"Stocking up" vs "Hoarding"?

I think the difference between "hoarding" and "stores" isn't obvious until there is a shortage of something. The hay example was spot on. If some of those buyers were buying hay in anticipation of being able to sell it to people who were desperate for it later on at wildly inflated prices that is:

1. Smart business.. too bad those other buyers didn't have the financial muscle or storage to pull it off. Tough patooties. If they need hay they can buy it from me at whatever I feel like asking.. or drive 200 miles and get it from somewhere else.

2. Stockpiling.. I don't need the hay right now but just in case I'm going to buy it and put it up. Who knows, this might be a short term issue (in which case... too bad about everyone who is doing without and having to kill off stock because I bought extras). But it might be long term... so I should buy as much as I can and store it. I can either use it for myself, or sell it for a big profit later on if I decide I don't need all of it for my own use.

3. Hoarding... I might need the extra hay, but I probably won't. Sure, I have more than I need for my immediate (winter) use and my neighbor has none, but that's their problem, not mine. If they lose stock while my barns are full of fodder that's their problem and none of mine.

Bit of a sticky wicket... under these conditions I can see how one person's "stockpiling" could become another's "hoarding" with a lot of bad feeling developing. One person's smart business move could become another's price gouging... and I believe there are some regulations which come into play. Or people want there to be. Oil companies for example, using "shortages" to rack up huge profits...


Now, if we take our hay example and turn it on it's head... last year, when there was plenty of hay, Joe put up two barns' worth pretty cheaply. He knew he only needed 1/2 a barn but the price was good and he didn't anticipate much spoilage. Now Joe finds himself sitting on 1.5 barns of hay when he only needs .5 to get through the winter. Is Joe "hoarding" if he doesn't sell into the shortage?

I'd argue "probably not," because Joe's storage didn't contribute to the shortage, whereas someone buying up more than they need during a shortage is contributing to that shortage and keeping those who need something from getting it.

I think the definition of "hoarding" would include an element of "contributing to the problem." Certainly if you have "stores" or "stockpiles" of something there is a shortage of, not placing them on the market isn't "helping" the situation, but it isn't actively contributing to the shortage... technically, since the stores haven't been in play for some period of time, as far as the market is concerned they don't "exist."

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Icelandic Sheep and German Angora Rabbits

In that case what prepers do is not hoarding. At least in my case I buy things when they are on sale. I don't think the places that sale them would discount the price if there was not enough to go around.

1) All you're guilty of is bad math! (so hypothetical scenarios aside, better recalculate how long your real life food will last you). Nobody is going to starve to death* in two weeks those neighbors are much more likely to run into trouble (under your snow scenario) from the COLD (unheated houses & power out due to the storm) than from running out of food.

(*unless they've other health problems.... but if you go around identifying & singling out only THOSE people to feed, you're opening up a whole 'nother can of worms, ranging from saying "come rob me" to lowlives.... to creating social frictions between those who did & DIDN'T benefit from your largesse.... uh, remember the lowlives I mentioned?).....

2) There is no guarantee that you'd ever be reimbursed even if you DID distribute food to save your neighbors (whether from starvation, or from mere discomfort)..... and in fact, the odds are somewhat against you ever getting even most of your investment back. MORE likely is that you'd lose out, and everybody would end up knowing that you DO stockpile (so if anything bad.... let alone REALLY bad.... ever happens, you've already signed your own death warrant). There is no law saying you MUST voluntarily suffer financial loss just to "maybe" save other people..... mind you, you risk bad feeling & being branded a heartless murderer even if you AREN'T legally or morally at fault.... but if you don't decide to risk you & your family's safety, be sure to keep quiet about your stash!

3) While a disaster lasting 2 weeks & leaving you a huge excess of food WOULD involve different moral imperatives than one lasting years & leaving you little or no excess..... we ALL need to recall that NOBODY knows in advance just how long any given disaster will actually last. That "2 week long superheavy snowfall" is highly unlikely to be a micro-regional problem.... it's almost certainly going to affect things at least on a state level, probably on a regional level as well. Even if the roads are cleared in 2 weeks, this doesn't mean that supplies & services will resume any time soon (like I noted, power & light is going to be more of a headache than food!).... and it's likely that cities & larger communities are going to be given a priority when it comes to emergency relief (can feed more people with less effort), small communities like that will have to play tail end charlie as far as relief efforts go. And what if this super snowstorm is the straw that breaks the camel's back..... what if a foreign nation or terrorist groups takes advantage of it to set off a dirty bomb within our shores, or to release a bacterial/viral weapon? What if it sparks a racial war (discontent or desperation over relief distributions.... opportunistic racists, etc).

So my advice is.... save yourself & those you HAVE obligations to (family). If you think you have excess & there are friends or decent neighbors in need, consider sharing with them.

But you have neither obligation, nor ability, to save every ---- improvidant fool in your area! Especially if it means risking your family's life or financial security to do so.

In heavy snow the most likely problem will be building collapse, weather exposure/lack of sufficient heat and also lack of food/medicine on a presumably short term scale, at least around here. For a flood you would have structural damage or destruction/obliteration and the other two as well, though the problem would be more widespread due to the number of waterways we have locally.

