"Stocking up" vs "Hoarding"?

hello people
I have been reading this thread and i have pick a few thing that is my insight , right or wrong you be the judge personally i don't care i have a blind spot the ( a so called apathy)
first I see people taking about: a social (civil) obligation, charity and foresight lets start with foresight
with foresight you or we, who have thought and seen of the "what ifs" have prepared. but we did it for our own reason mostly which is family. that is a small thing in the scheme of things.
social oblgation: should we all have it? most people do and that leads to charity to those who need it but you can only do so much and then it starts to the you. I say were is the social obligation of all those other citizen? i give up the same as everyone else and not before hand they have the same access to the information i use, so why didn't they come up with the same insight as my own. At least half the people here on this site are looking after their own but how many are majors or councilors that are pushing their own insight onto their community? if you think you should have a social obligation, are you working for the community toward that goal?. i think not. I must admit some one high up must of though of it at some stage otherwise you would never of had FEMA but there is only so much that can
be done by them it take people that a driven at all levels to make thing work.

tell me how many people have you tried to convince of the needs to stock? how many of you have joined the (volenteered) emergency services to help spread your ideas and ideals? not many. I haven't because as much i try to convince people. people don't want to listen.

I believe you can only give what you are willing to give. sharing what you only help you, when you are sharing with like minded people because they will realise that what in one way (such as food given) is because your needs maybe different late on, (those needs may be knowledge or repairs or even medical)

I say there is no hoarding garbage here only a imperitive to preserve self first, then family and friends , then neihbours and after that community most of us are at the family first level

am i wrong?

I don't think this is wrong.



This on the other hand, I do not agree with.

This is an unpleasant reality I am faced with. I have made sacrifices and chose a way of life to protect my family. Like I pointed out earlier, there are 30-35 adults on my one block alone! Now in the bigger picture, there are THOUSANDS of people within one mile of my home.

Just WHO am I supposed to share with? By whose standards? Yours?
You have made it clear that you think I am supposed to open my pantry or I am a 'piece of garbage'.

SO tell me Morrison Corner, just what exactly do you think I am supposed to do? I am not being sarcastic nor angry. I am quite serious. I would be very interested to hear your take on my situation.

On this forum, Burb, people lump together short term inconveniences, longer term upheavals, political uprising, and all out nuclear war, as if they are the same situations. "Me for mine! My stores.. touch 'em and it's war!"

When, in fact, short of nuclear... at which point it probably won't much matter what you decide to do... all else is inconvenience of a relatively short term duration. If we learned nothing from Katrina we should have taken note of the fact that at most the average family was able to save what they could get into their cars and go with. All else, no matter how nicely stored, was a loss. But for arguement sake we'll say you were on the fringes of the problem and able to stay put with your stores... help arrived, the trucks rolled, the stores opened, within a matter of weeks. Not years. And while someone on the edges of the issue may have ended up in the uncomfortable situation of running out of diapers, the years of stores stacked up in hidden caches could easily have been used to feed the hungry if they showed up.

The evacuation plans for Boston and NY call for funnelling those people into the resort areas of Maine, NH, VT, and upstate NY. Our town alone has some 10,000 beds, if I remember the stats correctly. When the towers came down everyone I know assumed, from B&B owners to private homeowners to large hotels, that we were going to be hosting scores of refugees for some period of time. We all checked our pantries, bought a few things to plug holes, I washed sheets so they'd be fresh... and waited for the folks that never came. But we were ready for them.

Plan B might have been fielding the national guard to the ends of the state and blocking it off.. VT for VTers!

Now, do you have a problem with putting the national guard at the edges of a state and closing it to refugees from a disaster in a neighboring state? Yes? ok...

Do you have a problem with a church telling someone of a different faith they need to keep on moving even if it means they'll probably perish in the storm because they're the wrong faith? Yes? No?

Do you have an issue with tapping into your stores so you can take food to the elderly housing facility down the road with the big kitchen and staff who can feed many?

