After dealing with the COVID-response-induced shortages and empty shelves, a lot of people mock and shame people who buy more than their immediate need's worth of a commodity, calling them hoarders, or (even more derisively) "Preppers." During a time of crisis and shortage, such an attitude is understandable.
In normal times, it is dead wrong.
People who buy extra toilet paper, or cans of soup, or bottles of water for storage rather than immediate consumption are not hoarding, they are wisely preparing for any interruption of the grocery supply chain, be it a hurricane, a pandemic, civil unrest, or some other disruption. As long as they buy their supplies when stocks are plentiful, they are doing no harm; rather, they are encouraging more production, and keeping normal supply mechanisms moving.
Plus, when a crisis comes, and the rest of the world is mobbing the grocery stores for water and toilet paper, those who have done even minor preparation in advance will be at home, not competing with anyone.
Here's an interesting interview with a guy who has studied crisis preparation for decades. I don't know him, don't know anything about him—but he's no fearmonger, despite taking the necessity of the job very seriously. He's calm, and reasonable, and worth listening to, if you have a spare hour.
Listening to this makes me miss the days when we lived in the Northeast, and had a cool basement. That would be a great place to store emergency supplies. Here, we'd have to store everything in our adequate but limited living area: we have no basement, and the garage, the attic, and anything outside are 'way too hot for most of the year (not to mention favorite places for critters to hang out).
On the other hand, we don't have to worry about freezing to death in winter weather. It's been a long time since we've routinely kept a stack of firewood!