Basically, it's a matter of keeping your family safe and sound for as long as the state of emergency lasts then making the best of the aftermath.

As for how long the food would last that I have in my pantry, I know how long it would last by knowing how much I eat, though I won't say how long that actually is for personal security reasons.

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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

Nope! Many things could cause all sorts of long term upheavals.... like a host of pre-existing diseases becoming pandemics, or bird flu mutating just far enough to be a pandemic danger (as it's expected to do), or a host of other diseases becoming.

Terrorist attacks on our infrastructure (power, transportation, agriculture, etc) would also do it.

Racial or religious war could do it.

Quakes or volcanos in certain locations could do it.

A bad enough worsening of the weather could do it.

A few million refugees from Latin America arriving all at the same time might do it.

What we learned from Katrina was that when people live in risk prone areas, manmade protections WILL eventually fail. And that many of the people least able to stock up or protect themselves.... are also often the people most likely to react lawlessly (looting, murder, theft, etc) when faced with being in want while surrounded by a lack of law enforcement.

Nope. In the area hit by Katrina, not many people HAD hidden caches (most were too poor or too improvident to have created any).... and if you do the math, it would take better than 5% of the population having a year's worth of food squirreled away in order to just BARELY cover 3 weeks of shortage for everybody else. You didn't have 5% with such caches, let alone 5% convieniently living in floodproof areas, and even if you had most of the hungry wouldn't have known about it or been able to get there even if the stockpilers had suicidally put up signs saying free food!

Besides, what WOULD have happened was that the druggies & gang members would have robbed & murdered the stockpiling altruists right away, then turned around and tried to trade the looted stores for drugs or cash. Worse, a goodly portion of the stores would have been destroyed or wasted in the process, with all the violence & wanton destruction going on.

Evacuation plans optimistically assume that transportation won't be too badly affected. Snowstorms or hurricanes or earthquakes could really upset that assumption. Epidemics or fuel shortages would do the same.

Reality is RARELY as well orchestrated as a cricket match.

Wouldn't it depend on the nature of the disaster, and how bad it was?

For example, an outbreak of something like ebola WOULD easily require closing borders..... least the infection spread beyond the possibility of controlling it.

Something that upset food production & distribution might ALSO do this.... especially if "some" food could be produced and shipped "IF" the refugees were kept out, but not if starving hordes of the dispossessed invaded & distrupted a delicate balance....

Yes. Any faith that would turn away those in need for such a reason, is not a faith worth much. But that presumes the church had shelter to spare ANYBODY....

Depends on whether I've enough to save MY family. And on whether there are CHILDREN I can save with any excess..... sorry, but elderly would come second in my book to those who haven't yet lived most of their allotted lifespan.

Maybe. Probably, even.... but NOT for a certainty. Look at history...... they may not roll for weeks, or months, or years.... if at all.

Assuming that the supplies & electricity DO come..... it should be noted that HOW SOON & IN WHAT QUANTITY they come will help determine how many OTHERS are still living there with you. Meanwhile, building a stockpile, taking precautions, and NOT stupidly giving your safety margin away to every grasshopper in sight, is what will determine whether YOU & your's survive in the first place.

Any rolling trucks will be after the fact.....

This all depends on HOW MUCH ROOM the churches would have. It doesn't matter WHAT religion the stranded motorist is if there is no more room. Crowd too many people in, and ALL will die.... not just the unfortunate johhny come latelies.

Uh.... maybe you haven't been listening, or reading the news, or paying attention to reality in the US of A in the 21st (or even 20th) century...... but there ARE parts of this country of our's that lack ample infrastructure or resources, and where help would NOT get to you for weeks on end. There ARE isolated areas, poor areas, areas where geography & local conditions make the locals particularly prone to being on their own in times of trouble.

It's ALWAYS been this way.

VERY TRUE!!! When my electric was down because of an ice storm, it took 2 weeks for them to get it back on. The stores did not have electric so they did not open. Gas pumps did not work. People with electric heat stayed with people with wood or propane heat just to keep from freezing. If we didn't have enough to make it, then we would have gone without. NOBODY came here to help. Some people were without power for longer than I was. NOBODY showed up to help. Everyone for miles around every direction is on well water. Without electric there is no water. NOBODY trucked in water to help anyone. Everyone in this area was on their own to make it any way they could. Anyone who thinks big bro is going to come take care of them better think again. It won't happen.

Heck, we had an avalanche a couple of years ago that cut off the road from Anchorage to the Kenai Peninsula for DAYS. People were TRAPPED in Girdwood - there was NO WAY OUT. I think there were actually avalanches on both sides of Girdwood so the only thing they MIGHT have been able to do was hire a helicopter but I'm not even sure that was available even to those that could afford it. If this was the case, they could NOT drive to any other place to get on a plane and get into Anchorage/out of Girdwood. Of course the other issue was that no supplies were getting through either. Sure put people on notice of how quickly we can be isolated from one another!

I live in the Mat-Su Borough northwest of Anchorage. There is ONE road between us. There is most of a second road that has since been used as a secondary and more residential access but it is in bad shape and has flaws in that to get to it from one end you have to travel on the NEW road part way! When a train derailed at one end of the new road there was no way to get to the other. Several hours delay that certainly made things difficult but we all muddled through. It wasn't the days delay of the first example.