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The Great Japan Potato-Chip Crisis

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Re: The Great Japan Potato-Chip Crisis

#151

Post by Pitarou »

mikekchar wrote: post #148
Pitarou wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nobody that I know of complains about about the agricultural system here (granted, I live in a farming community :-) ). I did (granted, I have a background in Economics). Tell a Japanese how much a tin of tomatoes costs in Japan compared to the US or the EU, or a mango, or even a packet of generic acetaminophen (paracetamol) for that matter. Now ask them why. Nine times out of ten, they’ll say something about the J…

The answer to the question why is quite obvious from where I stand: Farmers get paid more because of the protectionist policy of the government. The distribution system also prioritises local food over imported food. They also spend money on things like being able to trace exactly where the food comes from. When my neighbour takes his rice to the JA, I can buy it at the local supermarket the next day. His name is on…

I was talking about ignorance among the consumers, not the producers. The farmers certainly know which side their bread is buttered on!

Re: The Great Japan Potato-Chip Crisis

#152

Post by hueving »

mistermann wrote: post #92
hueving wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about priorities, it's about the cause. Just be frank and admit a protectionist policy is the cause of a market inefficiency. It's okay to make that tradeoff, just be honest with yourself.

You may find Japan a bit frustrating if you were ever to visit. :)

I have visited and it's not that frustrating to me because I don't have to live there and I completely understand them deciding to make protectionist policies over choosing market efficiency.

Re: The Great Japan Potato-Chip Crisis

#153

Post by TulliusCicero »

fulafel wrote: post #136
TulliusCicero wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just chips. Japan's generally protectionist/sheltering attitude towards businesses makes their whole economy structurally inefficient. Japan's nominal GDP per capita is like 40% lower than the US these days.

There is more to life than GDP per capita.

Yes, but economic productivity is still pretty important.

Re: The Great Japan Potato-Chip Crisis

#158

Post by brownbat »

mistermann wrote: post #145
brownbat wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely, the plight of people put out of jobs, regions losing industries, it's not to be understated or trifled with. That's a major half of the problem. The rock on the other side of this hard place though is that there's also no lunch at all for someone who can't afford basic foodstuffs because of tariffs and quotas block access to reasonably priced goods. What's worse is that trade protections tend to be incred…

> there's also no lunch at all for someone who can't afford basic foodstuffs because of tariffs and quotas block access to reasonably priced goods Is that a real threat though? I mean, we've had some form of equilibrium in economies for thousands of years, some people do better than others, but people more or less "get by". Whereas now, I have the feeling that we are very quickly getting into dangerous uncharted terr…

> the likelihood of them being propaganda

Welp, that dead-ends conversations.

As a personal disclosure, I neither consider myself complicit with propagandists nor a total sucker. A partial sucker maybe...

I tossed three citations out there because I'm familiar with research on the topic and found those results fairly typical. But I get it, you don't find any of them particularly persuasive. You may not be inclined to listen to any countervailing evidence at this time. That's fine.

If you ever want to poke around at this topic again but are seriously skeptical about finding information you can trust, consider Googling the IGM forum.

The forum surveys economists across the political spectrum on various issues of economic policy.

You'll find massive splits on all sorts of issues, vast disagreements on how to best organize the economy. If you read the bios or works of the participants, the ideological differences of opinion will become fairly stark.

You might find that variety of opinions more reliable in and of itself, or you might simply find some individual you consider reputable on the forum.

From there you may find someone with interesting things to say that you'll trust more than me.

I don't expect you'll find a radically different view on trade, since there's fairly broad agreement that freer trade helps the average citizen, and helps society more than it hurts.

But who knows. Maybe I'm wrong.

Best of luck either way.

Re: The Great Japan Potato-Chip Crisis

#159

Post by flukus »

qubex wrote: post #138
hkmurakami wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember seeing a "food security" campaign where demonstraters wanted the country to achieve 100% food sufficiency as a national security prerogative. Wasn't sure if it was a strange form of nationalism, or a veiled lobbying effort by an interest group (the abundance of very small scale farmers across the countryside)

Clearly they've failed at achieving ”food security” if the local demand for potatoes has outstripped local supply. The apparent bias against resorting to importation also seems to indicate it is largely thinly-veiled protectionism and political cultivation of special interests. Furthermore however intuitive it may seem it runs contrary to hundreds of years of economic orthodoxy, known as Ricardo's Comparative Advanta…

> Clearly they've failed at achieving ”food security” if the local demand for potatoes has outstripped local supply.

How so? Food security is being able to feed the country even when it's completely isolated, not having potato chips on store shelves.

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