Panic Buyers

Over recent weeks it has become hard to find toilet rolls on the supermarket shelves. Rolls of toilet paper are physically large and very cheap so it only takes a tiny variation in the rate of buying for a supermarket to be stripped bare.

I wish that the invisible hand of the market would have acted more swiftly and more harshly. Imagine all the good things that would have happened if it suddenly cost £20 to buy 4 rolls of Andrex: Demand would have been reduced (Our selfish and easily panicked citizens would still be stocking up but their greed would have been tempered). Supply would become more efficient. If all of a sudden the Co-op could make a cool £50,000 by driving one lorry of loo rolls from a well stocked store to an empty one then it would get spread around the country to where it was needed in no time. Supply would be guaranteed. I would be holding out for the price to fall, but I would know that when I was half way through my last roll I could just walk to the shops and buy some more - at a price. Usage would be more efficient. People would suddenly find they can use less of the stuff when you hit them in the wallet.

Strawman: I can practically hear my NPC readers whining about the poor no longer being able to afford to wipe their bums. Think what they're really saying: That despite all the tools of taxation, national insurance, benefits and rebates they haven't been able to organise matters such that the poor and the elderly can afford basic necessities. The thing to do at this point is not to let them take charge of the national rationing or distribution of toilet rolls, they have already proved themselves incapable.

Strawman2: But if 4 rolls of toilet paper is more expensive than a bottle of whisky, won't the most disadvantaged in society do without it altogether? Maybe, and what business is it of yours to decide whether one of our citizens would prefer a tidy arse or a weekend bender?. You might be paternal, but you're an authoritarian villain all the same.

Richard "Von Mises" B