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Maybe you read about the man who, prior to the full public recognition of the severity of the coronavirus, drove through multiple states, buying up the supply of hand sanitizer at dollar and convenience stores in order to sell it online through Amazon at a premium, only to be shut down for price gouging with over 17,000 bottles unsold in a storage locker.
Following a profile of the man in The New York Times, in which he said he believed that he was “doing a public service” by “fixing inefficiencies in the marketplace,” and the resulting public scorn, the man has donated his supply to government authorities.
Justice served.
It’s less likely that you heard of the University of Chicago’s initial refusal to pay their resident assistants their spring quarter stipends since the semester would run remotely. The RAs at the institution with the $8.5 billion endowment would not be receiving their $3,404.
A petition that collected more than 1,900 signatures in 24 hours and some negative press and social media attention led to a quick reversal where the RAs will work remotely, supporting students as they make the transition to distance learning.
As policies and procedures collide with an unprecedented crisis, we are being given a series of object lessons in the power of shame and social sanction. In the case of the Purell pirate, as the situation initially unfolded, he apparently did not understand that his actions would meet with strong public disapproval, as evidenced by his willingness to pose in front of his wares for a New York Times story.
After all, he was merely doing what he had done for other items, such as Fingerling monkeys, which are apparently some kind of toy.
In this case, the social sanction went too far, all the way to death threats for the hoarder profiled in the Times. He is physically unharmed, but it is difficult to claim that one is acting in the interests of preserving the lives of others while threatening someone else’s life.
Still, we have seen a decisive shift in public attitudes toward where some of the most vital personal protection equipment utilized by front-line health-care workers should go, as people are donating home stockpiles or even taking to their sewing machines to fashion makeshift versions. While there’s no doubt that there must be individuals who, out of a sense of fear, are holding on to these items despite likely not needing them, the collective ethos around this behavior is undeniably changed.
In the case of the University of Chicago, I have to figure that they quickly figured out how bad it looked for them to look at saving some thousands of dollars in RA stipends versus the ill will they had so quickly generated. I do not know that the institutional powers have now learned to do the right thing, but at least they’ll be more cautious about doing the wrong thing in the future.
The most frustrating part for me is that a proactive, forward-thinking administration would’ve assessed the situation and realized that in these RAs they had a relatively inexpensive workforce ready to go in order to help aid the sudden disruption to the academic year. I can think of quite a few ways experienced junior and senior students who have acted as in-person mentors and guides to other undergraduates could be useful in this situation. That the University of Chicago could not bespeaks to a set of values that seem oriented around the bottom line rather than serving students.
In another example that is still yet to be resolved, writing at his Brutal South newsletter, Paul Bowers, a writer and former newspaper reporter, shares his struggle with Blue Cross and Blue Shield of South Carolina to provide any coverage for his therapy appointments when he had to shift from in-person to telehealth.
The BCBS plan only (partially) covers in-person visits, but for anything not in-person, they only cover mental health counseling conducted “via a proprietary app used by one hospital system in [Bowers’s] area.” Bowers’s therapist is not part of that system.
So, rather than being able to receive the mental health counseling he needs during a particularly anxiety-producing time, Bowers spent hours over multiple days trying to convince BCBS to change their policy. Ultimately he has received a waiver for the time being, but who knows how long this will last.
And who knows how many people in need of services cannot receive them right now because of these bureaucratic rules and regulations that have no grounding in serving the health and well-being of the insured?
Together, these stories illustrate a world that is fundamentally misaligned with what I think of as our fundamental values: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is a world in which we are required to battle for even a minimal level of care and respect from those who hold positions of power.
While I condemn the man hoarding vital medical supplies, he is himself a victim in this case. A veteran of the armed forces, he lives in a world where so-called retail arbitrage (essentially selling temporarily desirable junk) is the most available route to supporting his family. In the picture at The New York Times, he is wearing a T-shirt with “Family Man, Family Business” printed on the front.
Retail arbitrage is the most available form of entrepreneurship to this man in the economy we have built around individual consumption. His business has been wiped out, not because of prohibitions on hoarding and price gouging, but because we’re looking at a historic drop in demand. Because of the nature of his business, that business will not be eligible for any kind of government aid to get through the crisis.
The same is true of people who put their faith in things like Airbnb, where the market has obviously collapsed. This includes people who had rented multiple properties in the same city and then turned around and farmed out the units through Airbnb (a violation of both Airbnb and rental agreement policy) at a significantly higher rate. These people, as well as those who rent out their own multiple properties, will quickly be unable to pay rents or mortgages associated with the properties.
Ours is an economy where individuals can achieve some measure of prosperity primarily by cannibalizing others, while corporations like Airbnb, or Amazon, which is making a fortune off the coronavirus while ignoring the risk to their workforce, garner several lions’ shares of the benefit. The operations of Airbnb have driven up rents in many cities. Amazon has decimated huge swaths of local retail.
It was never sustainable, but the virus has revealed this in one fell swoop. I assume everyone is as eager as I am to get back to “normal” life, but I hope we’re also spending some time questioning how great that normal was for a large swath of our citizenry.
