A toilet paper run is like a bank run. The economic fixes are about the same

https://theconversation.com/a-toilet-paper-run-is-like-a-bank-run-the-economic-fixes-are-about-the-same-133065

39 82 6 years ago

p2detar• 6 years ago

The second solution is to ration the commodity – putting limits on the amount a customer can buy. Imperfect though these buying limits are, they are feasible, as shown by the restrictions put in place by Australia’s supermarkets.

The restrictions do not work, if not heavily supervised. And even then it’s still a gamble. People would queue again at another cashier to buy another pack of TP. I don’t think there is a solution, if actors are invested in gaming it.

the84722• 6 years ago

The inconvenience of having to queue several times might already lead to a sufficient decrease in hoarding to keep shelves stocked, especially when combined with increased supply. If not you can escalate, e.g. by limiting TP checkout to a single register.

zxcvbn40382• 6 years ago

Or implement surge pricing like uber so only the rich have toilet paper and it’s cvs receipts and three sea shells for everyone else.

Issuing ration cards like WWII would be an option also and that solves a number of the problems you mentioned, you could use the existing electronic benefits infrastructure for that.

You’ll never have a completely unbeatable system but you can go a long way to keep honest people honest. Even forbidding the resale of TP so people realize they are stuck with whatever they buy can do a lot of good - people wont buy eight thousand rolls of toilet paper if they know they’ll be stuck with it.

zxcvbn40382• 6 years ago

Along that thought I imagine that if TP resale was forbidden then people would have to pay the moffia to take the stuff and insert it into the supply chain someplace so then it would be double penalty - you lock up significant resources in TP or you take a loss to have someone sell it for you.

mtrower3• 6 years ago

But how do the damn three seashells work?

fortran772• 6 years ago

People will shoplift if there are limits. This has already been widely reported.

stefan_• 6 years ago

Shoplift toilet paper? That would be funny to watch.

SilasX2• 6 years ago

The smaller packages sure, but isn't it pretty hard to smuggle out the megapacks that are in demand?

stevenicr• 6 years ago

I look at this problem a bit.

Reading the article title gave me an idea - raise the price to $20 per pack. Give each customer 2 coupons per week that takes $15 off one pack. Tied to a name / loyalty card or whatever.

The heavily supervise-ing can be a night mare. Local one data point, 16 yo self checkout 'watcher' yesterday was brought to tears with some customers demanding something be done about the person buying 12 packs of ground beef when the sign says limit 2.

I noticed yesterday some local cashiers are breaking - psychically and mentally/likely emotionally - yet they keep moving to keep pushing stuff down the conveyor belt and bag.

Most cashiers were not hired to be or trained to be security guards and prepared for the emotional battles that can come with that.

tenebrisalietum2• 6 years ago

I'm wondering how long it will take everyone to be at capacity for toilet paper. I mean I can fill entire rooms with it but then it physically gets in the way. There has to be a point of diminishing returns soon.

pmorici2• 6 years ago

Home toilet paper usage has probably legitimately gone way up since people were previously using the company bathroom for half their waking hours and are now instead using their home facilities.

jasonv• 6 years ago

But office toilet paper supplies should be more available in grocery stores, but I don't see it.

Haven't seen TP on a shelf in over a week, and I go to stores three times every two days.

fortran772• 6 years ago

My friends back in Cupertino and Sunnyvale (I split my year between Tel Aviv and Sunnyvale and now am "stuck" in Tel Aviv) thought everything would calm down, but as soon as deliveries arrive of disinfectant cleaning products and paper products, they are complete bought up. The store managers claim the same number of almost everything is arriving, with a few exceptions like rubbing alcohol (and of course masks!). I have no idea what all these people are doing with them, but there must be houses in Cupertino that are 100% full of lysol and toilet paper.

nogabebop232• 6 years ago

If you look at the shelves they don't exhibit classic shortage issues, as they have big gaps for specific products vs. empty shelves of everything. This (to me) indicates supply coordination vs. actual shortages.

nogabebop232• 6 years ago

It also seems crazy for it to be toilet paper in the first place.

Its (1) easy to make, (2) mostly produced in-country with no long, integrated supply chain and (3) relatively new (talk to someone over 80 who grew up rural, they probably switched from the sears catalog to toilet paper in their life).

mokus• 6 years ago

Unfortunately we have no Amazon catalog to switch back to.

