“I learned of a place where a man can be free. Free to do what he wants to do. Free to ketchup his eggs without being hassled by the man.” – Strong Bad
My father-in-law raised dwarf dairy cows for a while. They gave condensed milk.
Almost everyone reading this post has lived a life of nearly unthinkable abundance. Did we have everything when we wanted it?
No.
Did we sometimes go without?
Yes.
Did we have to make tough choices because our primary liquid assets included some string, an empty PEZ® dispenser, a coupon for 2 for 1 taquitos at Sven’s Taco Hub, three cases of returnable Coors Light® bottles and a bank account with $3.17 in it?
Yes, though I guess that might be suspiciously specific.
Even as our individual economic conditions may have changed, we have lived in societies of amazing abundance. At no point in history have so many people been fed to the point that, rather than having too little food, the main food-related problem in the world is that we’re too fat. I can expect that this sort of conversation could have been had with most of our ancestors throughout history if we took them for dinner at a modern restaurant:
John Wilder: “Hey, slow down! You don’t want to get obese.”
Ancient Wilder Ancestor: “Obese, what’s that?”
John Wilder: “It’s where you eat too much food.”
Ancient Wilder Ancestor: “Sounds great. Let’s get obese.”
The Mrs. asked me to put ketchup on the shopping list, and now I can’t read any of it.
The modern grocery stores have suffered not from a lack of products, but have an amazing variety of choices. In the ketchup section here in Modern Mayberry, there are no fewer than 21 different options (including different sizes) for ketchup. It’s a literal wall of ketchup: spicy, organic, no fructose, already mixed with mayo . . . the list goes on. I looked it up – a good blogger always checks his sauces.
When I was growing up, there were just four choices if you wanted ketchup: Hunts® or Heinz™, and you got to pick the little bottle or the big bottle. That was it, and in my imagination the only people that would pick Hunts© ketchup were trolls that lived under bridges or that couldn’t afford the tasty goodness of Heinz®. We can have so many choices because while the 1970’s Modern Mayberry was served by two small grocery stores, today it’s served by a Wal-Mart® that has a food section that’s nearly double in size to the grocery stores of the 1970’s.
We have an abundance of choices today.
And I thought it was just people’s data he was interested in.
What does the world look like in a world of shortages? I think most people can’t even understand what a world like that might look like, but they are beginning to get glimpses. The toilet paper shortage was so odd a start to COVID-19 shenanigans that it could have almost been written by a comedy writer for a humorous end of the world movie. Me? I hope that if the end of the world happens, it starts in Las Vegas, because, you know, maybe it will stay in Vegas?
The toilet paper shortage didn’t impact us, because we generally have an inventory of two or three months’ worth of toilet paper on hand at any given moment. Why? I don’t like to run out of things. It’s the same reason I have spare ketchup in the pantry and a socket set and jumper cable in every car. I don’t like to let inconveniences become emergencies.
But the prospect of running out of toilet paper became very real for millions of Americans. And it showed many people for the first time what a shortage was. It wasn’t like the brand of ketchup you wanted was too expensive, it was that there was no ketchup at all. And no schedule of when there would be ketchup. And a line of people panicking about ketchup and buying cases of ketchup because they had heard ketchup was in short supply.
I imagine that people who bought a lifetime supply of toilet paper during the shortage feel a bit silly. But it’s really a great illustration about how the human mind works in periods of low information. If everyone knew that the toilet paper supply network was robust, then there would never have been a shortage. So, that was a short-term shortage caused by panic and lack of information. I mean, it’s the 3-2-1 rule of New Preppers: A three dollar first aid kit, two days’ worth of food, and one year’s worth of toilet paper.
But what about longer term issues?
Farmers have plowed vegetables back under into the soil because there was no way to get them to market. People who have hens to produce eggs have destroyed hundreds of thousands of eggs at the same time my local Wal-Mart® was out of eggs. Why? They produced the eggs for the restaurant industry, and there wasn’t a way to package them for individual sales. It’s like the inverse of communism: there’s too much food and the system is performing too well.
