There Is a Tennis Ball Shortage Too Now

https://www.vice.com/en/article/k78y5e/there-is-a-tennis-ball-shortage-too-now

by elsewhen • 5 years ago

137 229 5 years ago

vice.com

notRobot• 5 years ago

Just from HN I've learned that so far this year we've had a:

Pasta shortage: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25566652

Shipping container shortage: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26574077

Chip shortage: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27095558

And now a tennis ball shortage...

cableshaft2• 5 years ago

There's a lot more than that going on right now. A whole subreddit dedicated to it[1].

[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/Shortages/

knownjorbist• 5 years ago

Doom & gloom is a borderline fetish. Look closer and for most things the shortage is an inconvenience at most.

tmh88j• 5 years ago

Hmm, could have potential but it needs some better moderation. It seems to consist mostly of knee-jerk reactions to local stores selling out of a very specific random product and calling it a shortage, or vague statements without any useful details. "HEB is out of Valentina hot sauce" and "Walmart has limits on basic food".

megablast3• 5 years ago

Looks just like a preppers sub.

CarVac• 5 years ago

A few years ago at family meals, for grace I started thanking the industrial supply complex for bringing us all the wonderful food.

I was being more prescient than I could have imagined.

Kluny2• 5 years ago

Also bike parts, raw textiles, and tofu!

For the tennis ball problem, I invite everyone to visit my balcony, where my upstairs neighbour's dog leaves all his balls.

Finnucane• 5 years ago

There’s a tofu factory in my neighborhood, so no shortage here.

jbay808• 5 years ago

Wasn't there also a sofa shortage, caused in part by a foam shortage?

https://slate.com/business/2021/07/furniture-shortage-couch-...

Yoric2• 5 years ago

Obviously, they're after the MyPillow guy.

Arrath• 5 years ago

I can chime in with my own anecdote, I was quoted (back in May) a 28-week delivery timeframe for a couch, much like in that article.

auxym• 5 years ago

I had to wait 2 months to order a Fluke DMM at work.

Also bikes and all sorts of bike parts and accessories.

fy20• 5 years ago

I went into Decathlon yesterday, and only two bikes were out of stock. Compare to this time last year when there were only two in stock...

shusaku• 5 years ago

Somewhere, an economist is regretting creating an inflation measure based on a shipping container of pasta, chips, and tennis balls.

londons_explore• 5 years ago

Shortages wouldn't be so severe if market prices could reward those who had done work to mitigate the shortage. For example, when cups are in short supply, the person who sells their reserve stock for a healthy profit.

Unfortunately anti-price-gouging laws are being enforced more strictly, which means those who can alleviate a shortage are usually not rewarded. End result is people no longer go to great lengths to come up with ways to alleviate shortages, and the shortages end up worse.

Yoric2• 5 years ago

I suspect that gouging-without-countermeasures causes much more damage than anti-gouging, though.

snug• 5 years ago

There were also boba shortages earlier this year

gregoriol• 5 years ago

Tennis balls are not vital equipment, they are just for fun, so it's not a big deal. Some other shortages are more worrying as they affect more important situations like food supply, work tools, ...

kibbleznbits• 5 years ago

My dog disagrees.

gwright• 5 years ago

I don't think modern economies and supply chains work that way. It isn't like the tennis ball supply chain is an independent entity from everything else. It is all connected in somewhat intricate and non-obvious ways.

It isn't particularly surprising to me that we are seeing all sorts of side-effects of the unpresidented shutdown of vast parts of our economy as a response to COVID.

toiletaccount2• 5 years ago

I'll jump onto the dog pile and add air filters for your vehicle. Dealerships are buying them up like toilet paper so you have to call around and ask them very nicely if they'd mind shipping it to you. And during fire season too.

s0rce• 5 years ago

I just picked up mine from Amazon. Random cheap brands but everything was in stock. Rock Auto seemed to have stock as well. Maybe I got lucky.

SV_BubbleTime4• 5 years ago

Containers are real.

We used to pay $3000 per container.

We are now paying $11,000 per, and can’t get enough of them.

underseacables2• 5 years ago

This is serious. Think of the dogs!

fsagx• 5 years ago

My dog has been stockpiling for years. She's not worried. I'm more concerned what the old folks will put on the feet of their walkers.

valleyjo• 5 years ago

Savage lol

underseacables2• 5 years ago

Same. We have a strategic supply basket full of tennis balls for our three mouth breathers.

mrfusion3• 5 years ago

If this is real give pickleball a shot. It’s surprisingly fun and you can start having competitive games right away.

A lot carries over from tennis too so you’d have a good head start.

jhbadger• 5 years ago

Although I'd imagine pickleballs are also made in Asia and thus subject to similar shipping issues, but maybe they last longer than tennis balls so you need fewer of them?