The trucks are going to roll Berg. Maybe not for a few days, but they're going to roll. The supplies are coming in, the electricity will come back on, and you'll still be living in that neighborhood.

But more to the point.. you'll still be living. How you behave will determine whether or not you can live with yourself.

"But they're MINE and I paid for them..." strikes me as irrelevant when the wind is blowing and someone needs shelter. If you extend this thinking out to its logical end, the church down the road from me should shut its doors to Catholics and Jews in an emergency.. they aren't one of them and should die in the storm. The Catholic church should tell the stranded motorist their church is three miles down the road, go there.

But of course, they wouldn't. In an emergency we're all in this together and we all do what we can to lighten the load. If you bring to the table food and expertise that's what you bring to the table. My husband and I, during hurricane Floyd, brought heavy equipment and chainsaws... we were out there during all but the very worst of it (when the trees were crashing down) clearing the road because one of our neighbors relied on tanked oxygen to survive and needed transport to the hospital if she couldn't breathe.

Now, we could have sat in our house with our equipment under cover and thought "our gas, our tractor, (our heads too... with branches falling all over the place). And it our neighbor died because she was "unprepared" and hadn't driven herself to the hospital at the first puff of wind... so be it.

But I simply do not understand that kind of thinking. You're not living in some third world country which lacks infrastucture and resources, where they can't get help to you for weeks on end, and yet many on this forum behave (our spout rhetoric) as if they do.

If it is a "game," like Wind in Her Hair's counting supplies instead of counting sheep, a little nightmare to give you the shivers in an otherwise perfectly safe world, that's one thing. But if it is, spouting the rhetoric as if you would, in fact, let a neighbor die for want of something you have in abundance makes you look decidedly fringe... and how did he put that...

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Icelandic Sheep and German Angora Rabbits

Now you are starting throw the apples in with the oranges in this thread.

You are mixing actions in with this thread about our stocking up vs. hoarding. This thread is about stocking up and when does it become hoarding.

You have absolutely no idea what else most of us are doing in our lives. You have no idea what sort of actions any one of us might be doing -or not!- for our neighbors or our community in our daily lives.
I'm not interested in some sort of sanctimonious I'm-a-better-neighbor-than-you-are contest. I don't agree with your line of reasoning, but then I don't have to.

If it makes you feel better about yourself to label me as a piece of garbage, go for it. Hope it helps.

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And you call others an antisocial piece of garbage? Who would come out with "I'm rather hoping some of the mothers hold their dying infants up to your windows so you can watch them cry for want of a miserable cup of your rice." SHEESH! Take a pill.

Some folks are just so sure the trucks will roll again. What if they don't? What if it's a katrina like situation in a half a dozen cities at once? Would you go into that stadium and give them all your food? Not feeding 4 people for a few weeks, but thousands for an hour. After that you'd simply wind up like them - without.

Charity is of course a good thing. But you must think of the worst case scenario also. Maybe those trucks will bring in new food in a few days. Watch the film of the cops looting during katrina and you might hesitate. Those trucks of food might just go the other way!

I would be happy to share. But at the same time it would be a deeper responsibility in me to make sure my family is taken care of first and foremost! IF there is guaranteed help on the way and IF I am sure I would not be taking food from my own family, only then would I pass it out to others. ONLY THEN. So truthfully I don't see that happening, as I have NO faith my government will be any better prepared than they have in the past, and this could be a lot worse and far spreading disaster.

I guess I'm just another "an antisocial piece of garbage" that believes my FIRST responsibility is to my family. This what if scenario on the good guy side says uncle sam will right things if we just hold on for a while. The "bad guy" scenario is that our government will fall apart and NOT be able to come to our rescue!

Love thy neighbor, but your family first!

Ozarkguy

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* Homesteading information at:

homesteadingwithozarkguy.com

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Burb, on this forum you will find many who consider themselves holier than thou. Sometimes I think we need a pond forum just to see how many of these self-professed saints can walk on water. I'd also point out that it is real easy to give when the items being offered belong to someone else.

