11-01-2021, 10:00 AM
Back in the 1980s I worked in the freight business. I was a freight handler on the dock of a small perishable freight company. It was the only job I could get at the time, despite my college degree. I was hardly ignorant of the economics behind the whole business, but I wasn't paid to talk about it or make decisions, just move the freight. It was dangerous work and the biggest threat to us was the utter lack of weather protection. In winter we had people suffering cold weather injuries quite often. It was low pay and no union would touch us. The company I worked for no longer exists.
Even back then, small companies were being shut down by regulation and union tactics. Somebody behind the scenes knew what was happening, but most of the people on the ground had no clue of the broader plans. The idea was to consolidate everything under very large firms. It's no different from what you see with Google and Microsoft and other forms of oligopoly (a monopoly spread across just a handful of big shots). The whole thing is anti-consumer; it is quite conscious and frankly spiteful.
So this article by a trucker on why the consumer supply chain is breaking down tells only half the story. You see, the trucking industry was being squeezed long before the plague came along. It was all about cutting costs and raising profits for just those few who could survive the conglomeration trends. The economic shock from quarantines and lock-downs simply aggravated the crisis already in the making. Now you can see where it was headed all along. The lack of investment in infrastructure and personnel was intentional.
The whole idea was to reduce your choices so you couldn't go anywhere else. Every part of the consumer supply chain has been going through this. Every part of the chain of production, from raw resources to the store shelf, has been going through consolidation and restriction of competition. And once the whole thing was owned by a handful of conspirators, we would all be stuck with a system that offers zero alternatives. They can structure the pricing any way they like, and we cannot escape.
But they aren't geniuses in the sense of seeing the whole picture. Now that the final squeeze has begun, everything will break down at once. They have been relying too much on things they can't control, and that system on which they've built is collapsing. But it's going to hurt for a long time because replacing that consumer supply chain with small local production will not be easy.
Even back then, small companies were being shut down by regulation and union tactics. Somebody behind the scenes knew what was happening, but most of the people on the ground had no clue of the broader plans. The idea was to consolidate everything under very large firms. It's no different from what you see with Google and Microsoft and other forms of oligopoly (a monopoly spread across just a handful of big shots). The whole thing is anti-consumer; it is quite conscious and frankly spiteful.
So this article by a trucker on why the consumer supply chain is breaking down tells only half the story. You see, the trucking industry was being squeezed long before the plague came along. It was all about cutting costs and raising profits for just those few who could survive the conglomeration trends. The economic shock from quarantines and lock-downs simply aggravated the crisis already in the making. Now you can see where it was headed all along. The lack of investment in infrastructure and personnel was intentional.
The whole idea was to reduce your choices so you couldn't go anywhere else. Every part of the consumer supply chain has been going through this. Every part of the chain of production, from raw resources to the store shelf, has been going through consolidation and restriction of competition. And once the whole thing was owned by a handful of conspirators, we would all be stuck with a system that offers zero alternatives. They can structure the pricing any way they like, and we cannot escape.
But they aren't geniuses in the sense of seeing the whole picture. Now that the final squeeze has begun, everything will break down at once. They have been relying too much on things they can't control, and that system on which they've built is collapsing. But it's going to hurt for a long time because replacing that consumer supply chain with small local production will not be easy.
