It says something deeply, deeply weird about the soul of America, that people are panic-buying toilet paper in response to the East and Gulf Coast port strike.
I had a few responses to this, in no particular order.
First, guess I’m glad I haven’t worked my way through my pandemic stockpile yet.
Second, maybe I had better pick up some toilet paper at the store today. Just in case.
I fully realize that toilet paper doesn’t move through these ports. Almost all toilet paper used in the U.S. is produced domestically, call it 93% (reference Yahoo). The rest that is consumed in the U.S. is produced in Canada and Mexico, and isn’t shipped by ocean-going freighter.
And yet, it’s a fallacy to say that toilet paper should be unaffected by the port strike. If enough people are stupid and irrational about it, and the target of their stupidity is toilet paper, then toilet paper is very much affected by it.
Oddly, if you substitute “Springfield, OH” for “toilet paper” in the last sentence, it still makes perfect sense.
Anyway, the consequence being that if you need to buy TP, you’ll be every bit as much out of luck, even though a shortage is purely a result of irrationality, as if there some actual disruption of the toilet paper supply chain.
Some consumer items will likely go out of stock from this strike. Bananas being the poster child for that. But who would have guessed that TP remains the canary-in-the-coal mine for American anxiety.
