Psychological Hoarding and Government Induced Hoarding

The Mayo Clinic describes a hoarder as a person who survives in cluttered living spaces, moves items from one pile to another without the ability to throw anything away, acquires seemingly useless items, empty boxes, wrappers, trash, newspapers, magazines, bits of paper, discarded old toys, ratty clothes, household supplies, and spoiled food. Such a hoarder would buy, search for, and store items of little to no value.

It is alleged that there are more males than females who exhibit such a disorder and 2-6% of the population exhibits hoarding disorders. Causes of hoarding may include heredity, brain damage, serotonin issues, and other medical conditions.

The primary fears of the disposophobic are losing things and disposing of useless personal possessions.

Merriam Webster dictionary defines hoarding as a psychological compulsion to continually accumulate a variety of items often considered worthless by others coupled with an inability to discard the items without great distress. Such distress affects the hoarder’s health, career, and relationships with family members and others.

A person with dementia is more likely to hoard because of the anxiety that he/she might lose something. At the same time, piles of belongings may give them comfort. Alzheimer’s patients often hide the things they hoard, forget where they put them, and then accuse family or imaginary people of having taken them – food, clothing, money, and other possessions they deem valuable.

In our society, food hoarding occurs in children for reasons of neglect, deprivation, chaotic or disrupted home environments, difficulties in schools, disordered eating, and other psychological problems. Most adults hoard and hide food due to an eating disorder.

Adults who survived food deprivation under communist regimes where food shortages and famine were common, tended to hoard food to divide it among loved ones to make sure they had something to eat even during hard times when pantry and store shelves were bare, and food could not be bought or found. The intent was to avoid starvation.

Throughout history, when governments have intervened in the smooth operation of free markets based on supply and demand, the results have been disastrous, not the least of which are hoarding and the emergence of black markets. I am not talking about the psychological problems of hoarding personal items when people have a hard time getting rid of anything they own, I am talking about reality-based hoarding, the result of fear of shortage or imminent societal collapse.

Natural disasters such as announced hurricanes or tornadoes often compel people to buy excessive food, bottled water, gasoline, a generator, milk, but especially toilet paper. Civil unrest or fear of disease such as this corona pandemic can also force people to hoard food and other necessities, including toilet paper. In a category of its own are the preppers who are ready for any end of the world, political holocaust unrest scenario. They purchase food with the shelf life of 25 years or more and build shelters/bunkers underground, in caves, or decommissioned bunkers.

Hoarding goods in excess of immediate need is caused by artificial scarcity. Artificial scarcity can be caused by unnecessary government intervention that scares people into hoarding behavior, i.e., panic driven by government forcing the closure of businesses and locking down the working population which can no longer produce necessary goods for society to function properly. Best example was the Covid-19 interference in the market. The domino effect of unintended consequences is propped up by endless money printing and government welfare distributed as direct cash payments to Americans and illegal workers, and extended unemployment.

An example from the past of government interference in the market is price controls at Valley Forge when farmers, who needed to feed their families, did not abide by the government’s price controls, and sold their produce to the British for gold while Washington’s continental army was running at near starvation mode.

Economists believe this is what happened after 1971 when President Nixon decided to experiment with price controls. The economy suffered a plague of shortages, “we ran out of nearly everything” and, after price controls ended in 1974, most of the shortages disappeared.

Monopolies and cartels such as OPEC can also cause artificial scarcity of one product/service they offer. Holding a patent for a new drug can cause shortages and high prices as a result.

The New Deal issued the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) which was “designed to boost agricultural prices by reducing surpluses. The government bought livestock for slaughter and paid farmers subsidies not to plant on part of their land.” This act caused artificial shortages.

Deliberate destruction of goods such as in a war situation can cause panic hoarding driven by the fear of starvation. Such items in short supply become mediums of exchange, more valuable than currency, i.e., cigarettes, bullets, chocolate, soap, women’s pantyhose, medicine, and vitamins.

