4 ms·

The solution to hoarding is quotas, not price ceilings. Limit how many people can buy, but don't try to control the sale price.

vorpalhex 6y ago
Quotas are hard to enforce meaningfully. They work well when people are already disposed to be helpful - but even then they still have issues. Our local grocery chain had a quota on milk (for good reason) and the amount of fights and nearly brawls over it were amazing, despite being a need for some families and not others (it's inconvenient to me to not have cereal, it's a big deal for someone with young kids to not have milk) and generally reasonable limits (up to 2 gallons, more than enough for cereal/coffee/baking). People go to crazy limits to evade the quotas (visiting multiple stores, making multiple purchases in the same trip, etc) and often times they do simply because the quota exists - how many people actually buy more than 2 gallons of milk normally? TLDR, people are dumb fearful animals and that can cause quotas to backfire in a way that price controls don't (but they have other downsides).
- coding123 6y ago
  That would affect like what, 4% of the total stock. I don't see more than 1% of the population doing things like that.
- jdm2212 6y ago
  If you let prices go up, that will mostly prevent regular people from hoarding. You only have to enforce quotas against quasi-professionals looking to spend big, buy in massive bulk, and corner the market.
- ComputerGuru 6y ago
  > how many people actually buy more than 2 gallons of milk normally? We certainly do. At least six gallons at a time, because my time is money (and mostly because grocery shopping is a chore) and I don’t want to make repeated trips to the grocery store when I don’t have to. I calculate the consumption rate for adults, babies, and toddlers in the house and based off the expiration date and my own experimental findings (based largely off of fridge temperature and brand of milk as a proxy for homogenization method/temperature/duration) I get the maximum I can without it spoiling, which happened just once due to a bad batch that must have been stored wrong in shipping because it spoiled before even the sell by date.
- ardy42 6y ago
  > Quotas are hard to enforce meaningfully. They work well when people are already disposed to be helpful - but even then they still have issues. That's not true, you just have to design them properly. For instance: 3M knows its customers, and can decide give retail hardware stores an N95 quota of zero and hospital systems large quotas, roughly based on need. Those organizations aren't going to get into slap fights in an aisle. > Our local grocery chain had a quota on milk (for good reason) and the amount of fights and nearly brawls over it were amazing An unsourced anecdote about a failure of an unspecified retail quota system is not good evidence against emergency quotas in general. It might not even be accurate. > People go to crazy limits to evade the quotas (visiting multiple stores, making multiple purchases in the same trip, etc) and often times they do simply because the quota exists - how many people actually buy more than 2 gallons of milk normally? IMHO, the main goal of loosely-enforced retail quotas like those is not so much to strictly limit people to the quota, but to increase friction to frustrate hoarders and profiteers.
  - ComputerGuru 6y ago
    > hardware stores an N9s quota of zero See, this is a problem. Idiots/scalpers/resellers/paranoids raiding hardware stores for masks is terrible, but construction was considered an essential business country-wide and never halted meaning you still had minimum wage day laborers (not to mention unionized construction workers making well over that) working in environments N95 masks were designed for that had no access to PPE but still needed to report for work because they need to put food on the table and don’t legally qualify for unemployment (since the jobs are there and they’re not being fired/laid off).
    - ardy42 6y ago
      > but construction was considered an essential business country-wide and never baked meaning you still had minimum wage day laborers (and unionized construction workers making well over that) working in environments N95 masks were designed for that had no access to PPE but still needed to report for work IMHO, most N95s on retail shelves probably wouldn't have gone to construction workers anyway; they'd have been snatched up by consumers with no real need. I do think it would have been reasonable allocate a quota to to go to construction supply companies that weren't open to the general public, though, for precisely the reasons you outlined. This story is pretty interesting, construction workers/companies are having to make similar kinds of adaptations to the shortage as healthcare workers are: https://www.inquirer.com/real-estate/coronavirus-construction-n95-masks-pennsylvania-20200517.html https://www.inquirer.com/real-estate/coronavirus-constructio... > To combat supply shortages, the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration has temporarily adjusted some of its requirements for both health-care and construction workers, including allowing them to wear N95 respirator masks for longer than their intended use — normally a day or two for construction workers — and to use other types of respirators, such as KN95s shipped from China.... > OSHA is advising employers to reduce the need for N95 masks at jobsites any way they can, a Department of Labor spokesperson said. The National Association of Home Builders advises those who can’t find masks to minimize dust by vacuuming and wet cutting. The article even talked about construction companies and unions donating their existing mask stockpiles.

