The hoarders benefit massively from hoarding. They benefit from a regulation that prevents the markets from responding to shortages and spikes in demand. They have no problem whatsoever deciding how to allocate their resources in that situation, which is the entire problem, because the market doesn’t force them to.
An individual will always, every single time, without fail, know what they need better than a 3rd party who nominates themselves to make decisions on behalf of others. If you remove market forces from the situation, and establish an authority to decide who gets rationed what, it will always impact the efficiency of those resource allocation decisions.
"An individual will always, every single time, without fail, know what they need better than a 3rd party who nominates themselves to make decisions on behalf of others"
This is completely false. Most individuals in a panic buying situation never know what they really need compared to a calm, educated and knowledgeable 3rd party. This crisis has also proved your assertion wrong - witness the mass buying of perishable foods and toilet paper.
Food that was thrown out in a weeks time into garbage and food that was denied to others because of panic buyers.
> This crisis has also proved your assertion wrong - witness the mass buying of perishable foods and toilet paper.
It hasn’t at all. For starters, non-perishable food was absolutely the first to vanish off the shelves. But that aside, buying too much has no detriment at all to the purchaser. The risk that they may not consume all of it is so incredibly minimal compared to what they’re actually worried about. This is only possible because prices are artificially constrained. Most people don’t have to face a considerable opportunity cost when buy way more food than they need.
An individual will always, every single time, without fail, know what they need better than a 3rd party who nominates themselves to make decisions on behalf of others. If you remove market forces from the situation, and establish an authority to decide who gets rationed what, it will always impact the efficiency of those resource allocation decisions.