House of Eratosthenes

Bernie: ‘We Must Seize The Means Of Toilet Paper Production’

BURLINGTON, VT—In a video message recorded from one of his many, many houses, Bernie Sanders has called on the workers of the world to unite and seize the means of toilet paper production.

Sanders was under quarantine because he is old and susceptible to the virus. So he delivered the message remotely, but it was just as powerful as if he had delivered it to thousands of Bernie bros in person: “Workers of the world, unite and seize the means of producing bath tissue in large quantities!”

If I wrote for them, I’d have Poe’s Law embroidered into a wall hanging and displayed prominently wherever I work, just to remind myself of the difficulty involved in satire. I wonder if they have done exactly that, in fact.

I’ve been “socially distancing” like everyone else, sometimes even voluntarily. We did what everyone else is supposed to be doing all of the time before this hit, and so we have plenty of toilet paper and hand sanitizer. Mrs. Freeberg makes it a habit to keep me out of grocery stores, which is smart on her part because she knows I don’t have the patience to deal with much of anything there. And so I do not have first-hand experience with this nightmare. It must be awful, zipping around from store to store trying to find a roll or two. Oh yes, I do know it’s that bad. Facebook has been just plain boring lately. Just bitching and more bitching about toilet paper.

Restocking levels, people. That’s what businesses do. If X is your burn rate between deliveries, then 1.5-2.0X is your restocking level and after you take delivery, you have 2.5-3.0X. When it gets down to your restocking level you reorder. Don’t let it get to zero if it’s something you have to have all the time. But, a lot of people didn’t do that and so now we have a “shortage.”

Permit me a rant then. Since I haven’t personally experienced the grief, I have not had the opportunity to lay my hopeful eyes upon the empty shelves of despair, and those who have experienced this lacked the presence of mind, in their desperation, to take note on my behalf: If the coveted packages were there, how much would they have cost, hmmmm? The same? I’ll bet it’s the same. I don’t know what kind of rules apply here in the People’s Republic of California about what constitutes “price fixing” or “price gouging” or what the penalties are supposed to be…I don’t very much care. It really doesn’t matter. The cudgeling, the veiled civil-action threats, the potential headaches, they’ve all loomed large. There are no nightmares to be told about fifty-dollar packages netting four measly rolls, and if such a thing happened surely I’d be hearing about it. No, if it’s sixty cents a roll any other time, it’s sixty cents a roll in the most acute moments of our “crisis,” our “shortage.”

Normal forces of supply and demand do not apply.

Expensive Toilet Paper I’m putting “shortage” in scare quotes because my conscience demands it of me. This isn’t a real shortage. You have a shortage of something that’s a non-renewable resource, like petroleum, or gold. Every single component of this is renewable. No, this is a long and elaborate supply chain, and just like any chain it can be impeded at any link, with the effect of impeding the entire chain even with all other links fully functional. “Shortage” implies all of those links are destitute in what they need to do their deliveries, the problem being at the starting-end of the chain which is the manufacturing. No such situation exists here.

No, the problem is just ahead of those shelves that are breaking hearts with their emptiness. It’s with the restocking. And the restocking is happening hand-over-fist, seven truck deliveries in a day at one location…so the problem isn’t really there either. The problem is the consumption. If people bought something in line with what they were using, we’d be up to our ears in toilet paper.

This brings us up to what has become our conventional wisdom: The hordes of hoarders are TEH STUPID!! And furthermore are to blame for our current deplorable plight. In addition to being stupid. Yeah…well…mkay. Let me temper that just a bit.

I hold these hoarders to be guilty of emotional reasoning, which certainly does tick me off when it puts me in a bit of hot water through no action or inaction of my own. But is it really right and proper to start condemning people or calling them stupid when they succumb to it? I don’t have a perfect record of refusing the temptations when I’ve been put through an ordeal, and zipping around from place to place looking for just a roll or two certainly does seem like an ordeal. How many hops does it take me to become a quivering, angry wreck, even if my need is not acute? If I’m going to self-assess critically and accurately I have to say: Two. And not two stopping points across town from each other. Two points down the street from each other. Within minutes, not hours. For a computer part that isn’t even needed to bring the project online, and was an afterthought…two places that don’t have the item, is enough to work me into a lather, and start shooting daggers out of my eyes at anybody who stops to help me. Well okay if they’re trying to help me, because I was raised right and I know they’re trying to help me, I say the right things and I’m polite and I work at sparing them my wrath. But as long as we’re being honest, I know my ugly mood forces me to have to really work at it. Know what I mean? We’ve all been there, right?

