5 ms·

Just like toilet paper, hoarding is just game theory in action. If you don't take part in the madness, you're at a disadvantage as the "sucker". For toilet pap

Just like toilet paper, hoarding is just game theory in action. If you don't take part in the madness, you're at a disadvantage as the "sucker". For toilet paper, the cost of that disadvantage is having to wash your backside with the shower head and the benefit is the warm fuzzies of doing the right thing. For a business with no chips, it could be an existential threat. Warm fuzzies don't pay salaries. The only way to avoid it is to have every company in the world to agree to not hoard, and harshly punish "defectors" somehow. Or have the supplier strictly ration supply, which doesn't work if the supply is coming from existing stock in the hands of distributors unless they also cooperate (or collude, depending on how you look at it). None of that is remotely possible in the global industrial system. JIT is often blamed, but to avoid it, trillions of dollars worth of material would need to be hoarded constantly, which is its own problem: storage costs money, logistics and space, and its a substantial risk if you end up not needing it or the goods expire or become obsolete on a shelf and overproduction is a waste of resources. Going bust because you hoarded 5 million components that you never actually needed and couldn't offload is still going bust.

bluGill 5y ago
What is really needed is expose the JIT pipeline to upstream. We are buying 10,000 parts but need 100 per week, figure out what works with your production pipeline to deliver at that rate or above.
- rocqua 5y ago
  Issue is that people will skew the numbers reported upstream. This way they can affect what their 'fair share' would be. This tends to devolve into everyone mis-reporting numbers in the same direction, causing the reported numbers to be useless upstream.
CamperBob2 5y ago
The other way to avoid it is to have the government step in and impose rationing, as done in times of war... at least, back when war meant the common American citizen was actually expected to sacrifice for the greater effort. If the semiconductor shortage continues to worsen, I think we'll start to see calls for this type of intervention. One step that could be taken immediately is to prohibit sales from the distribution channel to overseas brokers, which are currently resulting in stupidity like $800 FPGAs that used to cost $20. But it's also true that this sort of market manipulation has downsides of its own. I honestly don't know what the right thing to do here is. But I do know the industry had best unfuck itself, and that right soon, or this situation is going to have major consequences in everyday life.
- jsymolon 5y ago
  > ... is going to have major consequences in everyday life. is going to ? Already has. Used car prices start climbing Jul '20. https://www.cargurus.com/Cars/price-trends/ https://www.cargurus.com/Cars/price-trends/
  - KptMarchewa 5y ago
    Car prices going 5-10% up are very far from _major_ consequences.
    - Kirby64 5y ago
      You reading the same page that the GP linked? It says YoY car prices are up 36%... which is enormous. That's got a huge ripple effect across the market, as best as I can tell, because it pushes people to buy older/lower cost cars across the board. Either that or they continue driving their old/potentially unsafe car even longer.
      - KptMarchewa 5y ago
        Apologies. The index below does not correspond in any way to chart, which confused me.
rootsudo 5y ago
For most of the world, bidets are a thing an it is a curious thing as to why the toliet paper industry is so powerful in the west. I prefer the bidet, and seeing normal reams of toliet paper cost now $30 for the "mega" value pack, I'm amused at the production of something, the trucking of something, the retailing of something that is ultimately discarded . The whole thinking and execution of it is backwards. --- It is remotely possible, the governments can set immediate import/export restrictions and also guide manufacturing as they did during Covid for incubators and such. While it won't be effective, it can either help the stock/supply rebound, or throw into more fear...
- com2kid 5y ago
  > For most of the world, bidets are a thing an it is a curious thing as to why the toliet paper industry is so powerful in the west. At least in America, my Grandmother's generation (great depression) grew up with outhouses. When homes were renovated to add an indoor bathroom, they were done on the cheap. Heck pre-pandemic the idea of a bidet was crazy, I had to work hard to find one that was reliable and at a good price. Now they are super available and advertised all over the place, but when I went to get one installed 10 years ago it was not easy just finding a reliable, cold water, model! Warm water models were obscenely priced in the US. It was likely a chicken/egg thing. Consumers didn't know about them, so no one made them for the US market, which meant the few that did exist cost an arm and a leg, so no one bothered to buy them so no one bothered to mass produce them. On top of that, when I inquired about getting an outlet installed behind my toilet for an electric bidet, my plumber and electrician thought I was crazy! Same question in 2021, "sure we do that all the time".
  - adhesive_wombat 5y ago
    Same here, they all come from the Far East, though they have at least started fitting the right plugs rather than a deathtrap adaptor. Pretty sure mine didn't make them much money since they didn't include a pair of stainless steel mounting brackets, and they FedExed them to me. From Korea. In a box 100 times the necessary volume.

