During my own harder times I have fed my family dead animals I picked up off the road. Fresh enough to not be stiff.
We could not afford McDonalds. I'm not a street beggar.
The 1911 I'm currently depending on I built with a $60 GI slide,a gift Vietnam era chrome lined GI barrel,and a Rock Island frame.
OK,I did fit it up nicely,it has a Trijicon front sight,and the rest of the parts are Cylinder and slide,Brown,Wilson,or Colt. And it has good magazines.
And I built it over time.
Maybe it was Stephan Covey? There is a time management matrix.
It scores Urgency vs Importance ,from "Not Urgent/Not Important through Urgent/Not important or Not Urgent/Important. Urgent /Important forces operating in crisis mode.
A business meeting urgent customer demands might have to pay overtime Urgency costs money.
Checking your oil might be not urgent/ important till the oil light comes on as you are tooling down the interstate.
The time to buy a SD handgun and ammo is well before you need it.It does not come with proficiency.
Well ahead of time,as a mature and thoughtful human adult,you recognise the need to be able to take care of yourself.
You allocate resources to fulfill that need. Likely,as a TFL member,you have a gun and some ammo.
If you do nothing till there is rioting in the streets,panic,etc, I'm sorry,but I just cant find much empathy for you if you can't find the latest gun article gun you are lusting for.
Buy your fire extinguisher before you need it.
"You can't always get what you want,but if you try,you might get what you need"
I shrug and stay home during the panics. I have wheel weights. I have brass,powder,primers.
And mostly I have the good sense to avoid trouble.
On capitalism vs regulation.....Many of the regulations that prevent capitalism from finding free market stability came via lobbyist bribing,by one method or another,members of Congress,who invest heavily,then behind closed doors,pick winners and losers. Thats how they become multi millionairs on a Congressman's salary.
Aside from useless whining,please tell me what process of "regulation" would you put in place to assure product availability,ALWAYS on the shelf,at any store that wants to stock,at the same stable price at each store.
How you do that? And,how do you "regulate" the shop who would lower its price to attract business?
In other words,would you "Regulate"competition out of the market??
I'll tell who will lose big time on that one.
We will.
Do you drive a Yugo?
On jacking up prices during a crisis over greed,like for water or insulin....Thats disgraceful.
In most cases a business must think of prospering long term. To do that,they must depend on a customer base.
Short term,you may be able to screw desperate people. But alienating your customer base will not serve greed long term.
Dick's Sporting Goods didn't gouge out of greed. They chose to discontinue some product.
And they alienated some customer base.
Football,baseball,basketball, will all go through losing some customer base.
I can forgive my LGS for having to charge $38 for a pound of Varget,I might be grateful he has it in stock,after the hoarder/resellers have cleared the shelves of $28 a pound Varget.
Might my emotions want to regulate the hoarder/resellers? Sometimes...but I cannot think of a way to do that without compromising Freedom.
No system is perfect.
I can refuse to buy from hoarder/resellers. I await their estate sale.
