Meanwhile I work at a grocery store and have had to regularly dispose of 100s of pounds of produce every day because management orders too much and we can’t get it out in time or it comes in bad because the company we order from doesn’t use refrigeration but we absolutely NEED 400lbs of bell peppers that we are just going to put out onto the floor, unrefrigerated, so that they go bad the next day!
Sorry for the rant.
The wonderful efficiency of surplus economies, in which the amount of goods produced isn’t calculated to be efficient and to use them as needed, but instead everything is produced in excess as a consequence of demand-limited competition between companies. Fully stocked supermarkets with no shortage of anything whatsoever, basically require throwing away a given percentage of produce periodically.
This is discussed in a wonderful episode of The Deprogram podcast (with Second Thought, Hakim and Yugopnik) in which they bring in a guest to discuss economic planning, and the guest explains the difference between shortage (think USSR) economies and surplus (think US) economies, which explains both why there are bell peppers rotting in supermarkets in the US and why there were shortages and rationing of certain goods in the USSR (spoiler: both are political decisions)
Hmm
Their: bread lines
Our: food banks