Destruction of goods because there is no longer a distributor or buyer for that good can also cause hoarding. The Covid-19 action by the government in 2020 had caused farmers in Florida to destroy tons of tomatoes, squash, and other vegetables which were previously bought by restaurants. Closed by government order, restaurants were no longer buying fresh produce. Farmers also dumped thousands of gallons of milk as schools, universities, and restaurants were closed indefinitely. At the same time, a shortage of milk in grocery stores forced grocers to impose a purchase limit of one bottle or one gallon. People thus hoarded milk and canned produce whenever available.

People have engaged in what is called panic-buying of certain products in anticipation of a disaster, shortage, or large price increase. Some examples of panic-buying through history include the first and second world wars when everything was in short supply; the 1918-1920 Spanish flu pandemic when people stored quinine and remedies for flu such as Vicks Vapor/Rub; Cuban missile crisis in 1962 when people bought excess quantities of canned food; any hurricane or tornado causes people to buy excess milk, bottled water, bread, and toilet paper; Coronavirus pandemic caused people to panic-buy food, facemasks, rubbing alcohol, hand-sanitizer, anti-bacterial wipes, anti-viral wipes, and toilet paper. Panic-buying causes price gouging by both individuals and grocery stores.

The most glaring example of constant hoarding occurred during the entire existence of the socialist republics of the Iron Curtain which were run by the highly inefficient centralized government of the Communist Party. Citizens of such countries like Soviet Union, China, Poland, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, North Korea, Vietnam, and Cuba were forced to constantly hoard items in short supply. Most products were in short supply because of the absolute mismanagement by Communist Party apparatchiks.

In these socialist/communist countries hoarding was punishable by law, and those caught served jail time. Both a black market and a barter market emerged from the severe shortage of everything. People were accustomed to carry around large sums of money and jute shopping bags to join a line in progress because they knew, whatever was on sale, they needed it.

But why hoard toilet paper? It is a basic instinct to be and stay clean. There is also the knowledge that, unlike food where there are substitutes, toilet paper has no substitute unless you consider paper towels, newspapers, and leaves.

People stockpile toilet paper because it is not perishable and are afraid that the domestic production and distribution will be disrupted. If needed, toilet paper can also be used as cosmetic wipes and tissue. Toilet paper under the centralized Communist Party economy had huge splinters in it and was always in short supply. Finally, people engage in mob mentality, ‘everyone is hoarding TP, I should too.’

There are 150 companies that manufacture toilet paper, and the average person uses under 100 rolls a year, some much less. The U.S. demand for toilet paper stands at about 3 billion rolls a year. We import about 10 percent of our needs of TP.

If hoarding from grocery stores is not an option, people turn to canning and drying fruits and vegetables. If you freeze a lot of food, remember that, if the power goes out, the cache will spoil. Twice we lost the contents of our freezer and refrigerator due to spoilage after hurricanes when electricity was out for days and even weeks.

No matter what you hoard for survival, you will eventually run out if production and distribution are disrupted for extended periods of time.

Psychological hoarders will continue hoarding unless the underlying medical problem is addressed.

 

 

A Dishwasher, Hiding Food, and a Bamboo Stick

Dependency on a tyrannical communist state is hard to shake even decades after that state had ceased to exist as a tyranny. People were so used to be told what to do at every step of their lives that they even waited for the government agents to come into small communities to shovel snow off their village streets. Some call it laziness but it is more insidious than that.

A totalitarian government has rules, regulations, laws, and decrees that govern everything their population does. Because there are so many, people are afraid to decide anything without consulting first the Communist Party powers lest they be chastised in front of their co-workers, which was embarrassing enough, fined, or worse, imprisoned.

We had to make do with extraordinarily little because we were allowed few possessions, we had to be all equal in our misery. Owning too much stuff was reactionary.

One “scholarly friend” insisted that what happened to us in eastern Europe is terrible, but it is never going to happen here, this is America, we are Americans and somehow exempted from hardship and terrible times. But here we are, Americans just elected a Marxist duo in the White House because capitalism was evil, and it has run its course of prosperity.  We had to try Venezuela’s socialist system because it “worked” so well for them, social justice, and all.

