Save WalMart, Save the World
Feb 04
Or something like that. I had a similar thought last week when I magnanimously volunteered to venture into the personal hell that is a WalMart SuperCenter to do the grocery shopping for my under the weather wife. I was wondering just how the hell everybody in the food chain makes money at 33 cents a pound on bananas that were picked in Chile, trucked to the coast, shipped to I’m guessing Miami via boat, loaded onto trucks, shipped to the nearest WalMart distribution center, then offloaded and reloaded onto another truck that delivered them to my local WalMart.
Capitalism really is a wonderful thing when it works. The plethora of reasonably fresh fruit and veggies available to me in January is a shining example of that. I’m not that old, but I’m old enough to remember when fresh produce simply did not exist in Jan.
Hat tip: Marginal Revolution
I was wondering just how the hell everybody in the food chain makes money at 33 cents a pound on bananas that were picked in Chile, trucked to the coast, shipped to I’m guessing Miami via boat, loaded onto trucks, shipped to the nearest WalMart distribution center, then offloaded and reloaded onto another truck that delivered them to my local WalMart.
I wonder that, too. I’m a scientist by profession, and my world is usually about understanding every little detail as best you possibly can. Which is why the free market gives most guys like me fits, and perhaps explains why the bulk of my colleagues lean left. We’re suspicious of processes that we can’t understand and follow.
I was lucky enough to take a couple of undergrad econ courses from free market fanatics. And while it was hard to get it through my reductionist, mechanistic skull, the self-organizing principles of the market have opened up unexpected vistas for me in science, too.
And I like having inexpensive bananas all year, whether I know all the details or not.