Cows have hooves instead of feet. They lactose.
Will that happen with cattle? I don’t think people will slaughter cattle on a whim, but the entire system is now partially locked up because meat packing plants are shutting down because of the WuFlu. But even that is a short term problem, since cattle that were going to go off to the feedlots to be prepped for the packing houses . . . aren’t. This will result in beef prices going up (not enough packing plant capacity), then dropping (lots of cheap cows), and then going up again (cows that should have been put in the pipeline . . . weren’t).
Today my daughter, Alia S. Wilder called me. She was spooked about beef. “Should I be concerned? Should I look for alternate sources of protein? What should I do? I saw row after row of empty shelves in the meat department.
“Are we going to be okay?”
Those were good questions, and if Alia is asking them, then you can bet millions of other people are, too. Even though I feel that the meat shortages are (for now) a short term ripple of the Coronavirus Economy®, I sense that people are getting the idea that at least some of the short term shortages we’re seeing now will build into long term shortages. Maybe not with toilet paper. Maybe not (for now) with beef. But people are worried that it will be real with something, and soon. And we’re certainly not going to have a shortage of toilet paper jokes.
What happens when we have real shortages because the systems that we relied upon to create the fabulous wealth in the West are irreparably broken because of the economic strains we’ve put on them?
We can look back on a real case study: Germany just after World War I. At the end of World War I, Germany had collapsed like my cat Rory on the surface of a neutron star. The Allied blockade had effectively starved the German people, and chaos was in the air. Their royalty, Kaiser Wilhelm had given up the throne for the life of a carnival worker who ran the “guess your age and weight” booth. A new government was formed, and became known as the Weimar Republic.
Go sightseeing in France they said. Home by Christmas they said . . . .
In 1919, this government’s first job was to “negotiate” the Versailles Treaty. In actuality, the treaty was dictated to the Germans, who had little leverage. Their army had been disbanded, and the Allied food blockade stayed in place during the negotiations, so Germany was ready to sign anything, no matter how bad the conditions.
The conditions were bad – the German reparations required by the treaty were huge, more even than the $257 billion (equivalent in today’s dollars) they had actually paid by 1932. One response was to set up a two-tiered currency system – one backed by gold, and one not backed by gold. However, the war reparations payments set by the Versailles Treaty had to be backed by gold, so Germany couldn’t just print their way out of those payments.
But they could print their way into poverty. They used the German marks not backed with gold to buy goods overseas. The nice thing about that (if you were German) was that you could just print those marks. Then? Free stuff.
Until it wasn’t free stuff. The impact was significant. In 1921, $1 would buy you 150 German marks. Two years later, that same $1 would buy you over 25 billion marks. The result was perverse: the Germans had no idea how to stop the hyperinflation. People had become used to it and the government was worried that if they stopped hyperinflating the currency, then the whole system would collapse.
One story I heard was that a man had a wheelbarrow full of money he left outside a store. When he got back, someone had stolen the wheelbarrow and left the money.
Germany at that time was an odd place – the factories and farms still existed and all of the physical things required for production were there. There was still food in the stores, but there was hunger and destitution everywhere: money had ceased to be of value. The nonsense of hyperinflation ceased when the adults took over the printing presses and sliced 12 zeroes off of the value of their paper currency. Since the money was pretend in the first place, the number of zeros is like Beto O’Rourke’s political opinion in Oklahoma: nearly irrelevant.
I don’t expect that we’ll have Weimar America, but then again the Germans didn’t expect hyperinflation (or the Spanish Inquisition) back in 1921. Thankfully, we haven’t been through a loss in a devastating war and starvation and the collapse of our government. But it’s entirely possible that whole categories of stores and even products will disappear. It’s also entirely possible that the money printing we’re doing in such a big spurt will have a significant impact on prices, squeezing our economy and the world’s economies in ways that we can’t yet understand.
