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?
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.
Worst case scenario I made too many products and I cut back on shifts next month and run a few less productions.
I hope it doesn't reach that.
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.
>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.
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?
All stores had to do was limit quantities, but they didn't.
