Supply chain infrastructure is complicated and can be hard to fluidly adapt quickly.

This is an inherent problem for any economy. But COVID emphasizes how the goal isn't merely a static economy but one that can calculate and implement adaptations quickly. https://marker.medium.com/what-everyones-getting-wrong-about-the-toilet-paper-shortage-c812e1358fe0

One of the most instinctive tendencies folks have when they start speculating about alternative economic systems is trying to solve for "basic needs" in one relatively static case. Kropotkin infamously does this in Conquest of Bread, tabulating needs/shipments after the rev.

For very simple notions of "basic needs" and for limited timescales this kind of crisis communism works. Planning is tractable for simple static problems. But the issues begin very quickly with complex chains/products and the need for quickly responsive adaptation to changes.

What I love about the story of our present toilet paper shortages is that it shows how implicitly complex something as seemingly simple as toilet paper is.

(And how rigid and intractable production under capitalism can become.)