Panic buying has an amplifying effect. When one hears that something one uses is suddenly scarce, one wants to buy some so one doesn’t run short. After standing in that line on Friday, I spent the weekend thinking about ways to avoid doing that again. That meant taking inventory and buying enough of everything, so I could eat for a month.
It wasn’t as difficult to do as it could have been. Years ago, I realized stores could not be depended up to have something I needed when I needed it.
When I was a child in Michigan, my parents drove twenty miles to the next city to buy groceries every Saturday. Supermarkets didn’t yet exist, and they preferred visiting the place they grew up to navigating the local markets.
Once supermarkets were open in my hometown, my parents would shop day-to-day. My father would call in the afternoon, and they would discuss what to have for dinner. If my mother had the car, and this was an era when people only had one car, she would spend time putting on makeup to go shopping.
I continued their patterns when I lived in cities. There was always someplace that was open.
This changed when I returned to Michigan in the late 1970s. MBAs were talking about maximizing profits and market efficiencies. They discussed queueing theory. That was research on how long people would stand in line before they get fed up and leave.
I lived in a newly opened suburban area and there were no grocery stores. Either chains hadn’t yet seen a market, or were waiting for it to to get larger before acting or thought, as long as there was no competition, they didn’t need to act; their other stores would suffice.
When it became a burden to drive an hour to buy groceries, I began purchasing enough to last a long time. The habits stood me in good stead here after Furrs closed and I had to go to Santa Fé to shop.
It soon became obvious that stores there were often out of the things I wanted. But, then along came Amazon. I ordered in bulk from them to save the price of postage.
One thing I had bought from them was procedure masks. Insulation leaches out of my attic, especially when the furnace is running at night. Since I suspect it isn’t good for my lungs, I wear a mask when I’m sleeping. I also wear them when I’m handling chemicals in the yard, or working around shrubs with dust that makes me cough.
I reuse the masks I use in the house, so a box lasts a while, but not as long as it might take for the national stockpile to be replenished.
In late February, when Coronavirus was still just in Seattle, I went to Amazon, using the brand name I always used. There were a couple boxes available, but at three times the usual price. One vendor just tripled the price. Another kept the original price, but charged $40 for shipping. I wondered if that was to cover the costs of shipping to overseas customers.
I knew I was being exploited, but I also feared the consequences of not having them. I paid the price.
Jack Shafer recently said, this wasn’t price gouging, but the workings of supply and demand in a free market. Actually, it was both, plus another example of the ways wealth defines who can purchase necessities.
Sources: Jack Shafer. "Stop Hating on the Hoarders." Politico website. 26 March 2020.
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