[conspire] About that toilet paper thing

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Texx (texxgadget at gmail.com):

> Ya, I read that article, but I also remember the line of pickup trucks
> PACKED to the gunrails pulling out of my local COSTCO.
> in early MArch
> 
> I also remember flour on ebay for $30 a pound in March

The fact that panicky suburbanits have been guilty of irrational
hoarding behaviour does _not_ mean that this is the cause.  As the 
Medium.com article points out, if the cause were hoarding, then the 
shortages would have dissipated in areas where stores imposed
per-customer quantity limits on (e.g.) toilet paper.  

But the interesting thing is that forcing curbing hoarders did _not_
make the shortage dissipate.  Therefore, the essential cause lies on the
supply side, not the demand side.

You say you 'read the article', but on the evidence you didn't get one
of its key points about toilet paper shortages, which was the one above.
And then the author examined the supply side, and found the cause in the
largely inflexible division between the institutional product supply
chain and the rather different residential chain.