Another self-proclaimed educated and savvy American claimed that our Constitutional Republic is a Fabian socialist society. If I say that such Americans are naïve, ignorant, uninformed, and some even stupid, Facebook “moderators” will suspend me for three days for “hate speech.”

In our socialist and Marxist “paradise” we did a lot of manual labor which built character. We were such characters that some risked their lives to escape this “paradise” at all costs. I was luckier than most as I had the opportunity to fly in on a comfortable jet.

We washed dishes by hand in a small tub with a little water heated in a pot on the stove and a caustic detergent that ruined our hands. Water was not easy to get in a village, it involved carrying a bucket from far away where wells were located. The government controlled in towns how much water came through the tap.  We had to conserve as they kept careful records of any excessive consumption.

This water conservation by necessity was drilled so much into our heads that, when I came to America, I believed dishwashers were a huge waste of water. Years of living in America had not convinced me that it was a life saver for families with children.

The house I had just bought in the south had a broken Maytag dishwasher.  Before I had a chance to fix it, my mother repurposed it as a hiding place for snacks and sodas. What better use for a “water-wasting” machine than as a kitchen cabinet for food that was to be divided as special treats from time to time?

I finally started using a dishwasher six years ago. Until then our brand-new dishwasher sat idle and empty. One Thanksgiving I had so many dishes to do and no volunteers to help that I decided to try the machine. I sat in awe looking at my clean and sterilized plates and wondered why I waited so long to make my life so much easier and my hands less wrinkled.

Another thing my mother could not shake from our previous life under communism was hiding food for rainy days, no matter how much abundant food supply she saw in grocery stores or in our own pantry.  It was something I disliked greatly – hoarding food for bad times and times were always bad except at Christmas time.

What could possibly be worse than being hungry all the time? Starvation for sure. She placed our food under lock and key and gave us small portions from time to time. This ensured that we had something to eat but it was never enough, I was always hungry.

Mom’s food hoarding for rainy days was not unusual. Our friend Ligia, another survivor of communism, made sure her pantry was stuffed to the rafters with canned food. The only other place where I saw more canned vegetables was in the grocery store.

The first home I bought was built in 1959 and had a lovely state of the art Frigidaire teal stove with a pull drawer for the electric plates and two large ovens with a rotisserie rack. I loved that stove! It was so well built that 31 years later it still worked like a charm and we cooked so many delicious meals on it. To me it represented the well-built American products, and the can-do engineering spirit I had learned to admire. To me, it was a jewel, and my house was a mansion compared to where we lived in my communist tiny apartment.

I had to remove this gem of a stove and reluctantly replaced it with a modern one when we sold the house. It broke my heart because it was part of America’s ingenuity and manufacturing pride that had made United States the best country in the world. It was a tangible luxury for me and my mom, so much better than the deprivation in our previous life under communism.

But the one habit born by the communist scarcity, is a habit I cannot shake even today. It involves a bamboo stick about two feet long. I had warned my husband who jokingly said that he would throw away my bamboo stick one day.

Without a washing machine or dryer, we did our laundry by hand. We used cheap soap and washed our clothes and sheets in a bath tub but, to make sure whites came out cleaner, we boiled them in a large pot on the stove or over a fire pit outside and stirred them with a strong stick to keep them from getting burned on the bottom. The stick had to be made from long-lasting wood.

I cannot remember who cut this bamboo stick for me, but I had it since 1978. I still use it today to push clothes inside the washing machine, to make sure that all laundry items are submerged under water thus being properly washed. Some old habits driven by communist poverty die hard.

Hoarding

Modern toilet paper with 

splinters

Photo: Ileana Johnson 2015

Throughout history, when governments have intervened in the smooth operation of the free market based on supply and demand, the results have been disastrous, not the least of which is hoarding and the emergence of black markets. I am not talking about the psychological problem of hoarding personal items when people have a hard time getting rid of anything they own, even old and dirty scraps of paper. I am talking about fear-based hoarding, the result of fear of shortage or imminent societal collapse.