JeffL• 5 years ago

The "good" Pickleballs, Franklin and Dura, seem to last a few to several days before cracking or warping while the "bad" ones that nobody wants to use because they are softer seem to last forever. It's a bit better than tennis where people want a new can every time they play. No shortage in Pickleballs that I've seen so far.

syedkarim• 5 years ago

I'm a former recreational tennis player and I previously thought that pickleball was lame. Now I only play pickleball (mostly singles) and sold off my tennis racquets. After two years of playing, I still can't figure out why 4.0-level pickleball is way more fun than 4.0-level tennis. If you play singles pickleball and live in the northwest Chicago suburbs, hit me up!

mrfusion3• 5 years ago

Awesome. Hit me up if you’re in Florida!

yuy9106162• 5 years ago

I will die on this hill but I'm never trying pickleball. Silly reason - tennis looks cool, look at Roger. Pickle ball looks...less cool

mrfusion3• 5 years ago

Seriously give it a try! My uncle tried to get me to play for years and I thought it was silly. But it’s the most fun I’ve ever had and I’m in the best shape of my life.

throwaway595532• 5 years ago

It sure was a good idea to allow every factory to move to East Asia.

monkeybutton• 5 years ago

We should've invested in a strategic tennis ball reserve at the bare minimum.

parineum• 5 years ago

I am pretty shocked that this hasn't been more of a narrative since the PPE shortages of COVID.

I guess it's expected that the people who have been pushing the free trade globalization angle wouldn't want to turn and admit that strategy has a significant downside that's been ignored. Not to say that it doesn't have upside.

leppr• 5 years ago

The upside is shifting resources to focus on industries with less competition like software and semiconductors. No country can sustain the current quality of life of their citizens without imports.

vajrabum• 5 years ago

And combining that with the JIT, minimize inventory thing makes it just that much more fun doesn't it.

8note• 5 years ago

And then there wouldn't be a shortage because western countries didn't lock down non-essentials due to covid?

missedthecue• 5 years ago

Investing in creating an autarky so that you can buy as many tennis balls as you want during every black swan event?

throwaway595532• 5 years ago

Investing in a country so that manufactures raise the standard of living of the population, and of course the lack of dependence on foreign countries.

If all you do is exporting raw materials and import manufactured good you're a colony. There's a reason for countries like China wanted to be the manufacturing center of the world.

I think you can come up with a more intelligent reply, unless you think this is all about tennis balls.

barbarbar2• 5 years ago

Just use old balls. They may not have much hair and be a little slow but it is the same for both players. In fact a bit more entertaining than 250km/h first serve (that nobody can see) and better for the environment.

yuy9106162• 5 years ago

Are we savages or what?

barbarbar2• 5 years ago

Actually I was not. But I think I see what you mean when reading it again.

oblio2• 5 years ago

Well, he is bar bar bar.

admn23• 5 years ago

They do make "pressureless" balls that arguably last a bit longer (which no one in the US uses it seems), but pressurized balls will go flat even if they're not being used if they're opened. Wilson has a new plastic-free ball that uses similar tech to pressureless called the Triniti, which attempts to solve the plastic part and they last about 5 sets plus.

jansan2• 5 years ago

Even 10 year olds use a set of new balls per match in league plays. Not that it makes much sense, but that's how it is.

droidist2• 5 years ago

What happens to the balls after the match? Do they get ground up and shipped overseas for recycling?

monstrado• 5 years ago

Not sure about the large stores, but i've had luck getting my balls at the local mom and pop tennis supply stores.

dcolkitt• 5 years ago

For those who are more domain knowledgeable in the logistics space, when can we expect these sporadic shortages to end?

I know that there's a supply chain whipsaw effect. Where a disruption in one component leads to a delayed downstream distortion somewhere else. But at what point can we expect these ghosts lurking in the system to finally work themselves out.

AlecSchueler• 5 years ago

What caused the initial issue, the Suez fiasco?

Kluny2• 5 years ago

Well no, covid. It's still fallout from that. Factories in the cheap-labour countries like Taiwan closed down due to covid, and oftentimes management made conservative bets about how long covid would continue, so they didn't ramp up production or efficiency (or couldn't).

icegreentea2• 5 years ago

The pandemic in general? Trans-pacific shipping got completely blown up (on both ends) multiple times since Feb/March 2019.

Already while COVID was largely confined to China, supply problems were beginning to emerge, starting with China factories shutting down and internal networks (trucking) being disrupted by the pandemic and lockdowns. Everything just compounded from there. I remember reading daily posts on a supply chain subreddit talking about shipping indexes dropping daily in March.

