5 ms·
Amen. Price isn't even the issue here, just a symptom. Hoarding is the issue. Limit people to not buying 100 rolls of toilet paper, and suddenly the price every
by 6gvONxR4sf7o 7y ago
Amen. Price isn't even the issue here, just a symptom. Hoarding is the issue. Limit people to not buying 100 rolls of toilet paper, and suddenly the price everyone's willing to pay levels out. Price isn't the problem. Uneven distribution is.
- koheripbal 7y agoThe best solution is to increase production to the point where all those hoarders are left with tons of worthless inventory.
- gruez 7y agothen they just return their inventory for a full refund.
- yyy888sss 7y agoAustralian supermarkets are refusing refunds on all of these hoarded goods.
- scruple 7y agoI'd love to see that stateside, too. I have to go out for some regular old run of the mill groceries tomorrow morning, I'm going to ask about refund/return policies at the two grocers that we frequent.
- coredog64 7y agoIMO, ensuring sufficient stock and refusing refunds will be a more thorough punishment than some half-enforced CA law on price gouging.
- gruez 7y agoI wonder whether that's legal or not. Presumably they bought the goods before this thing blew up and the terms of sale at the time of purchase allowed for returns. Are stores allowed to retroactively change their return ploicy? Do they have a "we can deny returns for any reason" clause in their return policy? Is that legal?
- rsynnott 7y agoI think where supermarkets give refunds at all for non-defective products, it’s generally discretionary.
- yyy888sss 7y agoIn Australia we have strong consumer protection, but not for changing your mind. It's a courtesy most retailers offer but you clearly don't deserve it when you realise you don't need 2000 tools of tp.
- mitchdoogle 7y agoWhy would it be illegal? Unless the product is proven to be defective or unsafe, I can't see how you could force a company to accept a refund when someone changes their mind. Companies only do this when they think it is good for their reputation. They aren't going to care that a price gouger gets stuck with thousands in losses.
- gruez 7y ago>I can't see how you could force a company to accept a refund when someone changes their mind This only makes sense if no refund policy was posted ahead of time. I don't know about the situation in Australia, but most stores in my area have their return policies printed on the receipt, and nearly all of them have them posted in-store or online.
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 7y agoSure if it were as easy as that. In normal circumstances, it wouldn't be easy, nor as quick as demand shifts. In a time when supply chains are disrupted and we're all WFH to slow a pandemic, expecting another industry to drastically increase production seems like a false hope at best and an immoral one at worst.
- dillonmckay 7y agoSo the market is functioning as intended based on the circumstances.
- sharemywin 7y agoAnd so are the price gouging laws.
- skywhopper 7y agoWhy is that the best solution? The actual need for toilet paper has not gone up. So increasing capacity would just be a waste of money for manufacturers. They know this too and aren’t stupid enough to try it.
- chrisseaton 7y ago> all those hoarders are left with tons of worthless inventory How can toilet paper become worthless? You're always going to need to use it yourself even.
- nerfhammer 7y agoworthless in that it won't be worth more than they bought it for.
- chrisseaton 7y agoI'm not sure what's what 'worthless' means.
- jbay808 7y agoPeople are saying this like they just walked out of an econ 101 class. It's expensive to tool up your production line for extra production when you'll just have to shut it down again a few weeks later as the surplus makes its way through the system. Why would a toilet paper plant operator do that? They know that average consumption of toilet paper hasn't increased whatsoever.
- eigenvector 7y agoEvidently people would rather ramp up entire supply chains of toilet paper (which include, let's remember, actual people cutting down actual trees and involve capital-intensive facilities like pulp mills that take years to build) than admit that there's a market failure and punish the handful of bad actors who are hoarding.
- anigbrowl 7y agoI had this argument with a lot of people last week. People learn the basic concept of supply and demand and suddenly think they're economists, which is like learning to write a loop and thinking you're a developer.
- pasquinelli 7y agoIsn't that tons of wasted work and materials?
- mitchdoogle 7y agoSeems like the best solution is to take the markets away for these sellers to price gouge, which is what's happening.. and introduce punishments for anyone who tries to get around these measures.