If you are hoarding anything that in normal times would be considered a daily staple, you are demonstrating the simple truth that government cannot save you. Even trivial conveniences like toilet paper are beyond its capabilities to provide. If it could provide housing, there wouldn’t be tent cities of homeless people in major cities. Forget medical care, whether you can pay for it or not. How do you stay six feet away from everyone else in a doctor’s office or emergency room, now that panic has inspired more people to show up in fear that they have Wuhan flu and are going to die?

Photo credit: Daniel Case

I pity people who are so fragile that the they are willing to fight and argue over toilet paper. What’s the worst that could happen if you run out? You get fecal matter on your hands? My bathroom has a sink and I have soap. It’s not as though toilet paper never gets a poke-through. You clean yourself up and move on. Soap and water, which we should all have on hand already, and which stores still stock, mitigates the adversity of running out of toilet paper.

Oh, but the children! Children are too fragile to cope! If so, it is their snowflake parents that made them so. You think the children of primitive tribes are tougher than your kids? They probably are, and again, it is their parents that made them so. If you have children, they’re probably staying home, offering plenty of opportunity for you to teach them how to handle some of the more distasteful things that can happen in life.

Here’s one lesson: it can happen in America, a first world country, a republic with democratic elections, because we the people sometimes make very stupid choices. We think politicians know what they’re talking about when they promise free stuff without detailing how to pay for it, since production costs of anything are more than zero. Maybe Bernie can revive his campaign by promising free toilet paper. Why not? Personally, I prefer freedom to freebies. There’s always a cost, even if you can’t see it.

Don’t let fear control you. This alleged emergency will set the foundation for all future crises that authoritarians will use to deprive you of more and more of your liberties. I’m mostly staying home for the requested 15-day interval, but then I’m out and about again. I fear uncontrolled government more than uncontrolled flu. Government doesn’t keep promises, it just leverages failure as an excuse to do more of the same, promising different results.

I bet Bernie and Jumblin’ Joe have plenty of toilet paper. They always will. Because they will confiscate it if necessary, for “redistribution”. Yeah, to their bathrooms.