Like honestly, it's pretty amazing that shortages aren't worse. Perhaps a testament to how much of our trade is in non-critical goods.

DavidPeiffer• 5 years ago

I'm an industrial engineer, more manufacturing focused than specifically logistics. From what I've seen and heard from talking with other IE's at other companies, we're probably looking at a couple years before things are "normal" again, and they'll continue to be a mess in a way that's transparent to the consumer longer than that.

As long as there are areas of the world with significant trade that are being hit hard by COVID there will be disruptions. In the last few weeks, Southeast Asia has had reduced port capacity due to a COVID surge.

Heck, even in US production it's tough to get production and warehouse employees right now! Weird times for sure, even if you're paying a strong wage.

If you're curious about general global shipping, in 2017 Flexport put out a great podcast about cargo ships. I really wish they would do an additional podcast about the current happenings, though their blog posts are quite interesting.

https://www.flexport.com/blog/alexis-madrigal-containers-pod...

Odd Lots (a Bloomberg podcast) also had a great interview from earlier this month.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-02/gene-sero...

nostromo• 5 years ago

Next time you’re about to complain about farm subsidies, take a moment to appreciate that the US makes more food than it needs and we don’t depend on imports from China to put food on the table.

convolvatron2• 5 years ago

that might be true independent of farm subsidies. we don't really know. it is pretty clear that there are government programs being used to buy votes. which is a pretty stupid way to spend public money.

unanswered2• 5 years ago

As opposed to all of those dollars flowing into extremely republican-leaning cities... Oh wait.

fullstop• 5 years ago

We pay farmers to _not_ produce crops.

actually_a_dog2• 5 years ago

Is it still okay if I complain about the colossal amount of food waste that takes place in the US?

handrous• 5 years ago

Food waste's a function of food prices. Raising prices is how you reduce it.

We have a lot of waste, because food is cheap.

coding123• 5 years ago

Over half of the fresh fruit and veggies at the grocery store is thrown out. I wouldn't be surprised it it was more like 95% for specific foods. I have a feeling that onions don't have this problem, but the Avocados, I see like maybe the same batch sitting for 2 days and on the 3rd you can't even pick one up because it's so ripe it's basically mush. Then salad bags, I imagine that shredded lettuce doesn't go to waste (it's popular for tacos), but pretty much the rest is probably thrown out.

What's the solution? I know that grocery stores make Guacamole that sits in the fridge and that helps it age slower, but the vast majority of the Avocados are just wasted.

shalmanese• 5 years ago

Can you point to a country in 2020 that was affected by food shortages because they depended on food imports from China?

Also, the US food supply chain was disrupted in 2020 despite not relying on imports.

adrr• 5 years ago

Can’t really ship perishables from China. What’s the shelf life of lettuce or strawberries? One week at most? Other crops are protected by tariffs or pest quarantines like sugar, garlic, onions, citrus fruits.

swiley• 5 years ago

There's a word for an everything shortage: "inflation."

blacktriangle• 5 years ago

I suspect it's more like two words: JIT Manufacturing

eddanger• 5 years ago

I have purchased maybe one or two packs in my lifetime but somehow I have half the worlds supply of tennis balls in my back yard.

nitwit005• 5 years ago

I routinely pick up tennis balls next to the court near me and throw them into the dog park. Now I know I could have made tens of dollars if I'd just hoarded them.

creaghpatr• 5 years ago

If you're using them to actually play tennis, they don't work nearly as well after a couple uses.

actually_a_dog2• 5 years ago

They're not even great for dogs: https://www.akc.org/expert-advice/health/are-tennis-balls-sa...

unanswered2• 5 years ago

Never forget that this was done to us intentionally. The virus was unexpected; but the reaction was deliberate.

charles_f3• 5 years ago

Based on what source are you saying that exactly?

Those shortages have been explained for a while by a combination of overlean JIT manufacturing(1) and supply chain issues.

(1) https://www.supplychaindive.com/news/lean-supply-chain-jit-i...

amelius• 5 years ago

Does this also hold for padel (not paddle) balls?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Padel_(sport)

cableshaft2• 5 years ago

Here's another one I just spotted: a dog shortage[1]. Good thing I guess, since we don't have the tennis balls to give them.

[1] https://www.axios.com/the-great-american-dog-shortage-632187...

h2odragon2• 5 years ago

People are going nuts about "yoga goats" too; bucklings this year have better prospects than ever before.

joezydeco• 5 years ago

My son was waiting on a new racket from Head this spring and was told that they lost a number of shipping containers in a storm off the coast of Hawaii.

https://www.wired.com/story/where-shoes-ordered-check-ocean-...

jeffbee• 5 years ago

Apparently, because this clown ordered 24 cans for himself. What the hell, man?

h2odragon2• 5 years ago

The black market opportunities are obvious, no? The man with the hookup gets the riches.

