Peter Hume,
I live in a town that is located about 1000km from Brisbane, and the shelves in the local supermarkets are now ½ to ¾ empty.

While bread still seems available, milk is almost non-available and fruit and veg is fast disappearing. In fact, the food stuffs that could be regarded as nutritious and able to sustain life are nearly gone.

Most of the supermarkets are run by your much cherished and much loved multi-national companies, and it seems that they have not been stocking enough food locally, but keeping most food in large warehouses in Brisbane, and then transporting it out to the rest of the state by road or rail.

Most of these much loved multi-national companies make huge profits, and could easily afford to store more food locally, if governments imposed that requirement upon them.

I don’t fully accept the theory of global warming or climate change, but our state and federal governments do.

It would be a test for our state and federal government to impose requirements on the much cherished mult-national supermarket companies operating in our country, that they do store more food locally, in case of more catastrophic weather conditions.

However, I don’t think our governments will do that, because they also cherish the much loved multi-national companies, and wouldn’t want to burden them with having to build more warehouses.

Cronus
Three fundamental problems with that approach:

Firstly you assume the statist orthodoxy is correct, namely, that the economic problems you refer to arise spontaneously out of unregulated capitalism. However both the Great Depression, and the current economic problems of Europe, arise in a context in which government controlled the supply and price of money. So the foundational assumption, that such instability arises out of unregulated capitalism is *not factually correct*.

Prices are the steering mechanism of the market, so by controlling the price of money, government controls the steering mechanism of the financial markets – which just happen to be the origin of the gross economic crises in issue, surprise surprise.

Economics tells us that prices function to clear the market – to equilibrate supply and demand at that price – so by regulating prices to some other level, we are *guaranteeing* the shortages and surpluses that just happen to define the economic crises supposedly requiring government’s wise hand on the tiller.

Secondly, even if it was correct that these problems arise out of unregulated capitalism, which it isn’t, the statist *assumption* that government has a general residual competence to manage problems thus arising, is disproved. Either government does or does not have the competence to manage the economy, and either way, the facts consistently disprove the statist theory.

Thirdly, it is not enough to believe in a general need for government to prevent damage to the commons. Given the defects of bureaucracy are common ground, it is not good enough to assume that if government keeps banging away with its meat-axe, it will optimise outcomes eventually. You need to be able to say *how* to distinguish hope in bureaucracy that is well-founded, from that which is not, *beforehand*.

You can’t “rebuild” bureaucracies so as to solve these problems inhering in common property, that’s the whole point. The tragedy of the commons cannot be solved by more communism however called - it can only be solved by individual freedom and private property.

http://economics.org.au/2010/07/the-tragedy-of-the-tax-pool-commons/

Vanna If more people did embrace climate change maybe something would get done. Don't blame the govt; just because they believe something is at foot. The best option is to guard against panic buyers.

579
There is panic buying, and it often occurs before a cyclone.

But if people knew that food was being kept locally, then it would reduce panic buying.

However thet know that very little food is kept locally in a town of 120,000.

To maximise their profits as much as possible, the dear multi-national companies have centralised warehouses in Brisbane and operate fleets of trucks to take food to the rest of the state.

If something happens to the roads, then too bad for the rest of the state.

Vanna

The dominance of markets by big multinationals is more a result of government intervention than of economic liberalism. The reason is that taxation and regulation count much more heavily against smaller more marginal businesses. The bigger ones are able to bear these costs much more because of economies of scale. The result is that big government and big business tend to go hand in hand.

So what did you have in mind? A law saying that supermarkets must store more food locally against emergencies?

Presumably the advantage would be that food is more likely to be available during emergencies, and the disadvantages is that during ordinary times, more food would waste, and food would cost more.

You assume that people would prefer to have the insurance in emergency times, than lower prices in ordinary times. But obviously, if they did prefer that, there would be no need of a law to force the issue.

Also there's nothing stopping supermarkets from doing it now. Obviously the reason they don't, is because people would prefer the competition who don't do it, on the ground of their lower prices.

It's basically an insurance question. Try this thought experiment. There is a very small risk of the earth being totally devastated by a meteorite. We can insure against it by collectively paying for a gun to blast it to smithereens in outer space. But the cost will be half of GDP, so no more cappuccinos, videos or cars - but total security against an unlikely risk. People might reasonably prefer the ordinary pleasures against the extraordinary insurance.

And why should you or anyone else be able to force them to prefer your values over their own?

Thus no-one has been able to demonstrate a benefit of coerced co-operation over voluntary co-operation.

Peter Hume,
As for food, there is availability, and then there is supply.

In QLD at present, there is available food, but limited supply because so much food is being kept in Brisbane.

Take out a few roads and bridges, and the rest of the state goes without food.

While much money has been spent on the armed forces in Australia to ensure national security, a whole state can now be put in jeopardy by eliminating a few roads and bridges.

Storing more food locally will not lead to waste. About 2 weeks to 1 month of food should be available, and non-perishables and canned food can be kept for many months. What goes into storage first is used first with minimal waste.

The supermarkets want to maximize their floor space by minimizing their warehouse and storage space, and you will note that one of the major multinational supermarket companies made a $2 billion profit in Australia last year.

So it does seem quite profitable to maximize floor space by minimizing warehouse and storage space.

I also question whether famines do often occur in other countries, or is it that food is available, but lack of supply is the problem