TKDR: I work at the end of the supply chain (manage a produce dept). From what I can see, rising food costs are almost entirely due to rising energy costs, as fresh food must be grown, harvested, transported and refrigerated. The word 'almost' in that last sentence really doesn't belong there. It is all dependent on energy and yes, 'energy' = fossil fuels. Rising cost of energy stems from failure of law framers to acknowledge production realities. That smaller bag of Cheetos, or that doubling in the price of broccoli... direct result of interference with efficiency of energy production and distribution. EVs do not haul tens of thousands of 8000 lb produce trailers up the west side of the Rockies - diesels do that job. And not too put to fine a point on it, even nitrogen fertilizer production is a fossil-fuel demanding process; personally know one small-scale grower who abandoned a 20 year business due to rising fertilizer cost witnessed post-pandemic.
Leftist policies are said to help the little guy, but as soon as it comes to climate stuff, the little guy is thrown under the bus in an instant. The energy prices that you cite are the prime example of this: High energy costs hurt "the rich," but "the poor" suffer tremendously. At the end of the day, businesses must pass rising costs on to consumers if they want to keep doing business. Thank you for sharing this insight!
David, very good article and most relevant today. F.A. Hayek, “The Road To Serfdom” should be required reading to understand the history and meaning of true capitalism and its role in providing abundance and freedom to individuals (unlike and contrasted with “crony” capitalism that has evolved with big corporations and their corruption not only of free market competition but also government and politics of free people). The failure to identify the distinction between capitalism and corporatism has led us to the brink now of serfdom to oligarchs. Stop and consider Big Ag and the control of the food supply in the hands of a small number of very large conglomerate global corporations and you begin to see very quickly that while you are right in assuming capitalism dictates that increasing costs must be paid by consumers (demand) in order to maintain supply, however it is a gross oversimplification to lump crony (fake) capitalism by big corporations into the same category when in fact they exercise anti-capitalist means to limit competition and in fact do often use dishonest business practices to maximize profits. The danger in ignoring this distinction cuts right at the heart of libertarian free enterprise and needs to be highlighted and exposed more before it is too late. The general public today is clueless of any difference and lumps it all together as “capitalism” as you seem to be doing in this article. Your thoughts?
Thanks, Will. I absolutely agree that today's mega-corporations can be a threat to individuals. However, they can only get to this position through government mandates (this meme describes it well: https://substack.com/@libertarianthinker/note/c-64651574?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=3wo7hv). One should not confuse cronyism (how I prefer to call it) with free markets, as you point out. When most people talk about "capitalism," they mix it up with cronyism and the policies that they advocate for just increase the level of cronyism even more.
Regarding your "accusation" of me lumping this together, I generally come from a perspective of how it is in a free market. You could probably call this idealistic. Nonetheless, producers having to pass on rising costs if they want to stay profitable fits largely to the heavily-meddled-with market that we have nowadays.
Mega corporations threaten private owned small businesses and individuals. The UniParty is Big Gov + Big Corp. They buy influence as needed from career politicians getting rich while in office. They have their own tax code and legal exemptions that private small businesses and individuals do not. They buy out smaller companies to eliminate competition. The idea that a publicly owned corporation should be treated as “private property” makes no sense, they are a group of individual shareholders who have private property rights, but as a group? No, sorry that by definition is a collective, as in “collectivism”. Corporatism if you extrapolate with the end in mind leads to oligarchy. Look around my friend, we are there. It is unsustainable. Even the mega-corps; the Black Rock’s, Google’s and the rest need look no further than the CCP to see what happens, as in when Jack Ma said he was going to “reform banking” in China. It is suicidal for free people to ignore and allow The UniParty to continue its progression to centralize power and control. As the late great Herman Cain once said, “Everything pivots on the tax code. Unless and until you change that, nothing will change.” Except I would add: it will only get worse.
I have a different point of view regarding inflation though.
Inflation is an intentionally evil way of fleecing you. The manufacturers do it trying to stay alive. But fiat money( no value backing it) is intentional to take the real money out of currency. That is a why all silver and gold has been removed from our money. That was intentional by design.
