for example through strategic price controls on energy, food, and other key inputs
I don’t know why anyone ever takes Jacobin seriously at this point.
The solution to rising food costs is not, in fact, to exacerbate the problem by giving producers a strong incentive to not produce food.
Agreed, the level of concentration in grocery distribution is worse than the telecoms. At this point they need to be broken up and run as non-profits!
the level of concentration in grocery distribution is worse than the telecoms.
Telecoms can fall into being natural monopolies for technical reasons, like there only being so much radio spectrum to go around. Grocery distribution, not so much. Literally anyone can start selling groceries right now.
Which, during the height of COVID, when going to restaurant was not allowed, we saw exactly that – a number of restaurants transitioned into being grocery stores.
We had our chance to change our ways. Nobody wanted to. There is concentration in the grocery business because that’s what we desire. Plain and simple.
That’s hilarious. The formal definition of shortage is a situation where an external mechanism, such as government intervention, prevents price from rising. This is literally looking to create a shortage (a real shortage, not the pretend kind we talk about when it comes to labour) of food and energy.
