That’s the theme of a discussion at reddit.com. “Someone told me it was too late last fall,” the original poster recalls. “I went on to build a moderate canned prep.… Someone told me it was too late to prep for the pandemic in February. I went on to gather [personal protective equipment] before the stores emptied.”
Most Redditors nodded. But one suggested that if things go kablooey and some products become scarce on shelves, “buying up those supplies is not being a prepper but being a hoarder.”
“Hoarding” is a word used to disparage somebody else’s foresight and concern for survival. If something you need is in short supply, it is reasonable to stock up, if you can. (Even if it’s toilet paper and comedians chortle.) If the market is allowed to function — so that sellers of highly demanded goods can charge what the market will bear — everyone who can scrape together the necessary extra dollars will be able to obtain those goods.
If a person buys up a supply only to resell it, not to restock his larder, he does us all a favor if the item is about to become desperately needed. He makes no money unless people can pay his price. But if we can afford the price, it is pointless to sputter about the extra expense — an expense we could have avoided had we prepared better for the future earlier on, saving more of the thing ourselves.
The cost of not being prepared can be quite high. Same with the value, hence purchase price, of necessities bought after disaster.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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2 replies on “It’s Never Too Late to Prep?”
My grandmother, who was born in Czarist Russia, used to say that the wasn’t hoarding things, just keeping the hoarders from buying them all up.
“to say that she wasn’t hoarding things”, not “to say that the wasn’t hoarding things”