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Panic Buying begets Panic Buying

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  • #31
    cb051921dAPR20210518114504.jpg
    Some may call me foolish, and some may call me odd
    But I'd rather be a fool in the eyes of man
    Than a fool in the eyes of God


    From "Fools Gold" by Petra

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    • #32
      Originally posted by Mountain Man View Post
      Pro tip: Soak your toilet paper in gasoline to make candles when the power goes out!



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      • #33
        Originally posted by Mountain Man View Post

        Buying enough bottled water for a week is, I think, reasonable. Buying enough bottled water for 6-months is irrational.
        1 week ..... You decide is reasonable.
        6 months...... Irrational fear.

        What kind of guidance is that? What about a shopper who buys water each month for a whole month? So on a shortage s/he buys for two months? How will you pass judgement there?

        And you never did tell us what you would buy of the water display was being emptied in front of you.

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        • #34
          There's a guy I knew in California who always had something like 10 bottles of the huge Sparkletts Drinking water stored in his garage - in case of a catastrophic earthquake. He didn't buy them all at once, and I'm not sure how long they would last, maybe 6 months. Of course, water from your water heater should be potable. Mine is 20 gallon.

          water.jpg
          Last edited by Ronson; 05-20-2021, 09:52 AM.

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          • #35
            Originally posted by eider View Post

            1 week ..... You decide is reasonable.
            6 months...... Irrational fear.

            What kind of guidance is that? What about a shopper who buys water each month for a whole month? So on a shortage s/he buys for two months? How will you pass judgement there?

            And you never did tell us what you would buy of the water display was being emptied in front of you.
            I was not passing judgement, nor was I defining a hard and fast rule. To put it more generally, people who buy enough to meet their needs are being reasonable. People who buy far in excess of what they can even use are being irrational. In many cases, it's just people hoarding supplies for no other reason than real or imagined scarcity, such as people who never buy bottled water suddenly buying 10 cases of it because of some undefined fear. A lot of this sort of thing happened early on during the China flu scare.
            Last edited by Mountain Man; 05-20-2021, 11:05 AM.
            Some may call me foolish, and some may call me odd
            But I'd rather be a fool in the eyes of man
            Than a fool in the eyes of God


            From "Fools Gold" by Petra

            Comment


            • #36
              Originally posted by Ronson View Post
              There's a guy I knew in California who always had something like 10 bottles of the huge Sparkletts Drinking water stored in his garage - in case of a catastrophic earthquake. He didn't buy them all at once, and I'm not sure how long they would last, maybe 6 months. Of course, water from your water heater should be potable. Mine is 20 gallon.

              water.jpg
              I could see keeping a stock of something that you use regularly and rotating it, but panic buying a huge amount at once and having it hit its expiration date before it can be used is silly.
              Some may call me foolish, and some may call me odd
              But I'd rather be a fool in the eyes of man
              Than a fool in the eyes of God


              From "Fools Gold" by Petra

              Comment


              • #37
                Originally posted by Teallaura View Post
                Er, kinda depends. Panicky buyers with credit cards would have to see stratospheric prices before they would curb their spending
                1. Wouldn't that just mean the demand is that high?
                2. Surely their panic is greater for shorter terms (e.g. being without toilet paper next week) and less for longer terms (e.g. being without toilet paper next month. even less for 6 months from now, and so on). They value the toilet-paper-1-year-from-now is less. At a given price, they'll have some cutoff. The panic-buyer who buys 1/4 of what's on the shelf still made a tradeoff decision (could have bought 1/2 of the shelf). At twice the price, their cutoff would likely have been different.

                Originally posted by Teallaura
                - and that would just hurt anyone who doesn't have the financial resources to make even reasonable purchases.
                The alternative is empty shelves, which is effectively a price of infinity, which is even worse.
                In the case of just a vicious cycle of panic buying, then the price rise puts a stop to the vicious cycle, which is caused by fear that the shelves will be empty when you will need it. When the store shows that it can maintain supply, the panic cycle stops, and more people will delay purchase (and be more conservative with their current supply) in hopes their current supply will outlast the spike in price. So the "stratospheric" price would be short-lived.

                There are other ways it helps shorten the duration and severity of the crisis: A higher price incentivizes (and provides the required knowledge for) increasing the supply of the good, shipping it to where demand is highest, allocating more storage space to the good.

                Buy your stuff on sale and remember that you can freeze almost anything!
                And sell it when demand is high.

                If high-demand events can at all be anticipated (even just the general knowledge that emergencies sometimes happen), then the ability to raise price incentivizes some people/businesses to stock up on-sale during normal times, so they can sell during the high-demand event. And that makes the emergency less severe. (Good speculators make markets more stable.) Anti-price-gouging laws (and anti-price-gouging sentiment among the public) reduces such behavior.

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