So Who Is Responsible for Getting Bread Into the Supermarket?

ruggedtoast

So who is responsible for making petrol the right price?
So who is responsible for making the right number of houses at a right price?
So who is responsible for making the price of money right?
So who is responsible for you getting a job, educating your kids, caring for you, providing y

Thats an interesting OP, but I'm sure there is a middle way between hard-line communism and Tesco being free to sell horse burgers to the proletariat.

I have nothing against free enterprise as long as that is what it is, free. Like most people I am much less keen on the mega bucks casino capitalism where the elites enjoy all the profits, and the taxpayers suffer all the losses.

And yes, if I found myself unable to buy bread, or the supermarkets decided to collude in a price fixing cartel I would expect the government to sort it out.

This not being Somalia.

System

If the Tsarist government had intervened a bit more effectively in the privately-run bread distribution chain in 1917 they might not have ended up with a revolution on their hands.

Perhaps the man from Moscow had a long memory.

MobileSaver

ruggedtoast wrote: »

Like most people I am much less keen on the mega bucks casino capitalism where the elites enjoy all the profits, and the taxpayers suffer all the losses.

What most people don't realise is that the "elites" pay more tax in one year than the average person pays in their life time...

vivatifosi

Back in the 1980s, a Times reporter, Michael Binyon, wrote an absolutely brilliant book 'Life in Russia'. It has shaped my opinions on the Marxist/socialist state market aparatus ever since.

It talks about a town that only produced buckets, so in its shops you could buy, um, buckets. Or another place where Levi jeans were so treasured that owning a pair could result in a knife fight. More than anything though, it is just a really interesting insight. It's not so much about the markets but the people and their daily lives. It's long out of print and obviously dated, but well worth a read given it can be picked up for 1p plus postage from book resellers.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Life-Russia-Michael-Binyon/dp/0425081885

ETA: a review from the time:
http://archive.catholicherald.co.uk/article/10th-february-1984/6/amazement-in-everyday-russia-life-in-russia-by-mic

ILW

I do think a totally free market would be scary. In the end it tends to end up with who has the most effective weapons.

vivatifosi

I agree with that ILW. I think it was Adam Smith who spoke of the importance of the market in restricting famine, in that if you have a market for grain merchants, then they will see a value in storing grain which will smooth the difference between the good harvests and the poor ones. It is also likely that forced collectivisation was a cause, if not the main cause, of the famine in the Soviet Union under Stalin.

However I've also read, can't remember who by (Amartya Sen?) about the failure of markets leading to famine. For example when there is food available in markets but the people are too poor to afford.

Therefore there is a role for the state in markets at times - ensuring food security (hopefully without too much tinkering) - as well as a distributional ones in times of crisis. This may be delivering food to cut off communities in Queensland, Aus, when there's been a cyclone, or delivering drinking water to communities in England after flooding. In the less developed economy, the sad thing is that the need is probably greater due to poor infrastructure, yet the government is less able, in many cases, to provide this.

CLAPTON

vivatifosi wrote: »

In the less developed economy, the sad thing is that the need is probably greater due to poor infrastructure, yet the government is less able, in many cases, to provide this.

maybe, if free enterprise was given a free hand they would develop the necessary infrstructure to bring the food to market as it would be in their economic interest to do so.

however if they did, they would probably find their effort were nationalised as food is too important to be left to rich capitalists making large profits.

davenport151

ruggedtoast wrote: »

And yes, if I found myself unable to buy bread, or the supermarkets decided to collude in a price fixing cartel I would expect the government to sort it out.

This not being Somalia.

If I was unable to buy bread I would go home and make my own. Not wait for it to get sorted out. Then again maybe I should always make it. Need more pratice though.

grizzly1911

vivatifosi wrote: »

It is also likely that forced collectivisation was a cause, if not the main cause, of the famine in the Soviet Union under Stalin.

This was also the problem in China in their darker days. Can't remember where I read, Might have been Undercover Economist, Tim Hartford.

I think they even planted up false crops along the train line, when the Leader visited outlying areas, to pretend the agricultural policy was working rather than face the retribution.

Eventually the allowed the individual farmers to benefit directly in some way and there was a marked improvement in output.

ruggedtoast

davenport151 wrote: »

If I was unable to buy bread I would go home and make my own. Not wait for it to get sorted out. Then again maybe I should always make it. Need more pratice though.

Would you grow your own wheat, mill it and make flour, do whatever you have to do to make yeast?

I cant do any of those things so I buy it from the supermarket, who get other people to do those things with my money and take a cut themselves.

This supply chain works because there is a regulatory framework in place that comes from government, which also has to be paid for.

I think most people understand this.

You can't privatise everything.