"Hey buddy, you lookin' for some bounce?"

rvnx• 5 years ago

Vice should better check their articles. I typed tennis balls on US websites, same day delivery available...

Even for the same website as they said, there is stock in large quantities: https://www.tennis-warehouse.com/Wilson_US_Open_XD_Tennis_Ba...

This is 72-balls, way enough to play.

spamizbad2• 5 years ago

That’s pretty expensive

IshKebab• 5 years ago

It's like $1.32 per ball. That doesn't seem very expensive for fancy branded balls.

nobodyandproud2• 5 years ago

I know someone very closely and heavily involved with international logistics.

One of the major problems are the East Coast ports in the United States.

They’re relatively small and cannot handle some of the cargo ships that are used today.

Then other is the lack of labor, because docks are union jobs; the kind that pass on from generation to generation because of how good the work is.

greedo• 5 years ago

Are the unions restricting new memberships? If there's a surplus of unfulfilled jobs, the unions can just get new members during the peak times, and then when demand drops, they can give priority to senior members.

nobodyandproud2• 5 years ago

I want to be very clear that I’m a supporter of unions, but there are consequences when unchecked and I think they’re hurting themselves in the long run.

To answer your question: I don’t know for sure, because every union is different.

It looks like the east coast is represented by https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Longshoremen%2... which suffered from organized crime in the past and the west is https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Longshore_and_...

Which is more like what I described: The West Coast union apparently has tens of thousands of applicants for a single job, so clearly there is great demand to get in.

It may be that I mixed the two: East coast cannot handle the ships, even if it could go through the canal.

West coast, which can handle said cargo ships, has a strong union that is keeping the headcount artificially low.

charles_f3• 5 years ago

if tennis balls are hard to find in stores now, I will buy a case of 24 cans online

Standard panick reaction that's exacerbating the problem. People are piling up on all sorts of stuff right now. I needed new tyres for my mountain bike, largely impossible to find a few months ago. A neighbour told me "oh that's fine I can resell you a pair, I bought 6 a few weeks ago just in case" . Pair up tight supply chain and people virtually increasing the demand to stock up in case the offer runs dry, and you obtain magic.

invalidOrTaken• 5 years ago

exacerbating the problem

Problem for whom?

booleanbetrayal• 5 years ago

We are obsessed with manufacturing supply chain bullwhips. Bracing for impact again. re: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/massive-china-port-shutdown-r...

charles_f3• 5 years ago

Oh wow, you made my day so much worse with just one link!

lexapro• 5 years ago

Well, that's exactly what happened with the toilet paper, too. A few people bought more in fear of some worst-case scenario - and then everyone else noticed the supply dwindling and did the same to avoid not being able to buy any when their own, normal stock runs out.

admn23• 5 years ago

Seems very true. When mason jars were in low supply, all it took was a quick look to Ebay to see storage lockers full of them to understand part of the problem.

xyzelement3• 5 years ago

I grew up in the USSR in the 80s, so my view of what a shortage actually feels like are quite different.

Since the pandemic, there are 3 shortages that were in the news that were relevant to my family: toilet paper, chips/automotive, and ammunition (my father in law and I got into target shooting during the pandemic)

I would say the max impact of all these things was: you had to work a LITTLE harder, pay a LITTLE more, and wait a LITTLE longer to get what you wanted.

For example, in USSR I remember wiping my ass with cut-up newspaper for months at a time. That's what a TP shortage / deficit is. Over the last year, the max I had to deal with was going to a second store and not being able to buy lots and lots at once.

We ended up having to buy a car this summer. Shortage manifested in two ways - some trims/models were not available. IE - you could still get a car at any point, just may not be the exact one you want. We ended up ordering one because we cared about something specific and despite warning, we picked it up in a few weeks.

In contrast, my dad had to wait something like 10 years to get his Lada Niva.

What this means to me is our supply chains are INCREDIBLY resilient. The fact that these things basically translated into mild inconveniences is quite impressive.

raspasov6• 5 years ago

My experience exactly.

Growing up in the 90s in Bulgaria, my parents had to line up for hours or half a day to fill up gas in the car. This went on for weeks/months.

