Elon Musk says he took his kids to watch people horde toilet paper

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk joked about watching people horde toilet paper during the COVID-19 pandemic throughout Tesla's Q4 earnings call.

The topic of hoarding toilet paper was brought up by Musk, who compared the global micro-chip shortage to the toilet paper shortages most people were seeing in their local areas across the United States and other locations around the world. Musk's comparison is between individuals hoarding toilet paper and companies over-ordering micro-chips, which he expects to become less and less of a problem as more fabrication plants are constructed.

"I think there's some degree of the toilet paper problem as well, where, you know, there was a toilet paper shortage during COVID, and like, obviously, it wasn't really certainly a tremendous enhanced need for ass wiping. It's just people panicked in order to -- and got every paper you could possibly wipe your ass with, basically. I was like, "Is this like a real thing or not?" I actually took my kids to the H-E-B and Walmart in Texas to just confirm if this was real."

"Indeed, it was. And there's plenty of food and everything else, but just nothing, no paper products that didn't cause a split up. So an odd choice for people to panic about. And those things are -- actually, if end of the world is coming having toilet paper is the least of your problems."

It seems that Musk's comparison between toilet paper hoarding and chips makes sense if you are purely considering supply chain problems. Panic-buying equals supply shortages, which then equals scarcity of a product, which then equals more panic buying.