That honestly sounds like taxation with extra steps.
Why are you exporting food to some place while the local restaurant is importing it?
The obvious answer is that they both do what is most reasonable for them. If it’s cheaper to source locally the restaurant can (and if they care will) source locally. But why limit yourself to local only?
In practice the “let’s do all local” is very naive. My friend is a farmer. He told me about hay to give you some example. He’s able to sell and deliver truckload of bales for a good price. It’s extra money for him. But the thing is you need to buy truck load. Some local horse owner wanted just one bale. And he explained that if he paid the driver to go over to his farm, load it, unload it, paid the fuel, etc… he’d be actually losing money. So you might be wondering why is that horse owner buying more expensive hay when there’s farm with literal tons of hay not that far away. Well that’s why - it’s actually cheaper for everyone involved.
There’s another company that has cars and equipment to do small deliveries. They buy bulk hay, make smaller packages and sell it, but it’s obviously not local anymore, they need to be able reach across the country as they wouldn’t even cover equipment cost if they only served few local horse owners. It sounds ineffective, but it really isn’t.
I’m not saying that it’s always absolute 100℅ effective system, but everyone involved has motivation to be as effective as possible.
To stretch this into extremes, why aren’t you using locally built computer? It is technically possible to build one in your city. But the investment would be astronomical. And once you produce said computers, producing just enough for local community would never be economical. And if you produced quantities that are economically viable and sold them globally, it would be cheaper to buy them from the local global market than to build logistics for local delivery.
That honestly sounds like taxation with extra steps.
No it sounds like organisation of a society without all the extra steps.
Some local horse owner wanted just one bale. And he explained that if he paid the driver to go over to his farm, load it, unload it, paid the fuel, etc… he’d be actually losing money. So you might be wondering why is that horse owner buying more expensive hay when there’s farm with literal tons of hay not that far away. Well that’s why - it’s actually cheaper for everyone involved.
BS. At least one of the two has a pickup truck (if you’re talking good ole small bales) or a tractor with a forklift attachment (if we’re talking the big ones).
The reason it ends up being more expensive is because you insist on employing middle men, “pay the driver”.
I’m not saying that it’s always absolute 100℅ effective system, but everyone involved has motivation to be as effective as possible.
The free market ensures the perfect allocation of resources given that all actors are perfectly rational and act on perfect information, the maths make perfect sense. The trouble is that that’s not what’s happening in the real world, neither of the two conditions are even close to met. If our farmer and horse owner OTOH sit in the same council, are deeply connected into their local community, everyone can exchange information and we end up with a better result based on that exchange of information. They can also talk sense into each other, making things more rational. “Market” doesn’t mean “money exchanges hands”. And neither does “economy”.
To stretch this into extremes, why aren’t you using locally built computer? It is technically possible to build one in your city.
No, it isn’t. We literally don’t have enough inhabitants to run a silicon fab and everything connected to it.
We also don’t grow coffee – if nothing else we don’t have the right climate. I get mine from the Zapatistas. Yes, they do trade on the international market. It’s very good coffee, in fact, forget finding it anywhere but at specialist retailers. Noone here is arguing for “you cannot have Szechuan pepper if your neighbour doesn’t grow it” or “you cannot have a computer if you aren’t Taiwanese”. Communities – at whatever scale – do already have and will continue to have their specialities. How much of that is commodified or not will be a question to answer in the future, but already now we’re seeing both, We’re certainly not sending Ukraine bills for the weapon and money we send them, and that’s how it’s supposed to be: They need it, we have it, they get it.
That honestly sounds like taxation with extra steps.
The obvious answer is that they both do what is most reasonable for them. If it’s cheaper to source locally the restaurant can (and if they care will) source locally. But why limit yourself to local only?
In practice the “let’s do all local” is very naive. My friend is a farmer. He told me about hay to give you some example. He’s able to sell and deliver truckload of bales for a good price. It’s extra money for him. But the thing is you need to buy truck load. Some local horse owner wanted just one bale. And he explained that if he paid the driver to go over to his farm, load it, unload it, paid the fuel, etc… he’d be actually losing money. So you might be wondering why is that horse owner buying more expensive hay when there’s farm with literal tons of hay not that far away. Well that’s why - it’s actually cheaper for everyone involved.
There’s another company that has cars and equipment to do small deliveries. They buy bulk hay, make smaller packages and sell it, but it’s obviously not local anymore, they need to be able reach across the country as they wouldn’t even cover equipment cost if they only served few local horse owners. It sounds ineffective, but it really isn’t.
I’m not saying that it’s always absolute 100℅ effective system, but everyone involved has motivation to be as effective as possible.
To stretch this into extremes, why aren’t you using locally built computer? It is technically possible to build one in your city. But the investment would be astronomical. And once you produce said computers, producing just enough for local community would never be economical. And if you produced quantities that are economically viable and sold them globally, it would be cheaper to buy them from the local global market than to build logistics for local delivery.
No it sounds like organisation of a society without all the extra steps.
BS. At least one of the two has a pickup truck (if you’re talking good ole small bales) or a tractor with a forklift attachment (if we’re talking the big ones).
The reason it ends up being more expensive is because you insist on employing middle men, “pay the driver”.
The free market ensures the perfect allocation of resources given that all actors are perfectly rational and act on perfect information, the maths make perfect sense. The trouble is that that’s not what’s happening in the real world, neither of the two conditions are even close to met. If our farmer and horse owner OTOH sit in the same council, are deeply connected into their local community, everyone can exchange information and we end up with a better result based on that exchange of information. They can also talk sense into each other, making things more rational. “Market” doesn’t mean “money exchanges hands”. And neither does “economy”.
No, it isn’t. We literally don’t have enough inhabitants to run a silicon fab and everything connected to it.
We also don’t grow coffee – if nothing else we don’t have the right climate. I get mine from the Zapatistas. Yes, they do trade on the international market. It’s very good coffee, in fact, forget finding it anywhere but at specialist retailers. Noone here is arguing for “you cannot have Szechuan pepper if your neighbour doesn’t grow it” or “you cannot have a computer if you aren’t Taiwanese”. Communities – at whatever scale – do already have and will continue to have their specialities. How much of that is commodified or not will be a question to answer in the future, but already now we’re seeing both, We’re certainly not sending Ukraine bills for the weapon and money we send them, and that’s how it’s supposed to be: They need it, we have it, they get it.