5 ms·

My favorite part of this is that it implies grifters are failing to offload their stock. They bought it all hoping to profit off of shortages, and then not only

by _bxg1 7y ago

My favorite part of this is that it implies grifters are failing to offload their stock. They bought it all hoping to profit off of shortages, and then not only did Amazon and Ebay clamp down on reselling, there isn't actually a shortage. Justice.

dehrmann 7y ago
> grifters are failing to offload their stock The word you're looking for is arbitrageur. Or scalper. Grifter implies some thing dishonest. Arbitrageurs are very up-front with what they're doing, and you get exactly why you're paying for.
- reitzensteinm 7y ago
  There is dishonesty in this situation. If you ask Costco if it's ok to buy lots of toilet paper to resell, they'll say no. By buying in bulk to arbitrage you're acting against the interests of Costco and their customers, and hoping you fly under the radar.
  - gruez 7y ago
    >There is dishonesty in this situation. If you ask Costco if it's ok to buy lots of toilet paper to resell, they'll say no. That's debatable. Plenty of small businesses buy Costco stuff to resell, or for business use. They even have business memberships! Unless they have explicit no resell notices (although even then it's unclear what legal force they have), I wouldn't say it's dishonest.
    - rayhendricks 7y ago
      Costco literally is designed as a small business supply warehouse. There are some Costco they cater exclusively to this. Now not trying to price gouge in a pandemic is another thing.
    - reitzensteinm 7y ago
      Right, which is why it's easy to fly under the radar. It was poorly worded, but if corporate had a button they could press to stop new entrants buying a bunch in hopes of selling online at high markup, I believe they would. Trouble is, there's no way to filter them out, and any attempt may in itself signal a lack of faith in the system and result in more panic buying.
- mmhsieh 7y ago
  An arbitrage is a risk-free profit. I think these amateur toilet paper merchants are discovering their hoped-for profits are not so risk-free.
  - tylerl 7y ago
    Eehm... Arbitrage is buying on one market to immediately sell on another market at a profit. Which is exactly what these folks were doing. Except that the other market administratively blocked them from selling. Then the first market wouldn't reverse the purchase, leaving the would-be arbitrageurs holding the bag.
    - mmhsieh 7y ago
      The ones who were able to unload at the moment they purchased were arbing. If you could sell the toilet paper before you even got it out of the store at Costco, you have executed a successful arb. There was no risk in this trading profit. The others who carried inventory for a nontrivial period of time were market makers, and carried market maker risk. Market maker risk is the bid-ask moving against you when you are carrying inventory. These guys were basically carrying unhedged physical long positions in toilet paper thinking they had a free option to unwind at par, but Costco changed the game on them. Not all of these guys were arbing.
- wheelie_boy 7y ago
  Pandemic profiteer National emergency price-gouger
- ta2987 7y ago
  "Asshole" works.
- pyromine 7y ago
  In this scenario grifter would be accurate, yes maybe they are an arbitrageur too, but price gouging of this form is in-fact illegal.
- loco5niner 7y ago
  Grifter, swindler, price-gouger - all taking advantage of others in a bad way. Calling them an arbitrageur is overly- generous.
ljm 7y ago
There was never a shortage in the first place, I honestly do not understand the pathology of this, except that a totally unrelated and tragic situation in Venezuela got dumbed down in the west as being a toilet roll shortage. I'm almost grateful for it; we're hitting peak America, peak capitalism, peak Westernism...
- colechristensen 7y ago
  "Panic buying" makes good local news. Empty shelves get attention. On social media, everywhere. Stop the attention economy and you stop this nonsense. But also, put these pressures on stores and supply chains and they'll learn to be more elastic which is _necessary_. If demand for a good skyrockets and everybody wants a good inventory at home, it shouldn't be a social evil to go stock up on a month or two of TP, on surgical masks for personal safety, on whatever. We should have all been able to buy as many surgical masks as we wanted whenever we wanted, we would all be safer if that had been possible. Shorten lead times and have faster ability to adjust capacity and _you make more money_. The only peak I hope we're hitting is peak idiocy, where a large portion of people (actually the vast majority of people) choose to elect leaders based on emotional appeal to a chosen sect instead of using reason and valuing real competence. The peaks I fear we're hitting are peak personal freedom, peak democracy, and peak privacy. There is a cost, in lives, in not being able to do what China has done to limit and nearly stop the outbreak (once they decided it couldn't be blustered away). I hope we're able, willing, and eager to pay that cost and figure out when it is worth it and when it is not.
- Izkata 7y ago
  The story I heard was that it started with an unconfirmed rumour (possibly completely made up) on social media about it happening in Hong Kong because of people making makeshift masks out of it, the western media picked up on it from Twitter & co, then accidentally created the panic buying in the rest of the world.
IAmEveryone 7y ago
TP is cheap, large in volume, probably has lots of producers (no patents) and plants (because transport is expensive relative to price), can be replaced by shower/bidet/worn-out socks/even white bread. I can’t think of a worse product to do this with. The daily newspaper, maybe. If this really is scammers getting burned, they’re not getting my sympathy (the budget of sympathy-for-the-undeserving is mostly pledged anyway, for the people who insisted on going to Church this Sunday)
- pas 7y ago
  It's not like they can't just sit on it. It's not perishable after all.
- 93po 7y ago
  I would never be able to eat Nutella on bread ever again if I used bread as tp
TheAdamist 7y ago
Articles were written about someone who tried that with hand sanitizer, bought all the hand sanitizer in a several state region then couldn't offload it after being banned from Amazon, etc. Search "17000 bottles of hand sanitizer". First article that came up for me that wasn't paywalled, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/03/16/new-york-times-article-two-chattanooga-men-stockpile-hand-sanitizer/5057225002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/03/16/new-yo...