Thanks! Those views aren't in conflict at all. Inflation is a policy aimed at getting people to spend and invest their money. That is literally the main job of central banks. And you're right, with gold as money this wouldn't be possible.
I compare cost per 100g/kg (which is printed next to the price, here in Australia. I was comparing dog treats and saw Purina has removed weight from it's labelling and now just says how many Pieces are in the bag... to avoid product cost comparisons and perhaps allow for shrinkflation in the future without the need for new packaging. That so infuriated me, I have since made my own.... sliced chicken in the air dryer etc. You can cheat your customers, but don't piss them off.
"Measured in gold, the price of a good suit has not changed much over the last century."
I once came across a comparison of how much you might be expected to fork out for a good suit today to how much a young Roman man of good family might have to unbelt for a decent outfit, and it turned out that in gold the price really was just about the same as it had ever been. (I can't remember what history book or podcast this was in but for some reason the phrase "10 gold pieces" stuck with me.)
And in a couple of weeks I will find out how my first ever batch of cold process soap is going to lather up to my expectations, by the way :)
I find it truly fascinating how paper money could only be introduced as a representation of gold because people knew that it was just paper. Equally fascinating is how, as you point out, most folks don't know about this / don't realize what this means.
At some level the whole is beginning to resemble the bulldozer scene at the beginning of The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, are you familiar with it?
Your work is too good to not want to help, David. Don’t sell yourself short.
There is a regular vacuous Brit who discovers his neck of the woods has been slated for total demolition to build a bypass. He realizes this the morning it begins, runs out and lies down in front of his house to prevent it being demolished. There is a bit of argy-bargy between him and the foreman of the demolition team till a friend of the Brit’s arrives (he has some other fish to fry) and he needs to get the Brit away from the place. Here is how:
Ford = the friend
Mr Prosser = the foreman
Arthur Dent = the house owner
““He wants to knock your house down?”
“Yes, he wants to build...”
“And he can't because you're lying in front of the bulldozers?”
“Yes, and...”
“I'm sure we can come to some arrangement,” said Ford. “Excuse me!” he shouted.
Mr Prosser (who was arguing with a spokesman for the bulldozer drivers about whether or not Arthur Dent constituted a mental health hazard, and how much they should get paid if he did) looked around. He was surprised and slightly alarmed to find that Arthur had company.
“Yes? Hello?” he called. “Has Mr Dent come to his senses yet?”
“Can we for the moment,” called Ford, “assume that he hasn't?”
“Well?” sighed Mr Prosser.
“And can we also assume,” said Ford, “that he's going to be staying here all day?”
“So?”
“So all your men are going to be standing around all day doing nothing?”
“Could be, could be...”
“Well, if you're resigned to doing that anyway, you don't actually need him to lie here all the time do you?”
“What?”
“You don't,” said Ford patiently, “actually need him here.”
Mr Prosser thought about this.
“Well no, not as such...”, he said, “not exactly need...” Prosser was worried. He thought that one of them wasn't making a lot of sense.
Ford said, “So if you would just like to take it as read that he's actually here, then he and I could slip off down to the pub for half an hour. How does that sound?”
Mr Prosser thought it sounded perfectly potty.
“That sounds perfectly reasonable,” he said in a reassuring tone of voice, wondering who he was trying to reassure.
“And if you want to pop off for a quick one yourself later on,” said Ford, “we can always cover up for you in return.”
“Thank you very much,” said Mr Prosser who no longer knew how to play this at all, “thank you very much, yes, that's very kind...” He frowned, then smiled, then tried to do both at once, failed, grasped hold of his fur hat and rolled it fitfully round the top of his head. He could only assume that he had just won.
“So,” continued Ford Prefect, “if you would just like to come over here and lie down...”
“What?” said Mr Prosser.
“Ah, I'm sorry,” said Ford, “perhaps I hadn't made myself fully clear.