Natural disasters such as announced hurricanes or tornadoes often compel people to buy excessive food, bottled water, gasoline, a generator, milk, but especially toilet paper. Civil unrest or fear of disease such as this corona pandemic can also force people to hoard food and other necessities, including toilet paper. In a category of its own are the preppers who are ready for any end of the world, political holocaust unrest scenario. They purchase food with the shelf life of 25 years or more and build shelters/bunkers underground, in caves, or decommissioned bunkers.

Hoarding goods in excess of immediate need is caused by artificial scarcity. Artificial scarcity can be cause by unnecessary government intervention that scares people into hoarding behavior, i.e., panic driven by government forcing the closure of businesses and locking down the working population which can no longer produce necessary goods for society to function properly. Best example of this is the recent Covid-19 interference in the market. This action is yet to reveal the entire disaster which has wrought on the economy as the domino effect of unintended consequences is making chips fall.

An example from the past of government interference in the market is price controls at Valley Forge when farmers, who needed to feed their families, did not abide by the government’s price controls and sold their produce to the British for gold while Washington’s continental army was running at near starvation mode.

Economists believe this is what happened after 1971 when President Nixon decided to experiment with price controls. The economy suffered a plague of shortages, “we ran out of nearly everything” and, after price controls ended in 1974, most of the shortages disappeared.

Monopolies and cartels such as OPEC can also cause artificial scarcity of one product/service they offer. Holding a patent for a new drug can cause shortages and high prices as a result.

The New Deal issued the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) which was “designed to boost agricultural prices by reducing surpluses. The government bought livestock for slaughter and paid farmers subsidies not to plant on part of their land.” This act caused artificial shortages.

Deliberate destruction of goods such as in a war situation can cause panic hoarding driven by the fear of starvation. Such items in short supply become mediums of exchange, more valuable than currency, i.e., cigarettes, bullets, chocolate, soap, women’s pantyhose, medicine, and vitamins.

Destruction of goods because there is no longer a distributor or buyer for that good can also cause hoarding. The recent Covid-19 action by the government has caused farmers in Florida to destroy tons of tomatoes, squash, and other vegetables which were previously bought by now closed restaurants. Farmers have also dumped thousands of gallons of milk as schools, universities, and restaurants were closed indefinitely. At the same time, a shortage of milk in grocery stores forced grocers to impose a purchase limit of one bottle or one gallon. People thus hoarded milk.

People engaged in what is called panic-buying of certain products in anticipation of a disaster, shortage, or large price increase. Some example of panic-buying through history include the first and second world wars when everything was in short supply; the 1918-1920 Spanish flu pandemic when people stored quinine and remedies for flu such as Vicks Vapo//Rub; Cuban missile crisis in 1962 when people bought excess quantities of canned food; any hurricane or tornado causes people to buy excess milk, bottled water, bread, and toilet paper; Coronavirus pandemic caused people to panic-buy food, facemasks, rubbing alcohol, hand-sanitizer, anti-bacterial wipes, anti-viral wipes, and toilet paper. Panic-buying causes price gouging by both individuals and grocery stores.

The most glaring example of constant hoarding occurred during the entire existence of the socialist republics of the Iron Curtain which were run by the highly inefficient centralized government of the Communist Party. Citizens of such countries like Soviet Union, China, Poland, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, North Korea, Vietnam, and Cuba were forced to constantly hoard items in short supply. Most products were in short supply because of the absolute mismanagement by Communist Party apparatchiks.

In these socialist/communist countries hoarding was punishable by law, and those caught served jail time. Both a black market and a barter market emerged from the severe shortage of everything. People were accustomed to carry around large sums of money and jute shopping bags in order to join a line in progress because they knew, whatever was on sale, they needed it.

But why hoard toilet paper? It is a basic instinct to be and stay clean. There is also the knowledge that, unlike food where there are substitutes, toilet paper has no substitute unless you consider paper towels, newspapers, and leaves.