If I complain that people are complaining too much in the modern world, I would be complaining as well. So I won't, otherwise it will be an infinite loop.

akomtu2• 5 years ago

Someone from North Korea could tell you that USSR people had an easy life. We don't see those stories on HN because there's only one person in NK who has internet.

contravariant• 5 years ago

Not sure there ever was a real shortage in toilet paper. I mean sure the stores ran out at some point, but that's mostly because you can only realistically have so many toilet paper in the store at once, so if people buy more for whatever insane reason then it's going to run out soon. The supply didn't ever run into any issues as far as I can tell.

javagram• 5 years ago

There was still supply of “toilet paper” but not of the kind that was sold in the store. Normally large amounts of commercial paper was sold but that wasn’t in grocery stores and sales stopped because of offices closing. Things got figured out eventually both as panic buying subsided and some commercial paper (single rolls, etc) was diverted to the grocery store supply chain.

raspasov6• 5 years ago

There might have been a short-term panic over-buying plus the fact that everybody all of a sudden was staying home (and *ahem*, going to the toilet at home more) as opposed to going to the office. That's just a hypothesis, I haven't looked at any data. But your point is essentially correct, I assume it just takes a bit of time to shift the supply from commercial/business channels (delivering to office buildings in the city) to consumer ones (delivering to stores like Costco, Walmart, etc).

pedrocr• 5 years ago

Having gone through that on the supply side it was a manufactured crisis. When news organizations were still waiting for the first COVID19 cases to happen in their country they would run fluff stories from other places. A very common one was the toilet paper shortage. They probably got some intern to write it sloppily so in some it wasn't even clear that the photos and examples were from a different country. That drove people to rush to stores and hoard creating a self-fulfilling phrophecy as no grocery store will keep too many days of stock of toilet paper as it has too much volume. That this then happened in more places made it even more of a story and it sort of snowballed.

The fact that people were now at home and using different types of paper than what offices use was as far as I can tell a very small factor, it was mostly panic hoarding.

jessaustin• 5 years ago

The rational reaction to the TP event was to install one of those bidet seats on one's toilet. I haven't bought a roll since.

jjav• 5 years ago

Not sure there ever was a real shortage in toilet paper.

I mean the shortage was very real and lasted a long time. Here (outskirts of Silicon Valley) I couldn't find toilet paper in any local store at any time for a few months. Later I was able to buy one (max limit) only at closing time when they started stocking shelves, at any other time of day there was none to be had. The shelves were mostly empty of paper into 2021. It's only the last ~6 months that it is reliably available again.

ozim• 5 years ago

In absolute terms you are right.

In relative terms well in east block in 80s you were not expecting to have anything on the shelves when you went to the shop. You were expecting to wipe with newspaper for rest of your life and sometimes if you are lucky get rolls of TP.

When we live nowadays, we plan that we go to the shop and we will have it.

Like a car example, your father was not planning a road trip next year because he knew he is not going to get a car.

Nowadays people might plan a road trip make arrangements and then be surprised by car shortage - who is losing more? I expect that person who made arrangements for a road trip and then got nothing because there are no ICUs to make cars.

xyzelement3• 5 years ago

On one level I agree with you: happiness = reality - expectations.

However what I am saying is that we don't actually have real impact on our lives today. From what I can tell, nobody actually failed to get a car and had to cancel their road trip (to use your example)

raspasov6• 5 years ago

Perhaps surprised that they can't make the trip in the car with the specifically selected Premium Leather Seats and the Piano Black trim within the next 2 weeks? :)

In all seriousness, that's not entirely true. From first person accounts I've heard, in the early 80s and throughout the 70s everything was more or less OK in the Soviet block. Of course the selection was not as great as in the West, but essential 20th century conveniences were available. In the late 80s things really started to fall apart and it became painfully obvious that their economic model is not competitive and ultimately unsustainable.

KozmoNau72• 5 years ago

As an observation, we have become extremely accustomed to the unprecedented easy with which we can buy things, from a gigantic selection of vendors, levels of quality and design, and other (real or artificial) differentiators.

Now that this comfortable situation is starting to unravel even slightly, the reaction is one of incredulous disbelief. "Surely this can't be happening, we live in prosperous times!" seems to be the gist of a lot of people's reactions.

We have become so used to (near-)instant gratification, that maybe we need to take a step back and recalibrate our desires, demands and expectations.

I'm glad my family has always had a modest outlook and ability to comfortably live within our means, often finding creative solutions when money was a bit short.

It has ingrained in me that compromise is not a hateful thing, realistic expectations make everything more manageable. For instance, I don't hold the specific car I own• to be some essential part of my identity or image. I take the more practical view that if it performs the tasks I need and meets an acceptable level of quality and economy, I am satisfied. Then it doesn't matter if it's a Mercedes, a Toyota or a KIA. If someone looks down on me or thinks less of me because they don't agree with my choice, then that is their problem, not mine.

• I don't own one right now, but it goes for any other possession, really.

Moderation needs to come back into fashion, in a big way.

SubiculumCode3• 5 years ago

Is there a button for, I don't agree 100% but your comment shouldn't be gray?

chihuahua5• 5 years ago

Also, if someone looks down on you because of the kind of car you have, that's exactly the kind of person whose approval is irrelevant to you.

