Tennessee Man Who Hoarded 17,700 Bottles of Hand Sanitizer is Attacked for Doing What the Rich Do

The day after the United Stares had its first coronavirus de*th, the Colvin brothers decided to exploit the pandemic for financial gain.

They drove around Chattanooga, Tennessee, and like bank robbers hit a Dollar Tree, then a Walmart, then a Staples, and then a Home Depot.

But they weren’t cleaning out their cash registers, instead, they were cleaning out their hand sanitizer shelves.

Over the next three days, they drove around Tennessee and Kentucky, 1,300 miles in total, buying up all the hand sanitizer they could get their well-sanitized hands on.

After filling up their SUV multiple times they got a storage unit and listed their booty on Amazon at a massive markup. “It was crazy money,” they recalled.

Excitement and the coronavirus were in the air!

But then the next day, Amazon pulled their items and thousands of others off the site for trying to profiteer off the pandemic. The company suspended other sellers using similar tactics and warned others that if they kept running up prices, they'd be run out of their virtual town.

But the question I’d encourage you to ask is, “How is what they did any different than how a lot of people get rich today, i.e. hoarding a necessity to turn a massive profit?”

Just replace the word “sanitizer” with “shelter.”

Now I don’t blame a rich person for buying a bunch of land, apartment complexes, and mansions so he could eventually flip the property or have a steady stream of rent money coming in because it’s smart business. And a lot of times the rich person isn’t even doing the work themselves. He’s sippin’ champaign on a yaht while his accountants, lawyers, and finiancial advisors agnostically put his money whereever they think he’ll get the highest return, which often includes buying up real estate.

The 100 richest American families own more than 40 million acres, which is about the combined size of Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island.

They own empty apartment complexs mansions as financial instrument quote

But by hoarding land and housing they are driving up the price of a necessity.

To put it into perspective, there are far more empty homes in the United States than unused hand sanitizers in the Colven brother’s storage unit.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

Amazon should allow the brothers to sell their hand sanitizers at a small loss, which the brothers would willingly do to at least recoup some of their money, and therefore this would be good for society because it would discourage hoarding while putting a much needed product back on the market.

The United States government should discourage the practice of hoarding land by taxing large estates at a much higher rate. It’ll be because of the higher tax that we’d actually see overall land prices come down as the rich we’ll look to sell a lot of their properties.

And I believe the tax money from this land tax should then go toward building tiny homes and tiny house communities. These homes would be so cheap with such favorable income-adjusted loans that virtually anyone who wants one could buy one.

So whether it be shelters or sanitizers, we can make anything cheap by bringing down the cost of manufacturing and reversing the financial motive of hoarding.

Ultimately, hands should be for building not hoarding, but either way sanitize them.