People stockpile toilet paper because it is not perishable and are afraid that the domestic production and distribution will be disrupted. If needed, toilet paper can also be used as cosmetic wipes and tissue. Toilet paper under the centralized Communist Party economy had huge splinters in it and was always in short supply. Finally, people engage in mob mentality, ‘everyone is hoarding TP, I should too.’

There are 150 companies that manufacture toilet paper and the average person uses under 100 rolls a year, some much less. The U.S. demand for toilet paper stands at about 3 billion rolls a year. We import about 10 percent of our needs of TP.

If hoarding from grocery stores is not an option, people turn to canning and drying fruits and vegetables. If you freeze a lot of food, remember that, if the power goes out, the cache will spoil. Twice we lost the contents of our freezer and refrigerator due to spoilage after hurricanes when electricity was out for days and even weeks.

No matter what you hoard for survival, you will eventually run out if production and distribution are disrupted for extended periods of time.

Scientific Nutrition, Food Lines, Excess, and Worms

Photo: Compliments of DeWitt E.

It is inconceivable for those born after 1989, who never experienced want of anything, that at one time, the proletariat of the communist dear leader Ceausescu had to survive on a decreed daily rations of food and to stand in line from the middle of the night until stores opened and people fought for the food delivered in the morning.

Standing in food lines had become a method of survival and a national sport. Families involved their children, as young as five, to stand in lines to keep the place for a relative waiting in another line, always carrying an expanding string shopping bag reminiscent of a fishing net and extra cash.

Experiencing shortages of food because of war is something that even developed nations had to endure willingly to make sure that nutrition was available to all. For example, during WWII, there was a ration card issued to shoppers. The reason was obvious, the men were fighting a war and there were less people engaged in the economy to produce enough supply to satisfy demand while more resources were going to the war machine.

But the shortage of food people experienced for decades under Nicolae Ceausescu had to do with his ambitious communist plan to develop the heavy industry, no matter how unprofitable, and to pay off the debt to the west at the expense of the standard of living of the population.

The Communist Party had developed norms of “rational nutrition” based on medical criteria of age, gender, profession, physical condition, and energy expended on the job since the 1964. In case you wonder why they would embark on such endeavor, it was because communists do not leave anything to chance, everything you do must be controlled and enforced by law.

As shortages became more pronounced in the 1980s, the Communist Party issued new legal guidelines for nutrition. A huge control apparatus of propaganda was put into motion: doctors, college professors, the health ministry, the agriculture ministry, nutritional specialists, the communist press, the labor unions, and other political organizations sanctioned by the Communist Party. The declared official scope was to improve the population’s health. But the reality had all to do with the financial situation at the time. The economy was suffocated by Ceausescu’s ambition to pay off western debt and by his very expensive megalomaniacal projects to glorify him and his communist rule. He was, after all, the “maverick.”

A specialized commission proposed by the Health Minister in 1976 took its sweet time to develop norms of “rational nutrition.” It was not officially approved by the Communist Party’s “The Great National Gathering” until 1984. This “rational” program of nutrition led to a general suffering of the entire population unlike any other before.

People were starved but did not have to eat grass, leather, or engage in cannibalism as was the case in Ukraine. The man-made famine in Holodomor (Ukrainian for ‘murder by hunger’) happened in 1932-1933 when 28,000 people a day died of starvation. Stalin’s Soviet regime had taught Ukrainian farmers a lesson they never forgot. http://holodomorct.org/

An article in “Financial Times” of October 25, 1984, mentions that “Romania surprised its skeptical creditors by paying off a debt of $1.5 billion in the first 9 months of the year.” The same article mentions the fact that the payoff was achieved at the expense of the deplorable standard of living of the population, as evidenced by “the sad lines in front of all stores.”