One persons inconvenience (especially when it is someone else who is "inconvenienced") is someone elses major risk.

It would be interesting to tally what people actually put in their cars...... would it matter if they chose to save prada shoes rather than the contents of their pantry?

For arguments sake, how do you know "the trucks will roll"? Interesting juxtaposition of diapers and feeding the hungry.....are you perhaps suggesting "Let them eat diapers"?

If you have evacuation plans or buy into someone elses, that is your perogative. To insist that someone else who has no interest be subject to your decision to succor others is theft. You may argue extenuating circumstances but it is theft nonetheless. If all you propose to do is call people garbage, that is your perogative.

How kind of you to present it as only a binary choice. You are also comparing apples and oranges. If government represents that it will provide succor to evacuees,refugees or whatever label you care to append, then it is up to government to make good on it's promises. To claim rights to that which a prudent individual (no matter how much of their own resources they have chosen to devote to such an endeavor) has put away for their own sustenance and comfort is a different issue.

I have no problem whatsoever. Their church, their choice. I may have a comment on their actions to the extent that their actions differ from what they profess. That is a different issue.

If I volunteer the tapping into my stores then I obviously have no problem with it. If it is an attempt to coerce through force then I do have a problem with it and will choose how to deal with it at that point depending on the circumstances.

In FEMA you trust.

And that is the individuals issue, not yours. You come across as someone who would gladly be the yapping leader of a lynch mob.

That is your opinion and your perogative to act on. It is not your perogative to attempt to force others to subject themselves to your personal moral imperative. If you do so, you accept that those individuals may respond with force in kind.

You attempt to ascribe a single individual choice to all individuals and institutions (claiming this is the logical end) when in fact individuals will make different choices depending on a wide ranging number of factors.

And there is the rub of it. For those who take the time to make preparations (reasonable or unreasonable as you may deem it), they see that others have made the choice to spend money on designer jeans,vacations,big screen TVs,etc. Many of those preppers have sacrificed current consumption to protect themselves in times of need. You may personally choose to disregard the poor choices that many (or even some) may have made while others choose not to ignore those prior chocies.

You intentionally blur the line between friends and neighbors working together with strangers imposed on you by the government or through their own decision/lack or preparation.

I would be hesitant to make judgement on the choices of others to the extent that they were making choices about their own posessions and resources. My judgement regarding those who would seize what they themselves had not thought to put away is very simple.

If you are seeking validation or adulation for your choices, you will find none from me. The choices you made are the choices you made. Why didn't you stay out there during the worst of it? Why are your choices any more valid then the next persons? I am sure if we looked hard enough we could find someone who DID stay out during the worst of it and that would look down their nose at you for not being a good person and staying out there helping your fellow persons in their time of need.

Hurricanes don't arrive without warning. If you were really concerned about your neighbor you would have driven her to a safer place before the hurricane hit. Then she wouldn't ahve been dependent on your ability to play Paul Bunyan.

Your decision to help your neighbor may certainly be considered admirable. But what about all the neighbors you didn't help? You clearly made choices as to who should receive your succor and who should not. Why was your one neighbor worthy but others not? Why shouldn't you be upbraided and branded garbage for YOUR decisions?

So basically your claim isn't particularly a moral or ethical one. Why would there be a difference in the moral claim of one individual on another if it is a third world or a first world country? Your pseudo code would run something like if 1st world then require succor if 3rd world allow to die. What a humanitarian you are.

If I felt the difference was the survival of my family then I would let that neighbor die. You artifically set the stage by claiming that the posessor posesses in abundance. You set yourself as the arbiter of what abundance constitutes for others and how others should behave with regard to their property and their posessions.

The word I find most descriptive of your attitude is hubris.

Well said, I am not surprised by the folks on this thread that are nasty to the frugal and prepared ones.
Just read your post to MC MikeinOH good post.