vorpalhex 6y ago

Quotas are hard to enforce meaningfully. They work well when people are already disposed to be helpful - but even then they still have issues. Our local grocery chain had a quota on milk (for good reason) and the amount of fights and nearly brawls over it were amazing, despite being a need for some families and not others (it's inconvenient to me to not have cereal, it's a big deal for someone with young kids to not have milk) and generally reasonable limits (up to 2 gallons, more than enough for cereal/coffee/baking). People go to crazy limits to evade the quotas (visiting multiple stores, making multiple purchases in the same trip, etc) and often times they do simply because the quota exists - how many people actually buy more than 2 gallons of milk normally? TLDR, people are dumb fearful animals and that can cause quotas to backfire in a way that price controls don't (but they have other downsides).

coding123 6y ago
That would affect like what, 4% of the total stock. I don't see more than 1% of the population doing things like that.
jdm2212 6y ago
If you let prices go up, that will mostly prevent regular people from hoarding. You only have to enforce quotas against quasi-professionals looking to spend big, buy in massive bulk, and corner the market.
ComputerGuru 6y ago
> how many people actually buy more than 2 gallons of milk normally? We certainly do. At least six gallons at a time, because my time is money (and mostly because grocery shopping is a chore) and I don’t want to make repeated trips to the grocery store when I don’t have to. I calculate the consumption rate for adults, babies, and toddlers in the house and based off the expiration date and my own experimental findings (based largely off of fridge temperature and brand of milk as a proxy for homogenization method/temperature/duration) I get the maximum I can without it spoiling, which happened just once due to a bad batch that must have been stored wrong in shipping because it spoiled before even the sell by date.
ardy42 6y ago
> Quotas are hard to enforce meaningfully. They work well when people are already disposed to be helpful - but even then they still have issues. That's not true, you just have to design them properly. For instance: 3M knows its customers, and can decide give retail hardware stores an N95 quota of zero and hospital systems large quotas, roughly based on need. Those organizations aren't going to get into slap fights in an aisle. > Our local grocery chain had a quota on milk (for good reason) and the amount of fights and nearly brawls over it were amazing An unsourced anecdote about a failure of an unspecified retail quota system is not good evidence against emergency quotas in general. It might not even be accurate. > People go to crazy limits to evade the quotas (visiting multiple stores, making multiple purchases in the same trip, etc) and often times they do simply because the quota exists - how many people actually buy more than 2 gallons of milk normally? IMHO, the main goal of loosely-enforced retail quotas like those is not so much to strictly limit people to the quota, but to increase friction to frustrate hoarders and profiteers.
- ComputerGuru 6y ago
  > hardware stores an N9s quota of zero See, this is a problem. Idiots/scalpers/resellers/paranoids raiding hardware stores for masks is terrible, but construction was considered an essential business country-wide and never halted meaning you still had minimum wage day laborers (not to mention unionized construction workers making well over that) working in environments N95 masks were designed for that had no access to PPE but still needed to report for work because they need to put food on the table and don’t legally qualify for unemployment (since the jobs are there and they’re not being fired/laid off).
  - ardy42 6y ago
    > but construction was considered an essential business country-wide and never baked meaning you still had minimum wage day laborers (and unionized construction workers making well over that) working in environments N95 masks were designed for that had no access to PPE but still needed to report for work IMHO, most N95s on retail shelves probably wouldn't have gone to construction workers anyway; they'd have been snatched up by consumers with no real need. I do think it would have been reasonable allocate a quota to to go to construction supply companies that weren't open to the general public, though, for precisely the reasons you outlined. This story is pretty interesting, construction workers/companies are having to make similar kinds of adaptations to the shortage as healthcare workers are: https://www.inquirer.com/real-estate/coronavirus-construction-n95-masks-pennsylvania-20200517.html https://www.inquirer.com/real-estate/coronavirus-constructio... > To combat supply shortages, the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration has temporarily adjusted some of its requirements for both health-care and construction workers, including allowing them to wear N95 respirator masks for longer than their intended use — normally a day or two for construction workers — and to use other types of respirators, such as KN95s shipped from China.... > OSHA is advising employers to reduce the need for N95 masks at jobsites any way they can, a Department of Labor spokesperson said. The National Association of Home Builders advises those who can’t find masks to minimize dust by vacuuming and wet cutting. The article even talked about construction companies and unions donating their existing mask stockpiles.