Stocking up vs. hoarding
 

Is there a difference between stocking up and hoarding? Hoarding is generally perceived as a bad thing, but one man's hoard is another man's stock, no?

Is a hoard a quantity more than you can use? Or does the word have a stigma simply when used by those who haven't prepared?

When it comes to food stuffs and other essentials, how much is too much - or is there no such thing?

The reason I ask is over this holiday, my mother saw my food preps and asked why I was hoarding food. This turned into a debate over what was hoarding and what was saving for a rainy day.

Re: Stocking up vs. hoarding
 

Hoarding is taking an unfair share of limited supplies or material.
Stockpiling is acquiring larger than normal quantities of supplies and materials when there is plenty available.

Re: Stocking up vs. hoarding
 

I think "hoarding" is just a negative way of saying "stocking up." Why would someone criticize you for having food preps anyway? I suppose you could debate the reasons for stocking up, but really having a hoard is less of a waste than most other things sheeple spend their money on. Especially if you buy stuff you use anyway and rotate. That "hoard" of yours might come in handy in a crisis. That plasma TV your neighbor bought won't.

Look at the squirrel that saves nuts and seeds for the winter. That is what a hoard is for, to get you and your family through the lean times.

Re: Stocking up vs. hoarding
 

Thinking of stocking up some more once the price dips a little again so I can hoard all my silver until the price goes to the moon.:D
should see some down days along with the up day, I will be waiting in the shadows to buy buy & buy.
wish business would pick up its getting shakey now for me managed to pay 6,500.00 hundred for my major dental work, will be getting it done in a few weeks and then need to come up with another 1,500.00.
just waiting for cold weather to kick in so I can keep my ship afloat with out using the cards again, winter seems to always be slow in my line of work then when summer comes can not seem to work fast enough no matter how late I work or how long I work.
all I need is 5 breakdowns aweek to get by but now its like nothing.

Re: Stocking up vs. hoarding
 

Ant and the Grasshopper


OLD VERSION:
The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks he's a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away. Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed. The grasshopper has no food or shelter so he dies out in the cold.

MORAL OF THE STORY: Be responsible for yourself!

MODERN VERSION:
The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks he's a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away. Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others are cold and starving. CBS, CNN, NBC, and ABC show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food.

America is stunned by the sharp contrast.

How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so? Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper, and everybody cries when they sing "It's Not Easy Being Green."

Jesse Jackson stages a demonstration in front of the ant's house where the news stations film the group singing "We shall overcome." Jesse then has the group kneel down to pray to God for the grasshopper's sake. John Kerry, Ted Kennedy, Tom Daschle , Dick Gephart, Hillary Clinton and Howard Dean stage an interview with Peter Jennings claiming that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and call for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his "fair share." Finally, the EEOC drafts the "Economic Equity and Anti-Grasshopper Act," retroactive to the beginning of the summer. The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the government. Hillary Clinton gets her old law firm to represent the grasshopper in a defamation suit against the ant, and the case is tried before a panel of Federal judges that Bill Clinton appointed from a list of single-parent welfare recipients.

The ant loses the case.

As the story ends, as we see the grasshopper finishing up the last bits of the ant's food while the government house he is in, which just happens to be the ant's old house, crumbles around him because he doesn't maintain it.

The ant has disappeared in the snow.

Later, the grasshopper is found dead in a drug-related incident and the house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of gay spiders who all just got married in Massachusetts and are now terrorizing the once peaceful neighborhood.

Moral of the story - VOTE REPUBLICAN

Re: Stocking up vs. hoarding
 

Great parable - but dated by virtue of the "Vote Republican" admOnition - nowadays a non sequitar. It should read: BUY GOLD, SILVER, GUNS & AMMO AND FOOD - KEEP A LOW PROFILE - STAY UNDER THE SOCIETAL RADAR SCREEN - READ GIM RELIGIOUSLY:banana:

Re: Stocking up vs. hoarding
 

A hoard is what you have if a hungry family is at your door, well armed and angry.

A stockpile is what you have when you "lock and load" to deter looters.

All a matter of perspective!

Re: Stocking up vs. hoarding
 

IMO Hoarding is 'stocking up' on an item that is currently deemed to be in shortage by your community. Stocking up before a shortage is not hoarding and can help reduce the effects of any future shortage of an item as more of the future scarce or needed item exists in the community.

Stocking up helps prevent or reduce effects of shortages!!!!

Re: Stocking up vs. hoarding
 

Hoarding is what your mother and other folks call it because they can't believe the day would come when the store shelves might be empty...I mean, they've lived their whole lives and nothing like that has ever happened ! .....and they resent you for making them considering it.

Ask them if their house has ever burned down, and if not, WHY do they carry fire insurance ?

Re: Stocking up vs. hoarding
 

:cool2: Posted by TnAndy:

:dito:
Right on Bro !!

Couldn't have said it better...

Pity no one issues an insurance policy for stupidity...

If your neighbor installed two 5,000 gallon underground storage tanks and bought fuel at $2.00 a gallon before the price zoomed to $3.50 a gallon you might call that hoarding...I call it smart.

Better to spend your hard earned FRNs on fuel than a plasma big screen TV...it's all a matter of perspective.

Same with PMs...a much safer bet than Crime Street.

:coolbeer:

Re: Stocking up vs. hoarding
 

The fire insurance analogy is right on-- it's food insurance when you stockpile food. Portfolio or asset insurance when you stockpile prescious metals and protection insurance when you stockpile guns & ammo.

Re: Stocking up vs. hoarding
 

Perfectly said, Andy, thanks.

My mother wasn't the first who stumbled upon my insurance who reacted this way. Each had their own way of deflecting the meaning of the stockpile, but in the end you say it best Andy, that people resent being asked to step outside their comfort zone and challenge their perception of reality.

Thanks for the replies, all.

Re: Stocking up vs. hoarding
 

We have had the conversation with some family as well but it is interesting they don't see their savings accounts and 401Ks as hoarding. Upon further discussion they really say (without saying it) that hoarding is having more of something than they do and that they agree with. With food I discussed how it is our 'insurance' as Andy mentioned and it gives us piece of mind in the event there's a food shortage or I'm without work for a long period, "You don't have a problem with insurance do you?"

Re: Stocking up vs. hoarding
 

I think TN Andy hit the nail on the head. People call it hoarding because
they are not going to stockpile anything. Nothing is going to happen, and if it does they want everyone to be in the same boat. They resent the fact that you won't be in that boat come some emergency. There are IPod's to buy, Vacations to take, Plasma TV's to buy etc, etc, etc. Hey we are the richest country in the World. Eat Drink and be Merry.

Re: Stocking up vs. hoarding
 

Stockpiling is what I do.

Hoarding is what other people do.

Re: Stocking up vs. hoarding
 

In the english language, "Stocking Up" is the same as "Hoarding". The hoarder is simply saving supplies for the future. One who has stocked up is by definition, a hoarder.

Any negative connotation has been attached by past and current culture.

I'm a hoarder. A dirty, dirty hoarder.