Price Gouging: Hoarding Toilet Paper

SELF QUARANTINED, sheltered in place, too wet to play out, to dry to stay in, with little else to do, I betook myself to fanciful speculation. Namely, to ascertaining teh reason why people are hoarding toilet paper. Any ubiquitous catastrophic circumstance of sufficient severity to severely limit the long term future availability of basic consumer necessities would, one might think, doom civilization itself, and perhaps human existence. If we are destined to return to the stone age, why hoard toilet paper, when, ultimately, a return to more primitive sanitary sanitary measures will be required? My plan, should I ever run out, is to "shit and shower". Hoarding, which in its extreme form we regard as a mental illness, can be regarded as a normal human response to perceived scarcity. According to classic economic theory, free market capitalism functions effieiency, producing prosperity for all, when, and only when, people generally behave rationally, i their own self interests. Human behavior is seldom entirely rational; hoarding, in a stable economy, less so. Widespread commodity hoarding leads naturally extreme price inflation, price gouging, in accordance with the law of supply and demand. price gouging can be seen as a rational response to opportunity, since capitalism is nothing other than the exploitation of opportunity and resources for maximum personal profit. Free market capitalism never functions efficiently naturally without government intervention, because because people never behave entirely rationally, harmful practices such as hoarding, price gouging, monopoly formation, and exploitation of human labor can never be eliminated or even ameliorated without government intervention, regulation. Do not fault hoarders, exploiters, price gougers, monopolists, for their behavior, which, though undesirable, are usually perfectly rational responses to existing economic circumstances. Fault faulty economic theory, which argues that in theory a free market can exist, that individual or societal behavior can in theory be rational, must be for capitalism to work, and that they ever are rational. Classic free market theory holds that government actin to regulate the economy is undesirable, when in fact it is urgently necessary. I myself do not behave rationally, but at least I do not hoard toilet paper. Still, the question of precisely why anyone does is still kicking my butt, which, so far, is still clean.