> You didn’t respond to anything I wrote. Why should I continue this discussion? It wasn’t a supply chain inefficiency issue. Period.
Yet the only way he could have profited is if there was a shortage somewhere, a.k.a a supply chain inefficiency. Either the supply chain is imbalanced and he gets an opportunity to make money or it’s not. You can’t have it both ways.
> Nationwide chains are perfectly capable of recalling stock from stores that aren’t selling much of something, and moving it to stores that are running low on those supplies.
Not efficiently. Recalling inventory from stores is a very slow process that doesn’t fit their normal model. Also, the inventories don’t come from a grand central warehouse so moving stock from a Walmart in California to a Walmart in New York isn’t really something that the infrastructure can support.
> but there’s no need for them to massively mark up the prices to be incentivized to do so. Unless the product is intended to be a loss leader, they already have a profit margin factored in.
That’s incompetence on the local chains, not that they don’t like more profit. Managers have no incentives to monitor prices and redistribute to higher priced markets so the local chains sell at bad prices.
> Hoarders create an artificial shortage, in hopes of jacking up the price.
No, hoarders do not create shortages. They try to profit during shortages. It’s a critical distinction. Hoarders did not account for the toilet paper shortage, the massive change from commercial to private TP consumption did that.
I recommend reading up on how markets get cornered to gain an understanding of what is required to artificially create a shortage. You’ll quickly realize that it takes an obscene amount of purchasing to meaningfully move a market.
Otherwise we’d have monthly occurrences of people cornering bottled water markets without there being an impending storm.
TLDR; shortages exist because everyone is buying more. People just don’t like price gouging because they are emotional and don’t like paying more when there is a shortage despite this being the mechanism that drives markets around the globe every day (energy, grain, beef, pork, currency, etc).
> Either the supply chain is imbalanced and he gets an opportunity to make money or it’s not. You can’t have it both ways.
But they can, because supply chains can actually run in both directions. GP explicitly mentioned the concept of recalling the stock. And while the supply flowing in reverse isn't moving as efficiently as it normally is, it's still likely much more efficient than a guy fedexing packages to random people across the country.
Yet the only way he could have profited is if there was a shortage somewhere, a.k.a a supply chain inefficiency. Either the supply chain is imbalanced and he gets an opportunity to make money or it’s not. You can’t have it both ways.
> Nationwide chains are perfectly capable of recalling stock from stores that aren’t selling much of something, and moving it to stores that are running low on those supplies.
Not efficiently. Recalling inventory from stores is a very slow process that doesn’t fit their normal model. Also, the inventories don’t come from a grand central warehouse so moving stock from a Walmart in California to a Walmart in New York isn’t really something that the infrastructure can support.
> but there’s no need for them to massively mark up the prices to be incentivized to do so. Unless the product is intended to be a loss leader, they already have a profit margin factored in.
That’s incompetence on the local chains, not that they don’t like more profit. Managers have no incentives to monitor prices and redistribute to higher priced markets so the local chains sell at bad prices.
> Hoarders create an artificial shortage, in hopes of jacking up the price.
No, hoarders do not create shortages. They try to profit during shortages. It’s a critical distinction. Hoarders did not account for the toilet paper shortage, the massive change from commercial to private TP consumption did that.
I recommend reading up on how markets get cornered to gain an understanding of what is required to artificially create a shortage. You’ll quickly realize that it takes an obscene amount of purchasing to meaningfully move a market.
Otherwise we’d have monthly occurrences of people cornering bottled water markets without there being an impending storm.
TLDR; shortages exist because everyone is buying more. People just don’t like price gouging because they are emotional and don’t like paying more when there is a shortage despite this being the mechanism that drives markets around the globe every day (energy, grain, beef, pork, currency, etc).