Speaking about Romania paying its debt off ahead of schedule, Washington Post quoted Sen. Dennis DeConcini (D-Arizona) in April 1989: "Fuel and electricity have been rationed for years. Staple foods, including milk, bread and flour, are rationed, and in many localities even these are unavailable. Meat is a rarity; soup bones only occasionally appear in stores. Decades of financial mis-planning and inefficient industrial development have led to the dire condition of the Romanian economy, making it the poorest in Europe after Albania." https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1989/04/14/debts-paid-romania-says/89557c5f-9f4d-4810-8e15-91538f134a3f/?utm_term=.c580cd34e479

The communist party leaders concealed the draconian rationing of food to pay off its debt by implementing the “scientific program of feeding the proletariat.”

The severe food shortages gave rise to black markets and hoarding, even though having excess food was punishable with jail time. People also bartered food and services to survive. Food lines became an economic input and the “entire social life developed around the obsession of finding food.” The terms “malnutrition” and “starvation” were replaced by the euphemistic concept of “rational nutrition.” http://www.istorie-pe-scurt.ro/cum-arata-o-cartela-pe-vremea-lui-ceausescu-programul-de-alimentatie-rationala/

An American who lived in Romania in 1983-1986 attested to the many horrors of Ceausescu’s reign of terror called the Golden Epoch. Speaking of food rationing and long-term malnutrition, she said, “I regularly saw people stand in line all day to buy a Styrofoam cup with a few broken eggs in it.  Unrefrigerated raw milk was sold on street corners on hot summer days.”

She continued, “Romania was rich in oil but Ceausescu shut down the urban heating grids [villagers burned wood for heat and there was no running water or indoor plumbing] in the middle of winter so that he could export the oil to the west for hard currency.  The very young and the very old dropped like flies.  We had no heat, no hot water and no cooking gas for 5 months out of the year.  We actually saw miles long gas lines right next to oil refineries.”

Joe Keller, an attaché to the American Embassy in the mid-80s, told another interesting story about food. He had picked up two bags of cherries from a street vendor at the airport. He was having friends over that evening to watch a movie. One of the children went into the kitchen to get a glass of water and came back horrified, telling her parents that there were worms in the kitchen. Sure enough, the table was covered in fruit flies’ worms. Some had crawled out of the cherries they had all consumed in the dark while watching the movie.

I don’t think I had ever eaten fruits in my childhood that did not have fruit flies’ worms. It was extra protein. Years later I wrote a story about that called Wormy Banana. https://ileanawrites.blogspot.com/2012/06/wormy-banana.html

Unscientific and chaotic means of running the socialist economy gave rise to decades of misery caused entirely by the communist dictatorship with its “golden” dear leader Ceausescu and his wife Elena.

The arbitrary and forced industrialization of Romania under his reign of terror gave rise to industrial giants which produced goods inefficiently, with massive energy consumption, massive raw material use, and high costs at the expense of the destitute people. Food and water were always rationed and in short supply and electricity and thermal energy were delivered arbitrarily on the whims of the apparatchiks in charge.

Nobody dared to object as the communist ideology ruled supreme. This perverse philosophy intended to shape the “new man,” a human being willing to enthusiastically approve and cheer the dictator’s random and destructive political and economic decisions.

Copying North Korea and China, Ceausescu developed his cult of personality. Millions were required to idolize and sing praises to the dear leader and his wife. Revisionist history placed him and his wife in the hall of revolutionaries, turning them into “the mother and father of the country.” Ceausescu, with just an elementary education, became the Honorary President of the Academy. https://istoriiregasite.wordpress.com/2012/06/16/romania-in-timpul-regimului-ceausescu/

While malnourished proletarians lived in Spartan conditions, barely heated concrete block apartments often without hot water and even cold water, the dear leader was chauffeured to different residences and his family luxuriated in the “Spring Palace” in Bucharest, built in the mid-60s.  This permanent family residence was decorated with one of a kind gold leaf mosaics, indoor and outdoor swimming pools, mahogany, rose, and teakwood furniture, hand-made brocaded draperies and tapestries, an extensive collection of original paintings and sculptures by famous Romanian artists, a trophy room, a wine cellar, and a bunker. There was Limoges, Baccarat, Mainz and other expensive porcelains and crystals. The 5,000 square meters residence had 170 rooms spread on two levels and a basement (88 rooms). His Swiss bank account was flush with millions of dollars. https://www.punctul.ro/in-vizita-la-fosta-resedinta-a-familiei-nicolae-ceausescu/

While the proletariat stood in food lines, subjected to “scientific nutrition,” the communists engaged in obscene excesses.