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marching to the beat of a different drummer

(While you are entitled to your opinion, I think that level of selfishness is sickening. In our little scenerio here I'm rather hoping some of the mothers hold their dying infants up to your windows so you can watch them cry for want of a miserable cup of your rice. But by all means, sit on over 1000 days of rations while your neighbors have nothing for two weeks. Won't you feel good about how well you've planned![/QUOTE])

How wrong you are.

Sorry, but you have no idea what you will really do until the event happens TO YOU. Do you feed the 200 for one day, then let your family including your little ones die. I dont think so. But we all need to really wait until this really happens to start judgeing each other, and then still dont. Put you feet into another man's moccasins. If you have planned ans saved and did with out so you could gathers preps, you are not obligated to hand it out to anyone if it puts your family at risk of death.

Darn right it’d be WAR. I’m the one who has gone without vacations, dependable transportation, and a lot of things I need. I worked my butt to the bone so I can stock up. Why the heck should I give away my supplies to someone who chose to spend frivolously buying anything and everything they want and maybe go on a ski vacation or travel to Europe, instead of stocking up to take care of their family? Maybe you feel sorry for those people, but I don’t. They have the same opportunity to stock up that I have. Many of them could stock up without having to make a choice between clothing or food like I do. I say they will have to live with their choices the same as I live with mine.

I choose to be in a position to take care of myself and my family. If you want to give away your resources that’s fine with me, but you don’t have any right to call me names or to tell me to follow the path you choose. You act like "big brother" who wants to tell us all how to live and what we can do with our belongings. Wake up and look at the real world. There are many of us who believe in taking care of our own and not supplying the milk to bottle feed those who don't prepare for their own future.

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Well said. I help people out now and then, and tell them why I prep. After that it's gambling; I am gambling that something will happen and I'll be prepared, If nothing happens then I am out the investment cost. They are gambling that nothing will happen, if something does then they will be out much more.

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Please forgive Typo's and Gramatical Errors as a result of public education

"That's the governments job. To meddle and interfere equally" - Reynolds

Here here to the last 2 comments. I can't tell you how many times in the last 28 years that our food supply has helped us out of tight spots. Mostly though gardening and then canning that garden. Some from scrimping and buying bulk. We have been snowed in, ill, and changed jobs and had very little money to buy groceriers. For 6 months once we had $5.00 to buy food a week after the bills were paid, in the ealry 80's. We made it because of not buying toys in the years before, we bought food instead and jars and learned to make everything from sctach that we possibley could. I can make a ton of things with wheat. WE had made pennies scream months before this happened and bought 50 chicks, so thats all we ate for meat besides meat wheat. The eggs were a true blessing. If we hadnt had the chickens so be it,wheat meat can be thrown in soup and cooked with beef bouillion etc. We also had powdered eggs.

I agree with those who have said that they would take care of their family and let the rest of the world do the same. We've worked very hard and done without even simple treats to have the dollars needed to stock up. And where do you start and end if you begin helping others? I live across the street from an apartment complex for elderly - 90 apartments with one person and sometimes two to an apartment. My food storage would be gone in the blink of an eye. We have elderly neighbors beside us. They have their own stored food and we would gladly help them and they us, as we share all the time. But the 90+ people across the street, sorry no can do.

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This is the day which the Lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.

Good post Mike in Ohio.

Morrison Corners, in the years I have participated on this forum with you I have frequently noticed how you can make a thread desintegrate into nastiness and name calling. Why? Do you get some special thrill out of it?

We might not all agree on prepping issues vs. hoarding, but people like you represent a holier than though mindset that really is out of place in a forum of friends.

You know what's funny?

Those who would denigrate us for "food hoarding" are likely the same with a 100+ DVD collection, or many many CDs, or multiple computer/XBox games, or several bottles of wine, or tons of shoes / coats / jeans / purses, or a collection of owls / frogs / elephants / unicorns / china / houseplants.

It's not so different, is it? Think of it more as "food collecting".

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Gun-toting, church-going, homeschooling, right-wing conservative, happily married, stay-at-home mom of three living in the real United States of America!

In my theoretical scenario of a three foot snow and flooding greater than that which hit the Midwest during the spring and summer of 1993 I based them on the amplified effect they might have on my local area based on what really happened in the past with lesser events.

