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Comment by TomGullen

Unlike the toilet paper panic buying there is limited capacity people can buy, so I would expect this to naturally end short term when people don’t have capacity to buy any more.

What concerns me is government planning to address this looks a lot more forward looking than a few days/a week, so I can see it getting worse.

Interesting how the government say it’s not a shortage, if the refineries were running low you wouldn’t say there’s no shortage as there’s plenty of crude lying under the sea bed. If I can’t buy petrol at the pump then for all intents and purposes it is a shortage.

I feel like there’s a chance here there is a systemic issue and “panic buyers” are a convenient scape goat as I think most people are just filling up to the top instead of half way, or going a little earlier than they would otherwise. No actors doing this would class themselves as panic buyers, but there’s a lot of vitriol and anger towards the concept of a panic buyer which is a convenient diversion away from other causes.

parent TomGullen 5 years ago

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