Public Shaming of a Hoarding Comrade

Newspaper clipping of  article about Baciu Viorel
from the 1980s during
Ceausescu's oppressive communist regime

People used to ask me what we ate when I was growing up in communist Eastern Europe. Women were quite thin and beautiful, on the “Ceausescu diet.” We were not just told how much to eat by decree but food was quite scarce and highly rationed. If a person dared to stash more food than the Communist Party deemed necessary, that person paid dearly in fines and eventually jail. Of course the elite class, in the classless utopia of a socialist country on its way to communism, had its own stores and food supply at low prices, never having to suffer the indignity of a rumbling empty stomach.

The heaping single plates of meat I see in American restaurants today would feed a family of three for quite a while. My mom, who is quite thin now in her advanced age, joked that she is back to the Ceausescu era thinness. In those times, if a person was overweight, others told them with a tone of envy, how good and fat they looked; they had found enough food and prosperity to afford to eat and gain weight without being investigated, shamed at work, or fined.

When the dear leader wanted to visit a grocery, dairy, or bread store to see how “his people” lived, fresh bread loaves and milk bottles were trucked in and then taken away as soon as he left. Staples like cooking oil, sugar, flour, and butter were also brought in from the communist apparatchiks’ stores and then whisked away before anyone had a chance to purchase anything.

The bread, milk, butter, oil, flour, and sugar lines were part of daily life and the socialist milieu. Walking around money was not to bribe politicians but to purchase food or scratchy and splintery toilet paper in case one encountered a long line where something needful would be sold that day.

In addition to fines and possible jail time, food hoarders were publicly shamed in the local and national newspapers which were run by the Communist Party.  Since their address was also provided, the readers were expected to ostracize them and sometimes beat them for their greed.

Such was the case of Baciu Viorel from Tirgu-Mures, domiciled on 1 Brasov Street, who decided to stock food for himself, perhaps his extended family, and maybe intending to sell some for profit to those who did not have time or stamina to stand in endless lines. The economic police raided his house and found too many bottles of cooking oil (34) and 26 kg of sugar in his pantry.

Obviously well-fed when compared to the gaunt proletariat, this man was presented as the enemy of the collective, to be condemned and derided. The 1980s article said that “Men like him disrupt normal commercial activity. Even though there are sufficient quantities of sugar and oil in stores, because of people like him who buy in excess of what they need, the stores are emptied daily. When food arrives, long lines form, causing thousands of people to lose precious time shopping. To end this situation, it is necessary to combat such hoarding, to brand those who are so selfish as to gather large quantities of food, interrupting normal commerce in stores.”

Having experienced the indignity of standing in endless lines in cold and hot weather to buy rationed food with rationing cards, food that often ran out before everyone in line had a chance to buy something, it is economically ludicrous to believe the Communist Party lies that one man’s hoarding disrupted delivery of enough food to the starving proletariat.  

It was the inadequate supply of everything that caused severe shortages of many items that Westerners take for granted in economies based on supply and demand. It was the centralized planning of economically ignorant community organizers who formed the Communist Party rank and file who made ill-advised production, supply, and distribution decisions.

Did Viorel deserve public opprobrium because he tried to survive by selling extras on the black market, the market the ineptitude of a socialist/communist regime had created? Who can blame him for hoarding food when nobody knew if they would find anything to eat the next day, when people fought in lines over bones stripped clean of any meat? Yet people used those bones to make soup. Extras in the pantry insured survival for many days without having to stand in those awful lines every day.

Was Viorel causing the long lines? Of course not, but socialists and communists are not known to be rational thinkers, they are indoctrinated sheeple who memorize and repeat what they are told without questioning, in exchange for special benefits.

When it comes to survival, other people were willing to pay the black market higher price in order to have food for their families without standing in line.