But what I really expect is that we’ll find out soon enough that we can’t print our way to abundance. Whereas the physical world hasn’t changed much with COVID-19, the systems of companies and people that work together to create and distribute something as simple as a hot dog, hot dog bun, mustard and ketchup (yes, I’m one of those) have to work together with all of the harmony that communists imagine only comes from communism. It takes thousands of people and a dozen companies to prepare such a simple feast.
Cast out this abomination!
Coordination of that type takes place naturally in a capitalist system that’s running well. The hot dog maker doesn’t have to coordinate with the bun maker – bun makers make what they can sell, and then buy flour from flour mills. Who buy wheat from farmers. Who buy fertilizer . . . and you see I could keep this chain going forever. The world is a web of interconnections. When normally self-correcting systems are first deprived of money, then flooded with it, systems and signals break down.
And our world of abundance goes with it unless we have those signals that prices and orders give. I hate to promise this, but I am certain when I say that we haven’t even scratched the surface of the strange things we will see in the next few years.
But one thing I don’t think we’ll see in a year: our previous world of limitless abundance and shelves filled with 21 different kinds and sizes of ketchup. I mean, who even buys Hunts®?
Money is just like water. It only does work when it’s flowing. When it sits still, it stagnates. Everybody needs some to survive. And if you have too much, you pour it into a hole in the ground and swim in it.
Great analogy. But now it’s evaporating – and we’re finding that some ponds were only a quarter inch deep.
Of course it’s evaporating. That’s what happens when governments shove things into the furnaces.
Your cow jokes today moo-ved me to groan more than once.
I am headed just over the hill for Wendy’s takeout at lunch today to have a memorial service for the Great American Hamburger. If my local store is one that still knows where’s the beef. Until we meet again, my delicious friend…
https://abcnews.go.com/Business/wendys-warns-menu-beef-supply-challenges/story?id=70515059
Meat has one last thing to teach we who have all lived a life of such unimaginable abundance…
https://13otaz41wml9jcqqa121aeoy-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/taleb-thanksgiving-turkey.jpg
Oh…and let me guess, you put the relish on the french fries instead of on the hot dog where it belongs? 🙂
I love that graph. It, more than anything, shows that sometimes life changes quickly and irreversibly in an instant.
No, relish (when we remember to buy it) is on the dogs. Fries? In order, mayo, ketchup or plain. Might have to try the relish.
Pure gold, John. I think that we have not even BEGUN to see the economic consequences of printing money.
The humourous thing? I’m older than you and, as a kid, the old people were psychologically scarred by the Great Depression. Our (silly-ass, happy-go-lucky) kids will be those kind of people…cautious, frugal, perhaps distrusting of the banks and the State.
Keep up the good work.
A couple of years ago, the old Korean War veteran living next door died, and I had a chance to talk with his son during the massive clean-out effort.
son: “You wouldn’t believe all the stuff he had hoarded in there. It’s like he was expecting another Great Depression!”
me: “He wasn’t wrong. He just didn’t live to see it.”
son: (long pause, then a new topic of conversation)
Klaus,
Thank you.
We need to be prepared, but never lose our spirit. Sometimes the biggest of trials can be the best things to strengthen us.
Here’s why beef is the first to go and the longest to get back – if we ever do….
https://zh-prod-1cc738ca-7d3b-4a72-b792-20bd8d8fa069.storage.googleapis.com/s3fs-public/styles/inline_image_desktop/public/inline-images/2020-05-05_16-02-13.jpg?itok=1OxQWBmA
https://spectrum.ieee.org/biomedical/ethics/how-chicken-beat-beef-in-america
Oh, and the chart is wrong – sheep have a gestation period 150 days, not five (!?!).
Wow, I’m imagining mama sheep popping lambs out like ping pong balls.
