5 ms·

I recently had no problem buying organic flour from the organic aisle, despite the regular aisle being sold out. People are stupid when they panic.

epistasis 7y ago
More likely, the cheaper product sells out first. Three weeks ago, there was no flour of any sort in the store I went to. No corn meal, not grains at all. Except for matzo meal, however, on the end of aisles where seasonal products are held, so I finally made matzo ball soup for the first time! There were also no beans except for a completely ridiculous $8/pound of dried lentil in some sort of super fancy packaging.
squillesque 7y ago
This story reaffirms my sense that the recent explanation du jour for scarcity, residential vs commercial supply chains, isn't quite right. This person set out to buy an order of 250 lb of flour and it still vanished before their eyes. My experience with commercial toilet paper has been the same, watching it dry up just like retail. People seem to be stockpiling cheap familiar essentials, plain and simple, wherever they can get it.
- ghaff 7y ago
  Who knows what's going on in the commercial supply chain though. The usual buyers are canceling orders so the upstream distributors--maybe even manufacturers--are also canceling without necessarily anticipating being able to sell direct to consumers. That said... >People seem to be stockpiling cheap familiar essentials, plain and simple, wherever they can get it. I'm sure there's some truth to this. I'm not stocking up on huge quantities of things I don't need. But, for example, a couple weeks ago there happened to be one bag of my favored flour in the store so I grabbed it even though I wasn't necessarily at the point where I would normally buy it. I also have an extra dozen eggs at home. Etc. Multiply that behavior by most people and that's a lot of extra buying from stores and inventory scattered around everyone's houses even though most people aren't doing the two-year supply of beans level of prepping.
- jefftk 7y ago
  Not 250lb -- 2500lb!
themmes 7y ago
My local supermarket here in the Netherlands split their toiletpaper section and spread it across the store to make use of this stupidity.
- organsnyder 7y ago
  I fail to see how going to the normal location when looking for an item can be called "stupidity".
  - Denvercoder9 7y ago
    I think the stupidity refered to here are the people buying pallets full of toilet paper.
    - ghaff 7y ago
      How many people are really buying "pallets"? It's probably more like people picking up another one of those big 18-roll packages even though they're not at the point yet where they would stock up under normal circumstances. And that adds up to a lot (of a bulky product) in the aggregate.
      - vonmoltke 7y ago
        While not pallets, I have read anecdotal reports here in NJ that stores are selling out of toilet paper within hours after opening following a restock, so it seems to be more than just buying an extra package every time someone goes to the store. The only way I have been able to get any since this started is the store I mentioned elsewhere that is selling individual institutional rolls.
        ghaff 7y ago
        TBF, the many people who don't keep a lot of extra stock in the house probably got caught out early on even as the usage was going up a lot. So there probably are genuinely people who need it at this point and they're buying more than they usually do. (And, yes, a lot of people who are in the store for other reasons may well grab a package of TP even if they don't really need it and wouldn't normally have bought it.)
timerol 7y ago
It's perfectly rational to want to buy twice as much flour if it's the same price it normally is, but not be willing to pay extra for the organic flour. It depends on the individuals willingness to pay and their estimation of the probability that the situation gets much worse. For most Americans, they will eventually use their normal brand of flour, so buying extra is essentially no extra cost. (Time-value of money over, say, 6 months means that we're talking about a 1% difference here.) It's a cheap hedge against supply disruptions. But that's not very likely to happen. The organic brand is often at least 20% more expensive, making the calculus not worthwhile. Put another way, if you expect flour prices to rise 10%, you should buy as much flour as you will use before it goes bad at today's prices, and 0 organic flour at a 20% premium.
- natch 7y ago
  >It's perfectly rational to want to buy twice as much flour if it's the same price it normally is, but not be willing to pay extra for the organic flour. Knowingly putting pesticides in your body never seems rational to me, even if it saves some money. But if they were going to do that anyway, then sure, your point stands.
  - cyphar 7y ago
    Organic products use pesticides, it's just that they often use older pesticide technologies or supplement the use of pesticides with other techniques for repelling pests. Most organic pesticides are no more healthy nor environmentally friendly than modern synthetic pesticides (maybe this wasn't true when DDT was popular, but these days it is).
    - natch 7y ago
      Yeah I’m aware the world isn’t perfect, and some things are not as labeled, but thanks for the heads up.

