When there are sufficient supplies of things like food, like now, and people start hoarding, shortages become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Would it make sense to encourage the panic to start too soon? First the customers would cause a shortage, then the producers would increase their production in hope for easy profit, then the shortage would end with everyone having enough stuff at home… and then the actual need would come.
More simply, if people are going to empty the shops eventually, I prefer if they do it one month before the actual crisis rather than one week before it. Because during one month, the market may fix the shortage, but one week is not enough time to do much.
It sounds like a good idea, but won’t actually work in practice for most goods. Supply chain resilience is minimal, the demand would be near-global, rather than local and possible to fulfill via redicrecting supplies, and forecasting of supplies and just-in-time production requires far more warning than the current crisis allows for most goods. It’s not like there is tons of excess goods or farm capacity just sitting around to be used when demand suddenly jumps—and the dynamics in these systems can be messy.
It seems to me that it doesn’t have to work for most goods. People can make do with eg. beans and rice for a while until things settle down. Would the government be able to distribute big bags of beans and rice to people?
Would it make sense to encourage the panic to start too soon? First the customers would cause a shortage, then the producers would increase their production in hope for easy profit, then the shortage would end with everyone having enough stuff at home… and then the actual need would come.
More simply, if people are going to empty the shops eventually, I prefer if they do it one month before the actual crisis rather than one week before it. Because during one month, the market may fix the shortage, but one week is not enough time to do much.
It sounds like a good idea, but won’t actually work in practice for most goods. Supply chain resilience is minimal, the demand would be near-global, rather than local and possible to fulfill via redicrecting supplies, and forecasting of supplies and just-in-time production requires far more warning than the current crisis allows for most goods. It’s not like there is tons of excess goods or farm capacity just sitting around to be used when demand suddenly jumps—and the dynamics in these systems can be messy.
It seems to me that it doesn’t have to work for most goods. People can make do with eg. beans and rice for a while until things settle down. Would the government be able to distribute big bags of beans and rice to people?