Mission Accomplished – Part I: Wrecking the Economy - Eric Janszen

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: Mission Accomplished – Part I: Wrecking the Economy - Eric Janszen

that concentration of supply has many dangers

I am less worried about this one. Simple physical concentration does not present much additional risk in my view, except for a few threats, such as say terrorist bombings. Even that risk is minimal until we're so concentrated that taking out just two or three warehouses would be able to starve many people for a prolonged time. We're not that concentrated.

Food warehouses are simple things. A few people with modest training can get the food in and out of them with tolerable efficiency. Food warehouses are also fairly redundant and fairly adaptable. One could cover for another, and any could adapt their workload to more critical items.

Let me put this another way. To conduct useful threat analysis, one needs to identify failure mechanisms. Simply noting one risky sounding factor, without identifying mechanisms by which that factor leads to failures and estimating the likelihood of those mechanisms, can be misleading.

The risk factor that worries me the most is the government. A few stupid policy changes, such as food supply destruction as an unintended consequence of price controls, can have systemic affects on gross food supply.

[ggirod]

Re: Mission Accomplished – Part I: Wrecking the Economy - Eric Janszen

Let me put this another way. To conduct useful threat analysis, one needs to identify failure mechanisms. Simply noting one risky sounding factor, without identifying mechanisms by which that factor leads to failures and estimating the likelihood of those mechanisms, can be misleading.

Here are a few mechanisms, many of which occur in localized situations but have minimal impact on the distributed food supply...

Threats:
1. Localized illness / strikes / civil unrest
2. localized lack of Electricity / lack of hydrocarbon fuels / refrigeration
3. Infestation with molds, pests, etc.
4. Terror via contamination / destruction
5. widespread contamination via mixing one contaminated product with similar products from different sources


Problems
1. Lack of competition between vendors
2. Decline of quality as high quality goods are diverted to some markets, remainder to others and no competition to stop it.
3. buyer monopoly - only one buyer for commodity > lower prices > supply destruction
4. retailer monopoly - no matter where you buy it is the same stuff at same price
5. likely confounding of product / batch traceability as product is mixed at the single point
6. scope of any sanitation / health regulation violation / process problem becomes orders of magnitude bigger.

I hope this helps.

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: Mission Accomplished – Part I: Wrecking the Economy - Eric Janszen

Here are a few mechanisms, many of which occur in localized situations but have minimal impact on the distributed food supply...

Sure, there are always many things that can fail. But in fairly simple systems with a fair bit of redundancy, such failures tend not to cascade and can be worked around. If the local Kroger markets have a massive supply disruption, we can still buy food at WalMart or Albertson's, even if we have to suffer through a few weeks of some shelves being bare. If this food is polluted, buy that food. There might not be nearly as much redundancy in the food chain as in the past, but there is still sufficient redundancy to easily survive some outages without mass starvation.

Our financial, military, legal and political systems present the systemic risks to American prosperity and freedom, not our food system. The main threat presented by the food system is too many overweight people suffering from chronic illness.

The countries that face severe food shortages are those that cannot grow nearly enough food domestically to feed their population and that risk not being able to afford food imports.

[ST]

Re: Mission Accomplished – Part I: Wrecking the Economy - Eric Janszen

The 1980s bubble and crash [in Japan] was also a product of U.S. policy.

I think this is reaching. For an account of just how bubble evolved and was perpetuated through Japan's deep ties between the corporate, banking and political sector read Edward Chancellors excellent chapter on Japan in Devil Take the Hindmost: A History of Financial Speculation.