epistasis 7y ago

More likely, the cheaper product sells out first. Three weeks ago, there was no flour of any sort in the store I went to. No corn meal, not grains at all. Except for matzo meal, however, on the end of aisles where seasonal products are held, so I finally made matzo ball soup for the first time! There were also no beans except for a completely ridiculous $8/pound of dried lentil in some sort of super fancy packaging.

squillesque 7y ago

This story reaffirms my sense that the recent explanation du jour for scarcity, residential vs commercial supply chains, isn't quite right. This person set out to buy an order of 250 lb of flour and it still vanished before their eyes. My experience with commercial toilet paper has been the same, watching it dry up just like retail. People seem to be stockpiling cheap familiar essentials, plain and simple, wherever they can get it.

ghaff 7y ago
Who knows what's going on in the commercial supply chain though. The usual buyers are canceling orders so the upstream distributors--maybe even manufacturers--are also canceling without necessarily anticipating being able to sell direct to consumers. That said... >People seem to be stockpiling cheap familiar essentials, plain and simple, wherever they can get it. I'm sure there's some truth to this. I'm not stocking up on huge quantities of things I don't need. But, for example, a couple weeks ago there happened to be one bag of my favored flour in the store so I grabbed it even though I wasn't necessarily at the point where I would normally buy it. I also have an extra dozen eggs at home. Etc. Multiply that behavior by most people and that's a lot of extra buying from stores and inventory scattered around everyone's houses even though most people aren't doing the two-year supply of beans level of prepping.
jefftk 7y ago
Not 250lb -- 2500lb!

themmes 7y ago

My local supermarket here in the Netherlands split their toiletpaper section and spread it across the store to make use of this stupidity.

organsnyder 7y ago
I fail to see how going to the normal location when looking for an item can be called "stupidity".
- Denvercoder9 7y ago
  I think the stupidity refered to here are the people buying pallets full of toilet paper.
  - ghaff 7y ago
    How many people are really buying "pallets"? It's probably more like people picking up another one of those big 18-roll packages even though they're not at the point yet where they would stock up under normal circumstances. And that adds up to a lot (of a bulky product) in the aggregate.
    - vonmoltke 7y ago
      While not pallets, I have read anecdotal reports here in NJ that stores are selling out of toilet paper within hours after opening following a restock, so it seems to be more than just buying an extra package every time someone goes to the store. The only way I have been able to get any since this started is the store I mentioned elsewhere that is selling individual institutional rolls.
      - ghaff 7y ago
        TBF, the many people who don't keep a lot of extra stock in the house probably got caught out early on even as the usage was going up a lot. So there probably are genuinely people who need it at this point and they're buying more than they usually do. (And, yes, a lot of people who are in the store for other reasons may well grab a package of TP even if they don't really need it and wouldn't normally have bought it.)

timerol 7y ago

It's perfectly rational to want to buy twice as much flour if it's the same price it normally is, but not be willing to pay extra for the organic flour. It depends on the individuals willingness to pay and their estimation of the probability that the situation gets much worse. For most Americans, they will eventually use their normal brand of flour, so buying extra is essentially no extra cost. (Time-value of money over, say, 6 months means that we're talking about a 1% difference here.) It's a cheap hedge against supply disruptions. But that's not very likely to happen. The organic brand is often at least 20% more expensive, making the calculus not worthwhile. Put another way, if you expect flour prices to rise 10%, you should buy as much flour as you will use before it goes bad at today's prices, and 0 organic flour at a 20% premium.

natch 7y ago
>It's perfectly rational to want to buy twice as much flour if it's the same price it normally is, but not be willing to pay extra for the organic flour. Knowingly putting pesticides in your body never seems rational to me, even if it saves some money. But if they were going to do that anyway, then sure, your point stands.
- cyphar 7y ago
  Organic products use pesticides, it's just that they often use older pesticide technologies or supplement the use of pesticides with other techniques for repelling pests. Most organic pesticides are no more healthy nor environmentally friendly than modern synthetic pesticides (maybe this wasn't true when DDT was popular, but these days it is).
  - natch 7y ago
    Yeah I’m aware the world isn’t perfect, and some things are not as labeled, but thanks for the heads up.