So many cows within 10 miles of me. Perhaps it’s time to pop a few cow/calf pairs on the father-in-law’s place.
FYI. As to the beef problem on a personal level. Find a local cattle rancher and purchase either a quarter, half, or a whole grain finished animal and then find a local meat processor. In OK where we are, the local processors are booked for months. On the Oklahoma cattle FB page has people making deals daily.
Our local processors are booked into 2021 already for beef.
We’ve been doing that for years. I can’t remember the last time we bought beef at the store. We’re on the books for half a cow this spring with a local rancher, though I should probably check to see if there are any wrinkles in the schedule given the current situation. There’s nothing better than having a fully stocked second freezer in the garage… as long as the power stays on.
…And there is the problem, in my limited view. “As long as the power stays on”. Wow. Look how immensely dependent we are all suddenly on the grid staying up (like we weren’t before, yes I know). The internet is allowing and enabling all these new socially-distant behaviours, including the final stages of the collapse of the brick-and-mortar portion of the retail equation. We are even educating our kids with it, staying in touch with all-and-sundry, keeping track of the latest gov’t decrees, paying bills, accessing gov’t largesse, and having doctor’s appointments. My stars! what if the grid goes down?
That will be it, folks.
That is a good call. There are tons (literally) of cattle around here. And I’ve been known to process my own deer . . . (if the local guys are busy).
Time will tell, but for those in the city, any changes will be harder. They don’t have any resources, except what money can acquire. Rural areas have enough food to survive, but not enough for those that happen to wander where they shouldn’t.
Jess, I’m not sure the city folk would ever think to leave. They just don’t know any better. (fingers crossed)
Thanks for at least two jokes that I can forge into riddles for my next ham-radio net! Unfortunately, there’s no way for me to convey the awesome silliness of spaghetti-pierced hot-dog chunks over the radio. That meme was the first one to literally bring tears to my eyes in recent memory. Vigorous laughter must be good for respiratory health, right? So keep doing your part to keep us healthy!
My pleasure, sir. When I saw that picture, that was the very first thing that popped into my head. The second was . . . “you know, I could make those . . . “
People without a sense of taste or smell might buy Hunts. For me it is an indicator of one’s sanity, and maybe Communist sympathies. 🙂
Each new reveal is another odd similarity.
Ha! Yes! Hunts, the ketchup of communists. Toss me a line sometime, and I’ll tell you a funny story that you might appreciate.
I wrote something similar a few weeks ago and remarked that scarcity is the norm for human existence until very recently.
“Something that was common for all of human history until recently, and is still common in much of the world, is scarcity. Most humans for most of human history lived hand to mouth, a subsistence existence that could be wiped out in the blink of an eye by a famine, natural disaster, war or injury. The idea of having giant stores full of food for the taking wasn’t something they could even dream about. Even as recently as my early childhood, it was common for stores to not have fruits and vegetables out of season. Today you can get “fresh” fruits and vegetables year round. Strawberries, mangoes, sweet corn. The seasonal nature of food is mostly lost on us.”
Now we have a ton of calories but not much nutrition. We have always had obese people but now people that are not obese are the unusual ones. As a kid in high school, I recall in a disturbingly vivid way that most of the girls were far thinner than girls today. Not gaunt, super-model skinny but not “belly hanging out of the bottom of their t-shirt” chubby. They looked like girls, not blobs of blubber wearing stretch pants. For all of the “food” we eat, people always feel hungry and tired.
Suddenly people are worried about the food supply. They are starting gardens but the knowledge of how to garden successfully is gone. Amish girls learn to garden by working in their mom’s garden and their mom learned by working in her mom’s garden. It is a little more complex than dropping a seed into dirt and waiting for the fresh produce to magically appear.