But that’s some forty minutes or so immersed in a first-world computer-builder’s part or supply I don’t really need. Not an everyday bathroom staple that everyone with an alimentary canal absolutely needs. I should help get the hate out for someone making less than rational decisions when they’re five-hours immersed in the futile errand?

So now wait a second. You got off work at five in the afternoon, it’s nine-thirty at night you’ve hit six stores that were empty, the seventh store has some. Price controls…hard firm legislated ones, or soft-culture “We might hit you with a lawsuit that is wrong, but you’ll have to pay up anyway so do you want to chance it” ones…are in effect. I don’t care which one it is, remember? It doesn’t matter. So the last store in town has the product and it’s still sixty cents a roll. How many do you get? A sensible amount, or something along the lines of “I never did find out how much my truck can carry, it’s high time we found the answer”?

Run.

No that’s not what I’m telling you to do. That’s my nit-pick. People keep calling this a “shortage.” It’s not a shortage, it’s a run. Didn’t you see It’s a Wonderful Life? “I’ve never really seen one but that’s got all the earmarks of being a run.”

It’s an important difference for two reasons. The less important reason is that if you stock up to 2.5 or so times your burn rate like I said, but it’s an actual shortage, this likely won’t help you. The shortage just has to last 2.5 times longer and then it wins and you lose. A run, on the other hand, is just today’s activity. It’s just a ripple.

But there’s a far more important reason. We keep hearing about this “price gouging” being a problem, and the remedies, be they hard statutes or soft intimidation, must look something like the answer to the problem. The cause of the problem must be something along the lines of what the kids are being taught in those universities, about the evils of “unchecked capitalism.” We must have the suits, or the laws, or the sensible regulators running their check against these evil, greedy, greedy, evil shopkeepers who would have the unmitigated gall to charge sixty-one cents or more for a roll that must cost no more than sixty. It’s our right, gosh darn it! For economic justice!

Well…with just a little bit of common sense, and the understanding that this is a run, not a shortage…the scales fall from our eyes. Such remedies are the disease, not the cure. And the price “gouging,” if that’s what you want to call it, left to run its course would have stopped the whole problem from happening in the first place. Without these laws or such intimidation, how much were we set to be gouged, anyway? A dollar for a roll? Two dollars? Maybe five?

At five dollars a roll, do you think weary stragglers would be tempted to play the game of “let’s see how much my truck can haul?” Maybe a few of them would! So let’s try ten dollars a roll. Does that sound like a nightmare?

Well I don’t know. If you’re the one still limping from store to store to store well after dark chasing these essentials, what would you rather see? A shelf full of overpriced rolls ready for your patronage at ten bones a pop…or, an empty shelf?

So yeah, you people who were so opposed to “price gouging” until we started this glorious One Square March…as you labor away in your garage carving up old tee shirts into rectangles…maybe it’s time to reconsider things. How are you liking this trial period for your socialism? Some ideas are so good that when you actually practice them, you wonder why it took you so long. And then there are ideas like yours.

I’d rather pay a few dollars more, myself. When you gotta go you gotta go, ya know?

DANG!
I just KNEW all those tee shirts, with pithy sayings, or advertising, that I would never wear in public, might come in handy!
Yeah, THAT’S why I saved ’em.
It’s NOT because I was considering turning them into strainers for something or other because I’m a frugal Yankee! Or giving them all to the local free clothing outlet, for teens to wear….”ironically”. Or the next impromptu “local nurses wet tee shirt contest”, in conjunction with the Mud Football Tournament and beer fest, to “raise awareness for breast cancer”…or something!
- CaptDMO | 03/17/2020 @ 15:09
Bernie is tribe, and yearns for the “good old days” of his Messiahs – Lenin and Stalin. His campaign claims the gulags “paid a living wage.” Guess what? So did Auschwitz!!!
- MarkMatis | 03/18/2020 @ 04:17

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Hordes of HoardersTuesday, March 17th, 2020

Hordes of Hoarders
Tuesday, March 17th, 2020