When I was in Spain my junior year in college for the 1995-1996 school year, we received just a little shy of two feet of snow at the homestead while I was overseas. My mother and stepfather did the best they could under the circumstances. My mother was a crafter and stay at home wife at the time and she did her best to get the snow off of the house and outbuildings during the day when the temperature rose enough that it might slide off the metal roofs of the outbuildings and off the shingles of the house. Where was my stepfather and what was he doing? He worked for the rural road district as the work supervisor and was working basically 18 hour shifts with the two other employees of the district for over 14 straight days, without a day off, just to get 56 miles of rural lake roads cleared. The only reason our driveway got cleared, which is off of a private road outside of the district's perview, is because he lived down it and the other two employees did the same with the private roads they lived down as well so they could get in and out to work. That was with two road graders and a dump truck plowing with a box full of cinders and salt. Most private roads never were cleared and residents down them had to use neighbors' 4x4 vehicles to get in and out.

As for the flooding, we had 10 days of being flooded in because we couldn't cross the low water slab bridge that was between us and the outside world. My stepdad hiked out to the highway to have an employee pick him up for work for several days until he could get his weighted down 4x4 pickup across the bridge. However, as the bridge had both road approaches undercut by the flooding, he had to take the wheel loader-hoe from the road shed to get gravel out of the creek to fix them so that we could get out with our vehicles. Again, the only reason we had the road district help was because he lived here. My mother and he are divorced and have been for several years, so there is no expectation of similar assistance in the future.

In a blizzard or flood the local and county emergency services will try to evacuate the municipalities or assist their residents as best they can, but we have over 650 square miles of county for them to deal with and only so many workers to do it all.

What does this have to do with the thread? Stocking up to handle the reality of being isolated for up to several weeks or more under a major emergency scenario is just being prudent. I have no expectation of outside help under the best conditions and wouldn't have any in an emergency. Some may view my stocking up as hoarding, but that is their view, not mine. My plan is to overcome as best I can whatever emergencies might occur, even if they are outside the reasonable expectation of what could happen here in a typical worst case scenario. The closest people to me are half a mile away and on the other side of the creek I live near and I am at the end of a dead end road. This is my choice and I prepare accordingly.

I have lived through unemployment for a few months at a time in the city when I first graduated and was glad to have my preps then. Now I am all the more sure that I need them for whatever comes our way as a society. My mother's parents and grandparents lived through the wars in the first half of the 20th century as well as the Great Depression. Just because we have had over half a century of great prosperity without deprivation doesn't mean we won't in the future. I cannot prepare to handle everyone who needs help, but I can at least take responsibility for my family and have a little extra for close family friends.

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I would challenge anyone here to think of a question upon which we once had a scientific answer, however inadequate, but for which now the best answer is a religious one. – Sam Harris

I think the differentiation between stocking up and hoarding varies with each individual. Some may see a year's supply of toilet paper as hoarding while the buyer sees it as being well-stocked and possibly a chance to stock up at sale prices.

I detest shopping and tend to only go every six weeks or so. I pay attention to sale papers and try to plan my trip around when I can get the most out of my dollar. So I'm stocking up for 45-60 days instead of the recommended three.

Is this hoarding? To some maybe, but to me it's stocking up for the weeks ahead. In the past year we've had several financial setbacks and I'm thankful I had food and supplies stocked up for more than three days.

Maggie

This is an interesting question! I know some folks around here that got might mad at people who made large buys of this year's limited hay supply - called it unfair, they did. Hmmm...