Trying to impress others with one's car is a game you can never win, in some sense.

djitz• 5 years ago

Cubans have a saying “cuando no hay papel de baño, el culo aprende a leer.”

When there is no toilet paper, your ass learns to read.

apengwin• 5 years ago

What does this mean, actually? Are you picking and choosing which newspaper sections to keep, or are you just sitting on the toilet a lot more?

A_non_e-moose• 5 years ago

Wonder how long that saying will last when ebook readers and paper-free trends hit that market.

mbg721• 5 years ago

For all the horrors that go along with living in a failed state, I'm sort of looking forward to a new golden age of dark humor.

vishnugupta2• 5 years ago

Similar experience.

In India I tagged along with my father when he applied for a physical phone connection when I was in class 8. By the time the application made it through the bureaucratic labyrinthine and all sorts of hurdles I was in class 10.

So now a days when I see someone rant for 2 month wait period for a car I silently laugh. The current generation though is growing up getting conditioned to instant gratification.

Listening to my favourite song for me, while growing up, meant convincing my father to give me money, walking to a cassette store, wading through their catalogue and finally get it. So for me waiting comes naturally. In a way for my generation (and earlier) waiting is second nature. Wait in line for movie tickets, at bank counter, ration stores, just to name a few.

u801e• 5 years ago

when I see someone rant for 2 month wait period for a car I silently laugh.

Things improve, so people's expectations change. People from generations ago could "silently laugh" at someone complaining about a missed flight and a long layover when they had to travel by sea instead of air.

curiousgal• 5 years ago

Having grown up in a Third World country makes almost every issue people around me complain about nontrivial. But that doesn't mean that they are. Just because others had/have it harder doesn't make those issues any less valid.

SV_BubbleTime4• 5 years ago

You are just a little early.

TP and ammo were user-caused panics. Superficial.

Microchip/Atmel just gave me 50 week lead times on really common chips. My products use these common chips, so do a TON of other things. If you can’t buy a tooshbrush or a thermostat in a few months, you might not realize it’s because of chip shortage or containers.

I think things are going to get worse. Our supply chains aren’t resilient, more than they are so large it takes a lot/longer time to see effects.

I think we’re going to hit the peak of the bullwhip soon and it’s going to surprise a lot of people what shutting the world down for almost 2 years will do.

cascom• 5 years ago

It seems like ammo has been in experiencing semi-perpetual issues for the past 12+ years

neither_color• 5 years ago

This is true. I see a lot of comments that turn this into a philosophical debate but not enough actionable talk. Earlier this summer I wanted to buy a graphics card, so I spent weeks following discord "drop" servers where people were running scripts checking inventories of every online store and sending out alerts as soon as, say, Best Buy restocks Nvidia cards. Naturally these would sell out instantly and/or websites would crash from thousands of gamers/miners/scalpers ALL trying to buy something at once.

During this experience I had the morbid thought that we're only a a natural/human disaster away from having to do the same for more necessary things. Get familiar with web scraping or buying communities of things you need while you can.

paganel2• 5 years ago

For example, in USSR I remember wiping my ass with cut-up newspaper for months at a time.

As a Romanian who grew up as a kid in the '80s and the '90s I'm sort of glad that this was a shared Eastern-European experience, it's something that people from the other side of the wall will most probably never understand completely. When I was spending the summer at my grandparents me and my brother were sometime wiping our asses off with pages taken from "Munca de Partid" (roughly translated as "Party Work"), which was the official magazine of the Romanian Communist Party's Central Committee. Our granddad had been a communist mayor in the village and he had almost the entire collection of those magazines.

[1] https://www.cosminnasui.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Munca...

nickpp2• 5 years ago

I still wonder what effect all that lead (from the newspaper ink) will have on our rectums' health.

renewiltord• 5 years ago

Out of curiosity, did no one transition to using water jets like in Asia or was that even more expensive?

code_duck4• 5 years ago

Most Americans have absolutely no idea what it is like to endure that sort of hardship. I mean, in the most extreme examples I know adults who act like they're going to starve because their peas were touching their potatoes.

midev3• 5 years ago

Most Americans have absolutely no idea what it is like to endure that sort of hardship

Which is great! Despite the flaws of capitalism, it's literally the point! As supply chains were impacted, new businesses and solutions filled the void. Given the vast amount of competition in things like toilet paper, automotive, etc, "shortages" just meant not getting your favorite brand for a few weeks.

I know adults who act like they're going to starve because their peas were touching their potatoes.

I would take this over the horror shows of communism any day.