Obsnold• 6 years ago

My wife suspects it started in Hong Kong. People started buying all the toilet paper so they could make masks from them. Then people in other countries saw on the news that toilet paper was running out in Hong Kong so they started panic buying as well.

JumpCrisscross• 6 years ago

It happens in every crisis, across every culture, and has been happening for decades.

One hypothesis is it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. The other is it's the defence of an intimate space.

Either way, it’s older than this crisis.

the84722• 6 years ago

It's one of the bulkiest consumable products people buy. Which means a whole shelf is only equivalent a few families worth of demand. So it only takes a few buyers stocking up for a few weeks of use to empty the shelves. And once the shelves are empty the panic sets in.

analog313• 6 years ago

The folks in Green Bay say they're busy making more. That's the difference between toilet paper and money. If you run out of toilet paper, you can print more.

... oh, wait. ;-)

But seriously, I think there is probably no fundamental shortage of the ability to make more TP. When you drive through northern Wisconsin, you will see huge stacks of wood all over the place.

HarryHirsch• 6 years ago

I think there is probably no fundamental shortage of the ability to make more TP

No one is going to build a whole new paper mill to cover for a 100-year event. TP is about the best example for inelastic supply and inelastic demand.

YeGoblynQueenne8• 6 years ago

Here's my and my partner's back-of-the-napkin calculation of maximum toilet paper hoarding capacity for what should be an average-ish person living in a two-bedroom house and buying six-packs of toilet rolls.

Suppose a two-bedroom house has 200m² surface with the ceiling at 4m. And let's assume that it's possible to squeeze 25 six-packs of toilet paper in 1m³. That's a capacity of 20,000 six-packs (800 m³ house volume times 25 rolls per m³). Assuming of course the person is willing to stuff every last cm³ of their house with toilet paper maximising storage efficiency, which means throwing out all the furniture and living in their car, not to mention not being able to go to the toilet in the house, in the first place.

It's definitely doable. 20,000 six-packs per person, no problem.

I'm afraid it's going to take a while before people are at capacity.

Edit: of course, when I say "back-of-the-napkin", it's just a turn of phrase. We ain't got no napkins.

TheSpiceIsLife5• 6 years ago

Surely people will run out of money / credit before they buy 800m³ of toilet paper.

standardUser• 6 years ago

It's a fun and silly article, but it would take a vasty greater disruption to actually cause a toilet paper shortage. The "problem" right now is that deliveries don't happen every 3 hours, so if people buy out all the TP at a store they have to wait for that TP to get restocked. It's not as if the trucks have stopped coming or the toilet paper factories have shut down. People just need to wait a few days, which is unusual but not really a problem.

pdonis• 6 years ago

People just need to wait a few days

I have been unable to find TP at any store within a half hour's drive from my house for about a week and a half now.

californical• 6 years ago

I got desperate this morning and woke up early to wait in line outside of a store before it opened (which on its own was insane), only to find that they didn't have any stock come in overnight. Rushed over to the next store -- queue of people around the block waiting to get in. Drove to another town at 7:30am and tried their store, and they had TP but only small packages, limit of one, and I got one of the last ones. Not looking forward to doing this again in a week or so, but at least we got some.

bachmeier• 6 years ago

I had to drive 800 miles and not one store along the way had TP.

Digit-Al• 6 years ago

Where I am it's the same. I went to do my normal weekly shop today; there was no toilet roll (luckily I bought a 9pk a few weeks ago so have enough left to last me a couple of months), no eggs, no chicken, almost no peanut butter (only a really expensive brand was left). Crazy. It's been impossible to find toilet roll and hand sanitiser for about two weeks now.

pascalxus2• 6 years ago

all this toilet paper nonsense got me thinking about how much TP people actually use. I looked up the statistics and it said the average US person uses 1 to 2 rolls per week!! I was floored. What are these people eating?

I'm mostly vegan and i do fast a lot, due to a slow metabolsim. But, I barely use 1 roll per 2 months. We shop for costco TP, maybe once per year, if that much.