I figure if I'm prepared to take care of me and mine that is one less group state government/FEMA has to worry about...and besides, Katrina showed that they weren't capable of a response to all afflicted; some never saw any help but church groups and their neighbors. We are well supplied and have a generator to be able to provide water for all our neighbors who need it. We live in an area with alot of old-timers who tell of bad times where they hauled barrels of water for months on end in drought....think they will survive faster than those standing around whinning for help. If I want two years of chow that is my choice....if you feel comfortable with less that is your choice. I'm with Three Jane--I'm a food collector...at least I don't have to dust it! DEE

"Quote:
Originally Posted by chamoisee
Why I asked? Oh. I applied for food stamps (and if you're wondering, I have 4 children living with me full time, 2 part time, I work full time so I am not a slouch, and just as soon as I can, I'll get off of welfare again). I used some of them to stock up on things such as olive oil (I buy it in the gallon cans) gallons of honey, and at the case goods sale at the store. My boyfriend raised his eyebrows at my buying two gallons of honey, and it started me to thinking, how much is unreasonable? When does it cross the line? We get severe winters here, and the economy is poor. When I go off of welfare, I might hit hard times again and need to use some of the stuff I have stored away. "


Honey will keep for ever so I would say anything over 500 gallons would be getting a little excessive perhaps, better to keep bees though IMO

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marching to the beat of a different drummer

Normally I will bite my tongue and either use great caution or not say anything when a thread gets a little 'rough' with opposing viewpoints. I don't do that to remain more popular (as some were accused of in another post) - rather I do that for self-preservation; I don't wish to have my blood pressure skyrocket. It's not worth my health. But quite frankly I don't think anyone has the right to try and push their views on others when the others clearly believe in what they're doing. No one knows their circumstances better than they themselves do. And it's still possible to get your views across without being unkind towards others in the process.

I was raised to work hard to keep from doing without and to plan ahead for the future. Who in their right mind would want to rely on our government or local authorities to come to our rescue in a timely manner to help us in whatever crisis might befall us? It's a great system to have, yes, but... should we really rely on it? I choose not to. But that's MY choice.

My husband and I have done without many things to scrimp and save for our future. Co-workers would talk about their new household of furniture and I'd think about our 22 year old livingroom furniture that doesn't look so great anymore - how I'd love to have something I'd be more proud of when company comes over. Or they'd be excited to show us the new car they just leased (after trading their 2 yr old car in from the last lease)... while we were driving a 15 year old pickup that had little heat and no AC. Then there's the malfunctioning electric range that we can't trust to walk away from because it might malfunction again and decide to switch to "boil" all on its own... until we can set aside the funds to buy a new one. I'd like to go out to the nicest restaurants, go on a vacation somewhere - but choose instead to save the money for things that would be more prudent like paying off our home and vehicles (which we've now done), and saving for our retirement years when we won't have a paycheck coming in anymore.

It's not that we don't have the money in savings because we do - that's WHY we've done without so many nice things we'd like to have. Those same people who are going out for $75-95 dinners once a week, driving a new car, living in a house with all new furniture and taking vacations at least once a year - drop their jaws when they find out our home is paid off and we have no debt. Some actually seem jealous. Well duhh!

We've decided to stock up on a lot of items; fuel for our tractor, food & supplies for our pantry, to name a couple things. The decision to work towards self-sufficiency as much as possible to us seems very frugile... planting fruit trees and bushes so we'll be producing more food, careful planning of our gardening and canning, raising our own beef, pork, poultry and stocking our own fish... making plans for a root cellar, cisterns to capture rainwater for use, hoping to one day get set up with solar and wind power... and the list goes on and on.

Our priority is to our family, then friends and neighbors. No one can know for SURE what they would do in a crisis until they're faced with it. I'm sure we'd help our nearest neighbors out as much as we could; we're already geared towards self-sufficiency anyway... and with what we've established here, we could probably support a lot of people. But we won't be bottle feeding them - we'd expect them to be contributing their labor to help in this endeavor. If we run out of meat, they need to help us get a deer or wild turkey, clean it and cook, can, or whatever needs done. And if strangers decide to show up and take whatever they want, then we'd expect those we've helped out to stand with us and make sure that doesn't happen.

That's our plan, but we certainly don't expect the rest of the world to adapt to it. That's their decision to make.

(This is the opinion of this writer and does not necessarily reflect the viewpoints of the HT management.) ROFL