Wait..so there is a global crisis that may cause disruption in the availability of some food products? Who couuld have possibly predicted such things? Well, pretty much anyone with half a brain, really.
Hazlitt said that economics was not about just looking at a particular action, but rather at the consequences of that action, for all groups, further downstream. It seems like many people figured that out, on a subconscious level mostly, as people wet out and started buying huge quantities of goods for reasons they couldn’t really articulate.
Which reminds me, the Current Situation is showing what people (as a group) are truly made of. For all their ”we are in this together” nonsense, even the most obnoxious NPR-listening, Volvo-driving, limousine-liberal is out there buying up more than her ‘fair share’ of goods. Why? Because when it really comes down to survival we put our ‘tribe’ first. That tribe can be your family, your religion, your race, your class, your region, whatever…but we all have one. For 99.9% of us it’s our families.
Food rationing? Maybe, but not as it really is… ‘food rationing’ is not settling for store-brand Mac&Cheese because the Trader Joe Organic version was sold out. That’s not rationing. Rationing is getting something that is probably not what you want, not in the quantity you want, and not in the quality you want…and you’re grateful to have it.
Gun Jesus has a nice four-part series on food rationing in Britain during WW2. It’s interesting to see what you would have had to work with.
As I have told many people in person, where I live all the food groups are still there in the store. There just isn’t every choice in type, brand, and size. People getting stressed because there were no white potatoes with sweet potatoes sitting right there, in volume. Actual rationing and the US public will really freak out. We are a spoiled bunch compared with my grandparents’ generation.
I appreciate my 30 day free trial of socialism. Can I cancel now?
Somebody needs to tell Ian to turn off the music after the intro (or even better, ALTOGETHER). I quit on what looked like a very interesting video after a couple of minutes of trying to hear him clearly.
“…For all their ”we are in this together” nonsense, even the most obnoxious NPR-listening, Volvo-driving, limousine-liberal is out there buying up more than her ‘fair share’ of goods. Why? Because when it really comes down to survival we put our ‘tribe’ first. That tribe can be your family, your religion, your race, your class, your region, whatever…but we all have one. For 99.9% of us it’s our families.” Amen. And the circle tightens as the crisis worsens.
Went grocery shopping today as part of my job. Some empty shelving but I don’t see the rhyme nor reason to it. There would be feet of shelving full of a type of product, then a big gap, then more of the product. Many people wearing masks (I had on an N95, thank you, with eyepro) and the atmosphere was … odd. I’m not enjoying this apocalypse nearly as much as I had hoped I would. Let’s all doff our masks and protest at our respective state capitals (happening here this friday). On second thought, I’ll stay home and watch. Anyone know how to get a good cheek weld wearing a full face respirator?
It can be done. We had to regularly qualify while in NBC gear. Think less cheek weld and more chin weld…
Regards
Anyone know how to get a good cheek weld wearing a full face respirator?
You’re going to need a laser!!!
Important Safety Tip:
WWII wartime food rationing in Great Britain begun in 1940 didn’t end until 1954, nine years after the armistices were signed, and four years after the Brits brought Churchill back to be Prime Minister a second time, during the Korean War.
Socialism: 1.000 batting average for total failure.
Nevil Shute has some very pointed criticisms of the long-term rationing & the health service in his 1952 novel The Far Country. His solution was to pull up stakes & go to Australia.
I have not seen a problem, even at it’s worst.
People are breathing well not that it does not look like it is going to be as bad as some (like me) told them it could be. So, they will go back to “business as usual” when the restrictions are lifted, then find out that the next batch will be much worse.
People are without work, incomes down 60-80%, crop failures, processing plants closing. And then they will wonder why food goes up 150-200% in the next 6 months and the selections will be less.
Too many people believing what they were told (even if it sounded off) for too long. Now they are so focused on their next social gathering, that they are not paying attention what is happening behind (just barely) the scenes. Nothing has really changed. They need to stock food and grow your own has done nothing but increase.
I am from Tampa, Florida originally. Lived in St. Petersburg, Florida. My family still lives there. What this article doesn’t say is that some stores in Florida up until recently were limiting meat at one package at a time. Now it’s two! My brother tried to buy two pounds of ground beef for a meat loaf and they wouldn’t sell him one package. They only had ground beef in one pound packages.
This is a family member who will not prep or store anything.
Interesting video with Ian about British rationing, my wife and I got a chuckle out of it, no problem with us living on that, with our chickens, greenhouse and farm. Aesop’s comment on it lasting til 1954 was an eye opener, that figures… We have seen some rationing here, limit one or two. But, agreed, now is the time to stock up on meat if you need to, as the ‘winds that are a blowin’ look like they only come from the north’.
Read an article today about an egg farm where they had to come in and gas all the hens…could not get the eggs to market, or more appropriately the normal customers supply restaurants, schools, etc and those customers are not buying.
https://www.facebook.com/1049thewolf/photos/a.97644114108/10157180891269109/?type=3
The newer generations are going to find out why their Grandmothers washed their tin foil and saved bacon grease.
Technically, the Trader Joe’s Organic Mac & Cheese is the store brand.
“Rationing is getting something that is probably not what you want, not in the quantity you want, and not in the quality you want…and you’re grateful to have it.”
Very true, and only the eldest Americans have any living memory of it. My mother tells her memories as a kid when they were only allowed to buy one pair of shoes per year, etc.
People get very practical when you have to live with constraints like that.
I’m not sure how any of this is ‘rationing’. Limit me to one package of meat? OK, the wife goes in after I leave and gets another one. Or I drive down the street to the next grocery store and get another one. Same with ammo or TP. Easy game.
A more in depth study on Ian’s British rationing video can be found at youtube with a BBC multi part documentary titled “Wartime Farm”. There are other docu’s made by the same principal group that are worthy of watching as well.
I’ll second the recommendation for the BBC “XXXXXX Farm” series. It’s full of interesting facts and useful stuff, as well as being well presented. The Edwardian Farm also spun off a show about the Edwardian Pharmacy which was fascinating.
(They have a few of the hosts living and working on a farm of a particular period, in costume and “living the life”. They cover, Medieval, Victorian, Edwardian, Elizabethan? and Wartime (40’s) at least, iirc. There are also specials about Christmas and the Pharmacy.) All highly recommended.
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Thanks for that link – sank a fair amount of time in watching all the episodes. I think it’d be interesting for them to compare that experience and research to the current situation. Nothing similar in some regards such as actual scarcity but in others…the security a laying hen brought to the home had to be special then and is now probably seen as less “pet” and more “that was a good idea”.