Conclusion: people use a lot of TP.

qihqi• 6 years ago

I guess you are a male. Half of the population uses 10x TP than the other half due to using it for both #1 and #2.

pascalxus2• 6 years ago

as a male, i also use it for #1 and #2. but, i guess as a male you use less on the #1.

analog313• 6 years ago

In normal times, a lot of people use TP for everything: Blowing their nose, minor cleaning tasks, etc.

myself248• 6 years ago

And around graduation season, tossing it over neighbors' trees...

carapace4• 6 years ago

Yeah, one of the more obscure benefits of vegan(-ish) diet: tidy BMs. Much less odor too.

hackeraccount• 6 years ago

You're literally saying your shit doesn't stink. No wonder everyone hates vegans.

chewz• 6 years ago

It is anecdotal but this morning I have stoped by the local supermarket and everything is fully stocked including toilet paper. Not many customers. If I didn't read the news I wouldn't notice that there is something going on.

We had few days of intensive buying here in Poland last week but it is over now.

seanmcdirmid• 6 years ago

In our area you can get toilet paper the first hour or two that the supermarket is open.

tenebrisalietum2• 6 years ago

More anecdotes: My SO is a Walmart manager. Walmart last week Friday implemented limits to toilet paper and other items. Am told there's currently a line for the paper goods section.

TeMPOraL2• 6 years ago

Same in my area of Poland, but arguably it's a smaller town. My hypothesis is that everyone who wanted to stock up already did, and we're now in the "social isolation / waiting for the knee of the exponential to hit us" phase.

nerfhammer• 6 years ago

It's usually stocked in the morning but gone by the afternoon in my area.

Eventually people are going to get tired of hoarding it...

YeGoblynQueenne8• 6 years ago

I live in the UK and panic-buying is not anecdotal. Just today, the government pleaded with shoppers to show responsibility and think of emergency personnel, such as NHS staff, who can't go shopping early in the day and are left with nothing in the evening:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/21/coronavirus-uk...

Also, supermarkets are imposing limits on goods to stop hoarding:

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/mar/18/asda-puts-r...

And the governemtn is relaxing trade rules so that supermarkets can work together to face the unfolding crisis:

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/mar/19/food-retail...

So in the UK at least, panic-buying is a thing.

Edit: and, btw, it's a thing that's hitting me hard because I refuse to go mad along with everyone else and hoard. Unfortunately for me, the government and supermarkets have plans in place to ensure vunlerable people have access to goods, but there's no such provisions for people who have just not gone mad yet. So I fear I might want for basic stuff as time goes by.

People are such shits when they're running scared.

heavenlyblue2• 6 years ago

Go to the corner shops. The only place where I can constantly get something I want to buy is a local Costcutter.

mtrower3• 6 years ago

It's bad in the U.S. as well. At least in Wisconsin, toilet paper, bleach, etc. Are nowhere to be found. Not in the supermarkets, not in the corner stores, not in the hardware stores... Milk, flour and eggs are also scarce. The limits are there but it's hard to say if it's helping.

Radio hosts are pleading with people to stop hoarding and just be reasonable.

Fortunately, my wife is a soapmaker, so we won't run out of at least that.

kwhitefoot2• 6 years ago

Stocking up to prepare for a crisis isn't 'panic buying'. It's actually a pretty rational choice

That's because stocking up in preparation for a crisis happens when there is no crisis and you buying a thousand rolls doesn't trigger other people to do it; they just shake their heads and mutter 'prepper'.

Panic buying something when the crisis has already started just means that uncritical people will also panic buy that thing and everyone, including you, suffers because now there are queues just to get in to the supermarket even if you don't want to buy that thing.

So it's only rational if you discount the rest of the system.

SilasX2• 6 years ago

Uh, what? Did this get cut off somewhere? [1]

It sounds like the author's concluding that the fixes aren't the same. Daley says that the fix for the bank run is for the government to step in as a guarantor and provide the cash to depositors withdrawing, then says that that's not possible for toilet paper, and thus it should do a quantity limit ... with no further economic analysis except that it worked somewhere.

Those are, like, the opposite solutions. Government (or the central bank, in this case[2]) can easily loan money out of thin air, but it can't do the same for toilet paper. At most, it could commandeer suppliers or initiate its own manufacturing, which breaks the economic similarity.

Similarly, the solution for toilet paper (quantity limit) doesn't apply to the bank run case, as bank insurers don't do a quantity limit. Arguably, the deposit insurance maximum is a kind of quantity limit, but Daley doesn't offer it as such, and it's known in advance, and unrelated to customers' legal right to how much they can access, so is non-analogous in several respects.

