Logistics. The bugabear of every epic disruption in the history of history.
I don’t think it’s idiocy, but I don’t think it’s only logistics. Another explanation that seems just as plausible: TP is very big, so it’s easily noticed when in low supply. That + people copying others behavior + the media reporting on it in one place leading to extra shortage in many more places seems to me equally behind this. In other words, too many people thinking “I’ll buy just a bit earlier so I don’t miss out” seems to me equally possible. Also jfc this article is a phenomenal example of just how much you can stretch a minor insight that would easily fit a tweet. Medium, man.
Right on all counts. That said, I drove past Butch's Guns the other day and saw a line 9 people deep waiting to get in. "What the hell do they need guns for?" I asked myself. "To defend their toilet paper, of course," I answered. People are buying because they have no control. Therefore they are buying things that give them a sense of control. That said, there are actual logistical reasons behind certain shortages. I mean, I can look up isopropyl alcohol on my medical suppliers' pages and look up isopropyl alcohol on eBay and see an easy 1000% profit to be made. If everyone could buy from medical supply houses they'd be golden, but they can't. Most of them are saying "we won't sell this to you unless you have a pre-existing account, and if you have a pre-existing account, we'll only sell to you if you've ever bought this before."
Yup. You need ONE paragraph of this article to address the title, and it's like 7 paragraphs in. I would argue that's the "logic" of idiots, hence idiocy. But it turns out their actions were at least somewhat justifiable, it's just that no one has explained to me why until today. too many people thinking “I’ll buy just a bit earlier so I don’t miss out” seems to me equally possible.
Grant's memoirs is like half just him describing how many miles of telegraph wire he laid per battle and where he made his troops bivouac. But practical aspects be damned. By far the best thing about this piece is hearing industry people describe in industry terms the difference between commercial- and consumer-grade toilet paper.Logistics.
The Durants' last book, which was basically "Napoleon Etc.", covered what Napoleon did in order to get supplies to the front lines far more than what Napoleon did once the supplies got there. They don't quite get as far as saying Napoleon was a better quartermaster than general.
I would argue that you can be a good quartermaster and a bad general, but you can't be a bad quartermaster and a good general. WWI basically ended when the 5 years of attrition was stalled because the blockade of Germany starved their population to the point of giving up. France and England actually enjoyed better standards of living during the war (in places that weren't battle ravaged), because trade with the US went through the roof, whereas Germany became destitute due to their only port being blockaded by the British. The war was effectively over when Germany lost some decisive Naval battles, but like all Lost Causes it took them years to admit it to themselves. (For comparison, Grant argues that the Civil War was won at the Battle of Chattanooga, which if memory serves was in fall 1863, since after that point he had effectively bisected the South.) I haven't read much about Napoleon but it seems that he probably made the same mistake of trying to take Russia, which extended his lines way longer than they could sustain. Noe we have a President whose knowledge of history doesn't even go as far back as Pearl Harbor trying to coordinate a logistics operation that has a wartime feel to it. It's not going well.
Margaret MacMillan argued that the basic problem with WWI was that Germany never actually lost, they fought to a stalemate and started negotiating before things in Germany could get dicey. As a consequence Germany never truly assumed the mantle of the defeated, merely of the temporarily set-back. She further argued that neither England nor France had the materiel to pursue a war with Germany to its logical conclusion and the Germans knew it; whether or not the United States could have funded such a war is an open question but the facts on the ground argued against it. if Germany had lost, the "negotiations" over reparations would never have been negotiations, the Germans would never have tried to wheedle their way out of it, the Allies wouldn't have built their banking systems on the assumptions that German war reparations would subsidize them and the Great Depression and WWII would never have been fought. Effectively, she argued that WWII was actually "WWI Part II" and was only possible because all involved economies spent 30 years building up for it. The problem with wars of conquest is they eventually become wars of control which are very different wars indeed. Both the troops on the ground and the people supporting them back home have very different expectations for their daily lives and their futures under a war of conquest - they'll put up with a bunch of shit on the idea that it is short-term, is temporary and will lead to better things. As soon as you say "France is now Germany we're done" everyone in Germany expects their payback. So you keep fighting. Neither Napoleon nor Hitler had any gift for managing a populace not perpetually engaged in existential war. As a consequence, they needed to find existential war wherever they could. At some point you're surrounded by oceans, mountains, deserts and Russia.I haven't read much about Napoleon but it seems that he probably made the same mistake of trying to take Russia, which extended his lines way longer than they could sustain.
I haven't read MacMillan, but I have read a number of books by David Fromkin, who broadly makes the same point that the interwar years should more accurately be read as a ceasefire. Specifically, his book A Peace to End All Peace is a look at how badly they fucked the Mideast in the negotiations to carve up the Ottoman Empire. Really fascinating how badly they fucked the aftermath of the war in basically all aspects.
Problem is the "Ottoman Empire" wasn't so much the "Ottoman Empire" as the "Ottoman periphery" and these lovely "modern" nation-states couldn't really fathom any organizational structure other than what they themselves had so why not divide up what you know between the Hashemites and the Qajars. It's always amused me that the UAE got a better deal than the rest of the Middle East combined simply because the British understood piracy better than tribalism. As for the powers-that-be they were busy worrying about becoming Windsors instead of Saxe-Coburg Gothas and not in the slightest about air power, chemical weapons and mass media. Cue Japan, who went "if we don't put down the kimonos and pick up rifles we're fucking extinct" but since no one on the Pacific Rim had any Saxe-Coburg Gothas, nobody took them seriously until it was way the fuck too late.