Joseph Shinn was sure, in his heart, that if we all just acted sensibly during the nascent stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, there would be plenty of toilet paper for everyone.
Most people, he says, knew what was right. Be human. Don’t race up and down the shelves gobbling up all the paper products. But most people also knew that most other people wouldn’t act in the interest of a greater good. Someone was going to start hoarding. And when someone else started hoarding, we were all going to start hoarding.
“I’m an economist, and I didn’t overdo it, but I went out and bought a little extra,” says Shinn, who has his Ph.D. in economics. “Because I knew that if everyone was going to be irrational, if I didn’t take these steps, I was going to fall into that issue.”