We are in for some spicy times and it is going to be pretty unpleasant for everyone. I have lot of food and we have our own animals and a garden, plus the means and willingness to defend what we have but not everyone in my family does. We might be heading toward a Hobbesian world where life will again be solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
I’m wondering how deep this rabbit hole goes – is it depression, or worse? The sad part about depression in 2020 is we don’t have nearly the same moral fiber as we did in the Great Depression.
It is a different country with very different people.
Hobbes: My ignorant self became aware of just scratching the surface of knowing things beyond the small perimeter of what I thought was sufficient when I attended a Project Appleseed weekend in late 2009. A seasoned gentleman instructor had a Liberty presentation Sunday morning, and what I heard was like sunlight in exposing what little in knew of the world and history. Your comment is volumes of provoking inquiry should one see the detail.
Arthur has a great site that you should visit . . .
Mustard AND ketchup on a hot dog! Unbelievable! Mustard only….unless you are under the age of 16.
^^^This. And relish. 🙂
Yep. I lost some respect for our dear blog host learning that he puts ketchup on hotdogs. But if he is one of those careless ones that contaminates the tip of the mustard dispenser with ketchup, then he will be dead to me.
Arrrgh! No, I HATE that. (shudders) I think people who cross-contaminate condiments should be shot for having bad sauce-brutality.
And onions….Mmm. Now I want hot dogs for dinner
I *can* do only mustard. But I like ketchup, too.
And you can have my ketchup when you pry it from my cold, dead hands. Or if you ask me nicely, I’ll pass it down the table.
The proper condiments for a hot dog are chili and mustard. Onions are optional.
I would never ketchup a chili dog. Heretic, yes, but not an evil heretic.
re:
‘ketchup’
Mom The Contrarian sent me with a shopping list… demanding ‘catsup’.
Questioning HerInfiniteWisdom, she patiently explained “CATS UP! CATS UP! WHAT IS SO HARD TO UNDERSTAND!”
Dad patiently explained “Apparently, that is not a question”.
*****
re:
Hunts
By far, hands down, Hunts is the superior ketchup.
No other ketchup compares to the tangy sweetness of Hunts.
Tragically, tomatoes and other nightshades — potatoes, peppers, eggplant — give me symptoms of arthritis, so they are ‘off the eggs’ for now.
My wife sends me to the store, because she watches television and is therefore scared of microbes, while I don’t and thus am not. I think she writes “ketchup” on the list, but in speech she refers to it as “catchup.”
Heinz or Hunt’s? None of the above, unless it’s on sale and is cheaper than the store brand. So, for me, usually Kroger or Great Value or Meijer.
Blindfold a ketchup connoisseur for a taste test, and prepare for hilarity. (Same as with microbrew snobs.)
I do like that CATS UP! thing.
And yet, if it’s in a diner in a red squeeze bottle? Yeah, I’m good with that, too.
I tried to like Hunts. I really did – it had sugar while Heinz had fructose. Sadly, we (me, the primary consumer) never finished the bottle. Now, Heinz has no fructose added.
Cats up! Ha!
Hunts ketchup is ‘controlled opposition’ created by Heinz to further accentuate the delicious goodness of Heinz. How else to explain the reason for the existence of Hunts?
Truly you have a dizzying intellect! That is the best explanation so far, despite the Hunts shills running about. 🙂
Yes. No one buys it, but yet, it’s still in the store. Perfect explanation.
Adam Smith said “‘it is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.”
Dampen one’s self interest through the deployment of stimulus and I think it’s fair to say that the incentives are not aligned.
^^^^This.
I’ve already heard complaints that people don’t want to get off of unemployment because they make more than they do at their jobs.
The bar down the road from us makes a dog with sweet peppers and onions, to die for.
Of course, if you are German, you put mayonnaise on the fries and curry sauce on the hotdog.
Curry sauce? Haven’t tried it. I already do mayo, even though it gets looks sometimes.
The German (Turkish, really) hot dog curry sauce is sort of a thin, watery, sweet and mildly spicy ketchup.