bluGill 5y ago

What is really needed is expose the JIT pipeline to upstream. We are buying 10,000 parts but need 100 per week, figure out what works with your production pipeline to deliver at that rate or above.

rocqua 5y ago
Issue is that people will skew the numbers reported upstream. This way they can affect what their 'fair share' would be. This tends to devolve into everyone mis-reporting numbers in the same direction, causing the reported numbers to be useless upstream.

CamperBob2 5y ago

The other way to avoid it is to have the government step in and impose rationing, as done in times of war... at least, back when war meant the common American citizen was actually expected to sacrifice for the greater effort. If the semiconductor shortage continues to worsen, I think we'll start to see calls for this type of intervention. One step that could be taken immediately is to prohibit sales from the distribution channel to overseas brokers, which are currently resulting in stupidity like $800 FPGAs that used to cost $20. But it's also true that this sort of market manipulation has downsides of its own. I honestly don't know what the right thing to do here is. But I do know the industry had best unfuck itself, and that right soon, or this situation is going to have major consequences in everyday life.

jsymolon 5y ago
> ... is going to have major consequences in everyday life. is going to ? Already has. Used car prices start climbing Jul '20. https://www.cargurus.com/Cars/price-trends/ https://www.cargurus.com/Cars/price-trends/
- KptMarchewa 5y ago
  Car prices going 5-10% up are very far from _major_ consequences.
  - Kirby64 5y ago
    You reading the same page that the GP linked? It says YoY car prices are up 36%... which is enormous. That's got a huge ripple effect across the market, as best as I can tell, because it pushes people to buy older/lower cost cars across the board. Either that or they continue driving their old/potentially unsafe car even longer.
    - KptMarchewa 5y ago
      Apologies. The index below does not correspond in any way to chart, which confused me.

rootsudo 5y ago

For most of the world, bidets are a thing an it is a curious thing as to why the toliet paper industry is so powerful in the west. I prefer the bidet, and seeing normal reams of toliet paper cost now $30 for the "mega" value pack, I'm amused at the production of something, the trucking of something, the retailing of something that is ultimately discarded . The whole thinking and execution of it is backwards. --- It is remotely possible, the governments can set immediate import/export restrictions and also guide manufacturing as they did during Covid for incubators and such. While it won't be effective, it can either help the stock/supply rebound, or throw into more fear...

com2kid 5y ago
> For most of the world, bidets are a thing an it is a curious thing as to why the toliet paper industry is so powerful in the west. At least in America, my Grandmother's generation (great depression) grew up with outhouses. When homes were renovated to add an indoor bathroom, they were done on the cheap. Heck pre-pandemic the idea of a bidet was crazy, I had to work hard to find one that was reliable and at a good price. Now they are super available and advertised all over the place, but when I went to get one installed 10 years ago it was not easy just finding a reliable, cold water, model! Warm water models were obscenely priced in the US. It was likely a chicken/egg thing. Consumers didn't know about them, so no one made them for the US market, which meant the few that did exist cost an arm and a leg, so no one bothered to buy them so no one bothered to mass produce them. On top of that, when I inquired about getting an outlet installed behind my toilet for an electric bidet, my plumber and electrician thought I was crazy! Same question in 2021, "sure we do that all the time".
- adhesive_wombat 5y ago
  Same here, they all come from the Far East, though they have at least started fitting the right plugs rather than a deathtrap adaptor. Pretty sure mine didn't make them much money since they didn't include a pair of stainless steel mounting brackets, and they FedExed them to me. From Korea. In a box 100 times the necessary volume.