Somebody's got to lie in front of the bulldozers haven't they? Or there won't be anything to stop them driving into Mr Dent's house will there?”
“What?” said Mr Prosser again.
“It's very simple,” said Ford, “my client, Mr Dent, says that he will stop lying here in the mud on the sole condition that you come and take over from him.”
“What are you talking about?” said Arthur, but Ford nudged him with his shoe to be quiet.
“You want me,” said Mr Prosser, spelling out this new thought to himself, “to come and lie there...”
“Yes.”
“In front of the bulldozer?”
“Yes.”
“Instead of Mr Dent.”
“Yes.”
“In the mud.”
“In, as you say it, the mud.”
As soon as Mr Prosser realized that he was substantially the loser after all, it was as if a weight lifted itself off his shoulders: this was more like the world as he knew it. He sighed.
“In return for which you will take Mr Dent with you down to the pub?”
“That's it,” said Ford. “That's it exactly.”
Mr Prosser took a few nervous steps forward and stopped.
“Promise?”
“Promise,” said Ford. He turned to Arthur.
“Come on,” he said to him, “get up and let the man lie down.”
Arthur stood up, feeling as if he was in a dream.
Ford beckoned to Prosser who sadly, awkwardly, sat down in the mud.
He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it. The mud folded itself round his bottom and his arms and oozed into his shoes.
Ford looked at him severely.
“And no sneaky knocking down Mr Dent's house whilst he's away, alright?” he said.
“The mere thought,” growled Mr Prosser, “hadn't even begun to speculate,” he continued, settling himself back, “about the merest possibility of crossing my mind.”
TKDR: I work at the end of the supply chain (manage a produce dept). From what I can see, rising food costs are almost entirely due to rising energy costs, as fresh food must be grown, harvested, transported and refrigerated. The word 'almost' in that last sentence really doesn't belong there. It is all dependent on energy and yes, 'energy' = fossil fuels. Rising cost of energy stems from failure of law framers to acknowledge production realities. That smaller bag of Cheetos, or that doubling in the price of broccoli... direct result of interference with efficiency of energy production and distribution. EVs do not haul tens of thousands of 8000 lb produce trailers up the west side of the Rockies - diesels do that job. And not too put to fine a point on it, even nitrogen fertilizer production is a fossil-fuel demanding process; personally know one small-scale grower who abandoned a 20 year business due to rising fertilizer cost witnessed post-pandemic.
Leftist policies are said to help the little guy, but as soon as it comes to climate stuff, the little guy is thrown under the bus in an instant. The energy prices that you cite are the prime example of this: High energy costs hurt "the rich," but "the poor" suffer tremendously. At the end of the day, businesses must pass rising costs on to consumers if they want to keep doing business. Thank you for sharing this insight!
David, very good article and most relevant today. F.A. Hayek, “The Road To Serfdom” should be required reading to understand the history and meaning of true capitalism and its role in providing abundance and freedom to individuals (unlike and contrasted with “crony” capitalism that has evolved with big corporations and their corruption not only of free market competition but also government and politics of free people). The failure to identify the distinction between capitalism and corporatism has led us to the brink now of serfdom to oligarchs. Stop and consider Big Ag and the control of the food supply in the hands of a small number of very large conglomerate global corporations and you begin to see very quickly that while you are right in assuming capitalism dictates that increasing costs must be paid by consumers (demand) in order to maintain supply, however it is a gross oversimplification to lump crony (fake) capitalism by big corporations into the same category when in fact they exercise anti-capitalist means to limit competition and in fact do often use dishonest business practices to maximize profits. The danger in ignoring this distinction cuts right at the heart of libertarian free enterprise and needs to be highlighted and exposed more before it is too late. The general public today is clueless of any difference and lumps it all together as “capitalism” as you seem to be doing in this article. Your thoughts?
Thanks, Will. I absolutely agree that today's mega-corporations can be a threat to individuals. However, they can only get to this position through government mandates (this meme describes it well: https://substack.com/@libertarianthinker/note/c-64651574?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=3wo7hv). One should not confuse cronyism (how I prefer to call it) with free markets, as you point out. When most people talk about "capitalism," they mix it up with cronyism and the policies that they advocate for just increase the level of cronyism even more.