It's never a knock to say "your country is so good you've never had the massive hardships we have had!"

notheretoo• 5 years ago

That’s because the shortages you experienced were real. The shortages we’ve had over the pandemic are greatly exaggerated by our trash tabloid media which vice is a prime offender.

seriousquestion• 5 years ago

That's important perspective. What did it look like in the early days of the shortage tho? Did it start off as minor and become more severe over time? Or did it go from plentiful to none right away?

raspasov6• 5 years ago

Pretty instant. Since there was essentially no internet or nothing substantial was online (mid 90s in Bulgaria), you'd hear from people that there's shortage of something, and it's already too late.

The line is hours long and your best option is to simply line up or you're gonna be out of gas, for example. Family members sometimes would take turns waiting at the gas station for a few hours.

There were more shortages in the early 90s right after the collapse of the Soviet block, but I don't personally remember those.

oblio2• 5 years ago

Hey, more than cut up! Crumpled! :-D

dheera4• 5 years ago

The reason there was a TP "shortage" in the US is everyone started hoarding it. There really wasn't a shortage, it was just idiots taking advantage of the situation to resell {masks, TP, lysol, sanitizer} to other people on ebay at 10x the cost.

If the government had some guts they would put their foot down, personally go to every single one of those ebay sellers' homes, throw them in jail, and then restrict sales of all of the above products to a generous and reasonable amount per person with government ID required to purchase. Problem would have been solved.

But our government is too chicken to do that.

nickpp2• 5 years ago

The reason we had true shortages in Eastern Europe in the 80s in because the government thought it knew better and interfered (planned).

The reason you had fake shortages last year is exactly because the government stayed out of it.

chihuahua5• 5 years ago

One interesting thing that happened was that Costco said you can no longer return toilet paper and bottled water. As a way of discouraging hoarding, it's better than nothing.

tamaharbor• 5 years ago

A bit harsh don’t you think?

ajsnigrutin• 5 years ago

Sometimes I'm happy that was born in yugoslavia, so out of all the communist countries, we had it best... there were shortages of course, long wait times for a yugo... but for us, kids, a trip once or twice a year to italy to buy jeans was a total treat... then we muddied them up, wore them over the pants we came with (or came with old pants, and threw them away), and hoped the customs won't notice or care to complicate stuff and charge import fees.

heavyset_go• 5 years ago

At the beginning of the pandemic, there was a very real drug shortage[1].

[1] https://www.jhsph.edu/research/affiliated-programs/johns-hop...

nimbius• 5 years ago

Unpopular opinion but I don't feel like comparing the last ten years of a total systemic government collapse to american covid is fair at all.

The soviet union died a miserable death at the hands of nationalists, profiteers, and american intervention. Covid was a manageable health crisis that spiraled into a food shortage as well. Beans rice and bottled water simply didn't exist in some stores and with rural america largely dependent on a single Walmart there are no other stores to go to.

Our supply chains despite being touted as best in the world collapsed almost overnight.

xyzelement3• 5 years ago

Our supply chains despite being touted as best in the world collapsed almost overnight.

Did they though? Were there really people who had to go without necessities for a meaningful length of time? My whole point is that they did not.

beebmam• 5 years ago

If you live in a low vaccination rate state in the US, you'll probably experience a severe shortage of medical care for the next few months, especially if you need to go to a hospital. My wife is a nurse in an ICU that is at 100% capacity (the majority of which are unvaccinated COVID patients, and a few vaccinated COVID patients too).

I imagine in many other countries there will be massive shortages of medical care as delta burns through earth's population.

This is probably the worst shortage we'll experience as part of the pandemic, because staffed hospital bed shortages means people will die of conditions they normally wouldn't die from.

rejectedandsad• 5 years ago

This is true overall, but graphics cards are still basically impossible to get unless you pay 2x-2.5x MSRP. A bit more than a little worse but thankfully relegated to a non-essential product.

I was impressed that I had no trouble getting an iPhone 12 Pro within a day, and my friends had no trouble getting M1 MacBooks. If anything it’s the Apple supply chain that might be the most resilient of all.

raspasov6• 5 years ago

https://www.amazon.com/Penn-Tennis-Balls-Case-Extra/dp/B001C...

It's Saturday morning. I can get 45 balls delivered Monday.

Click-bait shortage-mongering?

starky• 5 years ago

The store I usually buy tennis balls at is showing over 1200 tubes of just one brand of balls in stock at the store near me, must be pretty localized if it is a problem.

admn23• 5 years ago

These usually go for around $2.25 a can, but this isn't such a horrible price.

booleandilemma• 5 years ago

Shortage of something? Let me try to do without.

No wait, let me try to order 24 (24 for goodness sake) tennis balls online!

nradov• 5 years ago

There was a hot tub (spa) shortage in 2020. No one could go on vacation so people spent their money on home hot tubs instead. First world problems.