Since no defense of quantity limits is given beyond (as above) that it worked once, the title is bad and the argument isn't well supported.

[1] For the record, here's what I see as the last paragraph so you know if I'm missing something:

The second solution is to ration the commodity – putting limits on the amount a customer can buy. Imperfect though these buying limits are, they are feasible, as shown by the restrictions put in place by Australia’s supermarkets. https://www.afr.com/companies/retail/coles-joins-woolworths-...

[2] Let's not break into the debate about whether the Federal reserve is private or not; it really doesn't matter for purposes of this topic.

hyperman1• 6 years ago

Our national TV station has been asked by the government to show on the evening news how we have huge warehouses full of toilet paper. So the government is doing guarantor work: Proving enough TP is out there, and the delays are getting it from the warehouses to the shops

YeGoblynQueenne8• 6 years ago

> Those are, like, the opposite solutions. Government (or the central bank, in this case[2]) can easily loan money out of thin air, but it can't do the same for toilet paper.

If I may offer a brief moment of levity to relieve the tension of the moment, I must point out that if the government can print money then it can create toilet paper.

TheSpiceIsLife5• 6 years ago

That might not work here in Australia as our money is plastic!

carapace4• 6 years ago

TP hoarders bemuse me.

I cannot imagine a scenario where things have gotten so bad that we can't make toilet paper but our biggest problem is wiping our asses.

It's like, "Civilization is falling but at least I have a year's worth of TP!" !?

- - - -

There are all kinds of ways to clean your crack (bidets, showers) and making paper is pretty straightforward.

The internet is failing me, but the old "rag trade" was all about collecting old clothes and reprocessing them into new cloth and paper.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rag-and-bone_man

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

WillPostForFood3• 6 years ago

I dunno, imagine being locked in your house for a month. Pretty much the only absolutely necessary behavior is to eat, drink, sleep, pee and poop. If you stock up on food for eating, you are going to need TP for pooping. You can survive without TP, but it would be unpleasant.

dayofthedaleks• 6 years ago

Create more toilet paper by fiat?

rsync• 6 years ago

I am particularly disturbed by emergent behaviors and life decisions that are now laid bare in this crisis.

As a Bay Area resident, it is incumbent upon me to maintain, in perpetuity, several weeks of food and drinking water as well as various other life essentials. I owe this to my family and everyone in my community as we all live in a place where a tremendous natural disaster and accompanying social dis-integration could occur at any time.

Of course I have had my suspicious ...

Now we see that most residents of the Bay Area are barely prepared to make dinner tomorrow and have supplies on-hand for a day or two. They don't have contingency plans for the absence of water, electricity or gas and I suspect very few are certified and practiced in even basic CPR.

Shame on you.

There is going to be a day when even the grocery stores aren't open and the water isn't going to flow. Possibly for weeks. I plead with you to spend your quarantine time getting your shit together the way you've always been expected to.

carapace4• 6 years ago

Dude, you're just noticing this now?

One of the single most terrifying facts about our modern space-age-a-go-go society is that there is only about three days of food in the pipeline. If the food stops flowing for more than a week the only thing to eat is our pets and then each other.

That's some thin ice.

- - - -

But I'm speaking in generalities.

This particular virus is unlikely to take down civilization. Remember how few people it takes to farm these days, eh? Something like 3 people out of 100 are enough to make bread. It's going to hurt but we will survive.

However, this won't be the last virus.

The underlying causes are the teeming numbers of humans going out into wild areas and getting exposed to new contagions, combined with our casual global travel and transport networks (this virus went international almost before we (globally) knew it existed.)

We are going to have to reconfigure our civilization.

- - - -

"It may seem a ridiculous idea, but the only way to fight the plague is with decency." ~Camus

YeGoblynQueenne8• 6 years ago

> As a Bay Area resident, it is incumbent upon me to maintain, in perpetuity, several weeks of food and drinking water as well as various other life essentials. I owe this to my family and everyone in my community as we all live in a place where a tremendous natural disaster and accompanying social dis-integration could occur at any time.

Sorry, but I'm missing the context to understand your comment. Can you explain? What is the tremendous natural disaster that compels you to maintain sevearl weeks of food and drinking water?

chrisfinne• 6 years ago

Earthquake

A toilet paper run is like a bank run. The economic fixes are about the same

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