Regarding your "accusation" of me lumping this together, I generally come from a perspective of how it is in a free market. You could probably call this idealistic. Nonetheless, producers having to pass on rising costs if they want to stay profitable fits largely to the heavily-meddled-with market that we have nowadays.
Does this make sense to you?
Mega corporations threaten private owned small businesses and individuals. The UniParty is Big Gov + Big Corp. They buy influence as needed from career politicians getting rich while in office. They have their own tax code and legal exemptions that private small businesses and individuals do not. They buy out smaller companies to eliminate competition. The idea that a publicly owned corporation should be treated as “private property” makes no sense, they are a group of individual shareholders who have private property rights, but as a group? No, sorry that by definition is a collective, as in “collectivism”. Corporatism if you extrapolate with the end in mind leads to oligarchy. Look around my friend, we are there. It is unsustainable. Even the mega-corps; the Black Rock’s, Google’s and the rest need look no further than the CCP to see what happens, as in when Jack Ma said he was going to “reform banking” in China. It is suicidal for free people to ignore and allow The UniParty to continue its progression to centralize power and control. As the late great Herman Cain once said, “Everything pivots on the tax code. Unless and until you change that, nothing will change.” Except I would add: it will only get worse.
I believe what you say has merit.
I have a different point of view regarding inflation though.
Inflation is an intentionally evil way of fleecing you. The manufacturers do it trying to stay alive. But fiat money( no value backing it) is intentional to take the real money out of currency. That is a why all silver and gold has been removed from our money. That was intentional by design.
I wonder why? You be the judge.
Thanks! Those views aren't in conflict at all. Inflation is a policy aimed at getting people to spend and invest their money. That is literally the main job of central banks. And you're right, with gold as money this wouldn't be possible.
As you suggest, we should always remember that inflation (of all kinds) is explicit government policy, not some unforeseen byproduct.
https://mtsobserver.substack.com/p/take-the-clear-pill-on-inflation
I'm always amazed when I hear comments in the sense of "Those restaurants have increased prices again!" as if they didn't face rising price pressures.
I compare cost per 100g/kg (which is printed next to the price, here in Australia. I was comparing dog treats and saw Purina has removed weight from it's labelling and now just says how many Pieces are in the bag... to avoid product cost comparisons and perhaps allow for shrinkflation in the future without the need for new packaging. That so infuriated me, I have since made my own.... sliced chicken in the air dryer etc. You can cheat your customers, but don't piss them off.
Very sneaky! I have never noticed such a policy.
I always compare cost per 100g as well (a standard in Germany too).
Neither am I a dog treat expert nor do I know the brand, but probably your dog is better of with self-made treats anyway :)
"Measured in gold, the price of a good suit has not changed much over the last century."
I once came across a comparison of how much you might be expected to fork out for a good suit today to how much a young Roman man of good family might have to unbelt for a decent outfit, and it turned out that in gold the price really was just about the same as it had ever been. (I can't remember what history book or podcast this was in but for some reason the phrase "10 gold pieces" stuck with me.)
And in a couple of weeks I will find out how my first ever batch of cold process soap is going to lather up to my expectations, by the way :)
"Everything is getting more expensive" doesn't describe the problem adequately. The issue is that our money is losing value.
Absolutely; and that most people at this point don’t understand what money is.
I find it truly fascinating how paper money could only be introduced as a representation of gold because people knew that it was just paper. Equally fascinating is how, as you point out, most folks don't know about this / don't realize what this means.
At some level the whole is beginning to resemble the bulldozer scene at the beginning of The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, are you familiar with it?
I haven't even heard of it. Do you want to describe? (But no need to do this if you don't want to get too deep into the weeds.)
Your work is too good to not want to help, David. Don’t sell yourself short.