SubiculumCode3• 5 years ago

Same thing with swimming pools.

doopy1• 5 years ago

There's also an increasing shortage of rational thought.

redisman• 5 years ago

More seriously there seems to be many parts shortages. I have a big crack in my windshield but there are no replacements available until some unknown date

racl101• 5 years ago

A lot of dogs will be sad.

notadev• 5 years ago

“Naturally, as an experienced investigative reporter, my next move was the highly advanced research technique of Googling "Tennis Ball Shortage?" There were enough hits on Reddit and tennis forums to confirm there are, at least in some parts of the country, indeed tennis ball shortages.”

I feel like this fairly accurately sums up modern journalism.

adventured2• 5 years ago

$200,000 degree from Northwestern. Learned to Google.

_s• 5 years ago

My partner is a journalist in a specific niche (science).

Unfortunately - folks have shown time and time again they will not pay content when an alternative is available for free.

Most, if not all journalists, would prefer to be do doing investigative work over a few weeks and months - highlighting what is in the publics interests.

Publishers on the other hand, with the sales / advertising / marketing requirements & constraints, would much prefer they crunch out 10x stories a day that can drive traffic (ergo revenue).

What you are left with are tight deadlines, incredibly poor pay, and most of the experienced folks who actually care about what articles are written under their name just hanging up their pens and taking up cushy gigs in comms / marketing.

Journalism still exists, but has been dying steadily - nearly all folks in positions of wealth and power would prefer it didn't exist, and for the folks that should be reading what they write - they won't pay for it, and won't trust it.

sgregnt• 5 years ago

There seems to be more demand for podcasts or video blogs, maybe your partner can think of starting a podcasts?

comicjk• 5 years ago

I think investigative journalism nonprofits like ProPublica are the best point of leverage for this problem. Big newspapers like the Washington Post & NY Times do good investigative work too, but pair it with lots of duplicate stories.

trosi• 5 years ago

Very true. We need to find a way to subsidize "good journalism" or to convince people to care about it.

LeoPanthera• 5 years ago

Can you explain why you think this doesn't count as journalism?

A journalist who doesn't do simple Google searches on popular internet forums in order to discover what people are talking about would seem to me to not be doing their job.

schemescape• 5 years ago

Anonymous/semi-anonymous Internet forums aren’t generally a reliable source of information. Even if the people posting are being truthful (and accurate), they’re still not representative of the population.

FriedPickles• 5 years ago

Tennis balls always felt like a planned obsolescence item to me. Are we really unable to make balls that don't lose their bounce after a few matches? Or a tennis ball that can be reinflated?

I'm sure longevity will always be traded for weight and bounciness at the extremes, but for general play it's time for a reusable tennis ball.

opinion-is-bad• 5 years ago

It’s more than just the air that gets lost from a ball, the felt is delicate and even small changes in distribution affect the spin. The stresses in tennis are intense, with 100 mph common for even pretty low level amateur serves. Most players keep used balls after a match for practice hitting too, and they stay usable for months.

My aunt has been playing competition tennis for about 50 years now, and she jokes that even with all the inflation on other stuff, a can of balls cost $3 in 1970 just like it does now, so they have definitely been making some pretty big efficiency gains in the manufacturing.

latchkey• 5 years ago

Or they just pay the workers less.

(before you apply that comment to just tennis balls, think bigger picture)

dmje• 5 years ago

I'm sure it'll bounce back

BurningFrog• 5 years ago

This is pretty weird if you know some economics.

On a free market, there are only very temporary shortages or surpluses. Those conditions morph quickly into equilibrium with raised or lower prices.

The spring 2020 TP shortage illustrates this. Because if the pandemic, there were "profiteering" laws in effect that made price hikes illegal, so we got empty shelves instead.

Pretty sure there are no such laws for tennis balls now. So what's going on?

My best guess is that retailers don't want to take the PR hit of raising prices for something that should be resolved quickly enough?

Jeff_Brown• 5 years ago

Here here. When the pandemic started i prepared for food shortages. As it turns out it's been psychologically bad but physically nothing like the disaster it could have been.

atlgator• 5 years ago

So there's a dog shortage and a tennis ball shortage? This can't be coincidence.

https://www.axios.com/the-great-american-dog-shortage-632187...

Too• 5 years ago

Are there really only 2 tennis ball factories in the whole world?

I can appreciate making a high-end ball at scale is a rather precise and niche process with limited market and little room for innovation. Is cheap logistics making it completely impossible for smaller and less premium factories to be competetive elsewhere?

Does this also mean any ball you buy, whether budget or premium, is the same, produced in either of these places?

There Is a Tennis Ball Shortage Too Now

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