've seen this coming since at least early February. That's exactly when I started stocking up, buying ~2x amounts of non-perishables (e.g. 2 packages of pasta) instead of waiting for the impending hoarder shitstorm at the very last minute. I forget where I read this recommendation (WHO?), but it has definitely paid off, I haven't been to the store in almost 2 weeks :)

That assumes you have absolutely zero access to groceries for those 14-21 days. But there are still delivery services and neighbors. In Germany, city governments have actually delivered food to those quarantined.

I'd say that's a safe assumption to make. On top of that, even contactless delivery by via service or neighbour has nonzero risk of communicating the disease (in either direction), so it's worth minimizing the need for it.

Interesting. Here in Norway the recommendation has been to keep supplies for 3 days, including water, power supplies (battery banks), a radio with full batteries, heating and cooking possibilities and so on.

I agree with you. People have been hating so much on hoarders, while not acknowledging that the real problem is that people are way too reliant on a just-in-time supply chain. It's really not that difficult, expensive, or space-consuming to have a buffer of at least one month for scenarios like this. Yet, most people don't build up this buffer over time, out of laziness, and then they go around blaming others for the shortages during a crisis (or they go panic-hoarding themselves).

I used to go to work every weekday, and eat 2 meals there. Now I'm at home 24/7, so I'm already eating 5x the amount (before this, I would barely eat at home). Also, my girlfriend is here with me. I used to have a many months' worth of stock in the pantry, but now it turns out that it's just enough for two weeks.

Having a buffer is fine, but only starting to build up your buffer when everybody else does so as well is not. Everyone could've kept a month's supply of toilet paper on hand already. We've had an emergency supply of food and water (should last about a week?) for a couple of months now. I mean a few years ago we had months of drought, the tap never stopped but in some areas pressure was reduced, so it can happen to anyone.

My complaint is that I see people screaming "hoardres" where what really happens is someone buying an extra day's or two worth of supplies, and/or are buying for themselves and the extended family. Maybe things have changed now, but around me, most ruckus about hoarding was made by people who thought COVID-19 is just a flu and were inconvenienced by queues. People who couldn't understand that you need a buffer.

perhaps correctly a smear word, since you should have built your buffer up ahead of time?

Well, if the Lean methodology is so great for the entire supply chain, why it suddenly shouldn't be applied to the last link - the consumer? Building up a buffer is against just-in-time principle :P.

(The truth is, JIT supply chains simply aren't designed to survive events like a global pandemic. They're control systems overtuned to extract the last bits of efficiency from trade, and fall into bad oscillations when disruptions happen. As we can see today.)

> In other news I've got fourteen pounds of beans if anybody wants any.

Let your neighbors know, and be sure to tell them that there is no condition to wanting to eat them. Many people are going to go more hungry in the coming weeks or months, and helping those around us is one of the best ways to apply surplus.

the rational way to live is to live in a big enough domicile that you can have reliably stocked up with 3 weeks of what you need of any item at all times.

but maybe our world is not structured for maximal rationality.

Personally I think 640 sheets is enough for anyone, however, rationality isn't rational at the moment.

Since The Thing is exponential there is a worst-case-scenario that everyone on the entire planet will have it by the middle of May, if not before.

So correctly assuming that you are the last person to get it, then you will need eight rolls of bathroom tissue. This will see you through to the calamity and through two weeks of self isolation to either recover or die.

If living in a house of two adults with two point two children, one dog and two cats, then you are going to need four of those nine roll packs to see The Thing through.

This has some contingency for problems of localised flooding in your bathroom, a stomach bug or children that are secretly selling your supplies.

Plus this allows for extra supplies in case vulnerable locked-down Baby Boomers run out in your neighbourhood and need the folding stuff.

Given that the hoarding mentality is growing at an exponential rate and that every tree on the planet could be cut down for bathroom tissue in a month's time, the people buying dozens of rolls are arguably behaving in a rational manner.

> A well stocked pantry

Most ordinary people don’t have the luxury of a house with a pantry. And many people can only afford what they need each week so can’t stock up even if they had somewhere to store it.

There simply would’ve been no place to put bulk toilet paper in my 600/700 sq foot one bedroom in Seattle. Lots of people live in even smaller spaces.

I’ve lived this small and you get clever. I put things in storage under my bed, in my bookshelf, and in boxes in my closet. Worst case, I would just stack them in the open or on counters, behind the sink, and on window ledges

Whether or not you have a purpose built pantry is mostly just a reflection of the age of the building you live in.

A lot of bottom dollar apartments wind up having unintentional pantries because they wind up dividing a floor of an existing building in such a way that you wind up with a closet in the kitchen.

"Pantry" being a metaphor for whatever you have stored away, not a physical room. Regardless of your income unless it is extremely low or you are unemployed, whether or not you live paycheck to paycheck is a function of your decisions, not of your income. You will, in fact, have a considerably larger amount of money to spend, if you don't waste it on small volume frequent purchases.

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