by _bxg1 7y ago

dehrmann 7y ago

> grifters are failing to offload their stock The word you're looking for is arbitrageur. Or scalper. Grifter implies some thing dishonest. Arbitrageurs are very up-front with what they're doing, and you get exactly why you're paying for.

reitzensteinm 7y ago
There is dishonesty in this situation. If you ask Costco if it's ok to buy lots of toilet paper to resell, they'll say no. By buying in bulk to arbitrage you're acting against the interests of Costco and their customers, and hoping you fly under the radar.
- gruez 7y ago
  >There is dishonesty in this situation. If you ask Costco if it's ok to buy lots of toilet paper to resell, they'll say no. That's debatable. Plenty of small businesses buy Costco stuff to resell, or for business use. They even have business memberships! Unless they have explicit no resell notices (although even then it's unclear what legal force they have), I wouldn't say it's dishonest.
  - rayhendricks 7y ago
    Costco literally is designed as a small business supply warehouse. There are some Costco they cater exclusively to this. Now not trying to price gouge in a pandemic is another thing.
  - reitzensteinm 7y ago
    Right, which is why it's easy to fly under the radar. It was poorly worded, but if corporate had a button they could press to stop new entrants buying a bunch in hopes of selling online at high markup, I believe they would. Trouble is, there's no way to filter them out, and any attempt may in itself signal a lack of faith in the system and result in more panic buying.
mmhsieh 7y ago
An arbitrage is a risk-free profit. I think these amateur toilet paper merchants are discovering their hoped-for profits are not so risk-free.
- tylerl 7y ago
  Eehm... Arbitrage is buying on one market to immediately sell on another market at a profit. Which is exactly what these folks were doing. Except that the other market administratively blocked them from selling. Then the first market wouldn't reverse the purchase, leaving the would-be arbitrageurs holding the bag.
  - mmhsieh 7y ago
    The ones who were able to unload at the moment they purchased were arbing. If you could sell the toilet paper before you even got it out of the store at Costco, you have executed a successful arb. There was no risk in this trading profit. The others who carried inventory for a nontrivial period of time were market makers, and carried market maker risk. Market maker risk is the bid-ask moving against you when you are carrying inventory. These guys were basically carrying unhedged physical long positions in toilet paper thinking they had a free option to unwind at par, but Costco changed the game on them. Not all of these guys were arbing.
wheelie_boy 7y ago
Pandemic profiteer National emergency price-gouger
ta2987 7y ago
"Asshole" works.
pyromine 7y ago
In this scenario grifter would be accurate, yes maybe they are an arbitrageur too, but price gouging of this form is in-fact illegal.
loco5niner 7y ago
Grifter, swindler, price-gouger - all taking advantage of others in a bad way. Calling them an arbitrageur is overly- generous.

ljm 7y ago

There was never a shortage in the first place, I honestly do not understand the pathology of this, except that a totally unrelated and tragic situation in Venezuela got dumbed down in the west as being a toilet roll shortage. I'm almost grateful for it; we're hitting peak America, peak capitalism, peak Westernism...

colechristensen 7y ago
"Panic buying" makes good local news. Empty shelves get attention. On social media, everywhere. Stop the attention economy and you stop this nonsense. But also, put these pressures on stores and supply chains and they'll learn to be more elastic which is _necessary_. If demand for a good skyrockets and everybody wants a good inventory at home, it shouldn't be a social evil to go stock up on a month or two of TP, on surgical masks for personal safety, on whatever. We should have all been able to buy as many surgical masks as we wanted whenever we wanted, we would all be safer if that had been possible. Shorten lead times and have faster ability to adjust capacity and _you make more money_. The only peak I hope we're hitting is peak idiocy, where a large portion of people (actually the vast majority of people) choose to elect leaders based on emotional appeal to a chosen sect instead of using reason and valuing real competence. The peaks I fear we're hitting are peak personal freedom, peak democracy, and peak privacy. There is a cost, in lives, in not being able to do what China has done to limit and nearly stop the outbreak (once they decided it couldn't be blustered away). I hope we're able, willing, and eager to pay that cost and figure out when it is worth it and when it is not.
Izkata 7y ago
The story I heard was that it started with an unconfirmed rumour (possibly completely made up) on social media about it happening in Hong Kong because of people making makeshift masks out of it, the western media picked up on it from Twitter & co, then accidentally created the panic buying in the rest of the world.

IAmEveryone 7y ago

TP is cheap, large in volume, probably has lots of producers (no patents) and plants (because transport is expensive relative to price), can be replaced by shower/bidet/worn-out socks/even white bread. I can’t think of a worse product to do this with. The daily newspaper, maybe. If this really is scammers getting burned, they’re not getting my sympathy (the budget of sympathy-for-the-undeserving is mostly pledged anyway, for the people who insisted on going to Church this Sunday)

pas 7y ago
It's not like they can't just sit on it. It's not perishable after all.
93po 7y ago
I would never be able to eat Nutella on bread ever again if I used bread as tp

TheAdamist 7y ago

Articles were written about someone who tried that with hand sanitizer, bought all the hand sanitizer in a several state region then couldn't offload it after being banned from Amazon, etc. Search "17000 bottles of hand sanitizer". First article that came up for me that wasn't paywalled, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/03/16/new-york-times-article-two-chattanooga-men-stockpile-hand-sanitizer/5057225002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/03/16/new-yo...