There is a regular vacuous Brit who discovers his neck of the woods has been slated for total demolition to build a bypass. He realizes this the morning it begins, runs out and lies down in front of his house to prevent it being demolished. There is a bit of argy-bargy between him and the foreman of the demolition team till a friend of the Brit’s arrives (he has some other fish to fry) and he needs to get the Brit away from the place. Here is how:
Ford = the friend
Mr Prosser = the foreman
Arthur Dent = the house owner
““He wants to knock your house down?”
“Yes, he wants to build...”
“And he can't because you're lying in front of the bulldozers?”
“Yes, and...”
“I'm sure we can come to some arrangement,” said Ford. “Excuse me!” he shouted.
Mr Prosser (who was arguing with a spokesman for the bulldozer drivers about whether or not Arthur Dent constituted a mental health hazard, and how much they should get paid if he did) looked around. He was surprised and slightly alarmed to find that Arthur had company.
“Yes? Hello?” he called. “Has Mr Dent come to his senses yet?”
“Can we for the moment,” called Ford, “assume that he hasn't?”
“Well?” sighed Mr Prosser.
“And can we also assume,” said Ford, “that he's going to be staying here all day?”
“So?”
“So all your men are going to be standing around all day doing nothing?”
“Could be, could be...”
“Well, if you're resigned to doing that anyway, you don't actually need him to lie here all the time do you?”
“What?”
“You don't,” said Ford patiently, “actually need him here.”
Mr Prosser thought about this.
“Well no, not as such...”, he said, “not exactly need...” Prosser was worried. He thought that one of them wasn't making a lot of sense.
Ford said, “So if you would just like to take it as read that he's actually here, then he and I could slip off down to the pub for half an hour. How does that sound?”
Mr Prosser thought it sounded perfectly potty.
“That sounds perfectly reasonable,” he said in a reassuring tone of voice, wondering who he was trying to reassure.
“And if you want to pop off for a quick one yourself later on,” said Ford, “we can always cover up for you in return.”
“Thank you very much,” said Mr Prosser who no longer knew how to play this at all, “thank you very much, yes, that's very kind...” He frowned, then smiled, then tried to do both at once, failed, grasped hold of his fur hat and rolled it fitfully round the top of his head. He could only assume that he had just won.
“So,” continued Ford Prefect, “if you would just like to come over here and lie down...”
“What?” said Mr Prosser.
“Ah, I'm sorry,” said Ford, “perhaps I hadn't made myself fully clear.
Somebody's got to lie in front of the bulldozers haven't they? Or there won't be anything to stop them driving into Mr Dent's house will there?”
“What?” said Mr Prosser again.
“It's very simple,” said Ford, “my client, Mr Dent, says that he will stop lying here in the mud on the sole condition that you come and take over from him.”
“What are you talking about?” said Arthur, but Ford nudged him with his shoe to be quiet.
“You want me,” said Mr Prosser, spelling out this new thought to himself, “to come and lie there...”
“Yes.”
“In front of the bulldozer?”
“Yes.”
“Instead of Mr Dent.”
“Yes.”
“In the mud.”
“In, as you say it, the mud.”
As soon as Mr Prosser realized that he was substantially the loser after all, it was as if a weight lifted itself off his shoulders: this was more like the world as he knew it. He sighed.
“In return for which you will take Mr Dent with you down to the pub?”
“That's it,” said Ford. “That's it exactly.”
Mr Prosser took a few nervous steps forward and stopped.
“Promise?”
“Promise,” said Ford. He turned to Arthur.
“Come on,” he said to him, “get up and let the man lie down.”
Arthur stood up, feeling as if he was in a dream.
Ford beckoned to Prosser who sadly, awkwardly, sat down in the mud.
He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it. The mud folded itself round his bottom and his arms and oozed into his shoes.
Ford looked at him severely.
“And no sneaky knocking down Mr Dent's house whilst he's away, alright?” he said.
“The mere thought,” growled Mr Prosser, “hadn't even begun to speculate,” he continued, settling himself back, “about the merest possibility of crossing my mind.”