I spent much of 2020 trying to find things like bread in US supermarkets. It's funny how people harken back to Russia 40 years ago as if I was not walking through empty supermarkets four years ago.
There was only a shortage because it wasn't a free market, i.e. nobody wanted to make the dick move of raising the price of bread or toilet paper, because it would cause hardship.
If the prices had been allowed to rise, supply would have equaled demand very quickly, and the shelves would have been stocked as ever. Of course, some people wouldn't have been able to afford them, so we needed some external, non-market mechanism (rationing) to keep prices lower.
There is no such thing in the US as a truly free market.
While rising prices for the toilet paper would have quickly solved the shortage situation it would have elicited the wrath of local and national authorities. And those authorities can make life hell for anyone trying to charge whatever the market will bear.
> There is no such thing in the US as a truly free market.
Just like there are no circles in the US which are exactly 1.234 meters in diameter. Yes, the concept of a "free market" is an ideal, like the concept of a circle is. That doesn't mean that there aren't instantiations of either one which are closer to the ideal than others.
The market for programmers is one of the freest there is. We don't have guilds limiting how many people can be programmers (like, e.g. the American Medical Association does for doctors.) And we don't have unions forcing arbitrary seniority rules, or uniform pay scales.
And government regulation varies from state to state, but most states are "at will" states--you can either quit or be fired at any time for any reason. You don't have to provide any minimum amount of vacation.
The market in programmers is way more free than, say, the market in automobiles or airplanes, where there are all kinds of regulations about safety, etc. But if you can't afford a Ferrari, or a private jet, that doesn't mean there is a Ferrari shortage, or a private jet shortage.
And if you can't afford to pay market wages for programmers, that doesn't mean there is a shortage of programmers either.
Toilet paper ran out because inventories are kept to a bare minimum. Big box stores maintain a one day supply to keep inventory turnover tight. It had nothing to do with manufacturing capacity (Russian example).
Household toilet paper ran out (commercial did not, but its made for very different dispensers) because the supply chains are hyperspecialized and cannot adapt on any reasonable timetable. It absolutely did have to do with manufacturing capacity (otherwise it would have resolved much more quickly), and a rapid demand realignment of where people were using restrooms. The absence of price gouging laws would not have dealt with the fundamental problem, or even with the hoarding response once the supply problems became visible, it would just have shifted which hoarders cleaned out the stocks to the richest rather than merely the fastest, and would have put a lot more money in the hands of sellers.
I didn't claim that the cause of the problem was with manufacturing capacity.
But if the US didn't have implicit price controls ("just try raising prices 3x at this time of national need, you will regret it" from politicians), the deficits would have resolved in a week. My 2c.
Sure, if there were not price controls, the shelves would have been full of toilet paper.....but a large segment of the population wouldn't have been able to afford to buy it.
I don't know if you've ever been so poor that you couldn't buy toilet paper. But I sure have, and let me tell you, sneaking napkins from starbucks, and getting ink all over your hands from using newspapers goes from being inconvenient to being massively depressing real quick.
What kills me are these "sunshine capitalists" who just loooove the free market when they are making money, but who are the fist to cry "shortages!!!" and complain about the market value of engineering talent when it comes to spending money.
Heh, I have grown up not having the toilet paper -- workers paradise, stores carrying mostly the necessities, and luxuries like the toilet paper are only for the few big cities. Using scraps of paper does not kill you. And dental work without Novocaine does not kill you either (although I sure prefer it done with Novocaine now).
But living in this workers paradise I have seen real people suffer from the lack of medication that was available to anyone in the West. The party leadership did not find it necessary (or easy) to produce it locally, so it was only available to those with the right connections. And so on.
I am now a well-off, spoiled American (and the above reads like an O'Henry? story about two rich gentlemen arguing in a restaurant on who had it harder during their youth), but first impressions linger and I will take capitalism over socialism any day. Yes, capitalism has many failings, but replacing the guidance of money with the wise rule of the elite will always lead to a Venezuela-type mismanagement. My 2c.
The shelves wouldn't be stocked because stores and factories magically appeared; they would be stocked because the price was so high that nobody could afford to hoard bread or toilet paper.
