Tag Archives: supply

Playing international whack-a-mole…

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In the wake of Americans being killed while, advisedly or not, traveling in Mexico, there are calls to classify the cartels as terrorist organizations. Maybe they are but that’s probably missing the broader point. 

The cartels exist for one reason only – the immense, unquenched demand in the United Sates for their product. That’s it. Full stop.

With a fortune to be made in supplying that demand, going after the cartels is, in my estimation, one big, international game of whack-a-mole. Until we find the silver bullet to crush the demand curve, someone will fill the supply side of the equation. I mean drugs didn’t suddenly stop being a problem when Pablo Escobar was arrested and eventually killed.

We’ve been funding both sides of the War on Drugs since the day the phrase was coined back in the Nixon Administration. Fifty years later, you really have to wonder if decades of government policy have made any substantive difference. 

I hesitate to say we should just stop prosecuting this war. You won’t hear me calling to legalize heroin or meth, but it feels like we should at least admit that continual escalation of the war can be reasonably expected to deliver mixed results at best. 

At my most honest, I’ll tell you that I don’t really give a damn what a grown adult decides to put in their body. Personally, I like caffeine and nicotine. My only real objection to “drugs” as a policy consideration is when those who choose to use them start doing crime to feed the habit or when it leads to people blocking up the sidewalks and using the streets and parks as open-air bathrooms. It’s the same logic by which I don’t especially care how drunk anyone decides to get as long as they don’t get behind the wheel of a car or otherwise endanger others with their choices.

So, sooner or later I’m sure we’ll end up labeling the Mexican cartels “terrorists.” They probably are by any reasonable definition… but I don’t expect the words we use to make any appreciable difference in what’s flowing across the border and into every city, town, and village in America. 

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Parity. Part of my job this week was calling around and talking to people from other organizations who are saddled with their own version of my favorite dog and pony show. It’s no surprise that everyone I spoke to runs theirs a little differently. I didn’t uncover anything unexpected or particularly helpful, but I did discover that everywhere else, the person these other offices put in charge of their annual spectacular is at least graded out as a deputy director. Put another way they are all, a minimum of one good pay grade or two notches on the org chart higher than me. Yeah, that was a feel-good moment right there.

2. Inflation alarm. The federal government poured vast amounts of money into the economy over the last eighteen months in the form of direct payments via enhanced unemployment benefits and stimulus payments and the Paycheck Protection Program. People, as they tend to do when they have money in their pockets, went on a buying binge. Stocks, houses, and consumer goods were all in the crosshairs of people with cash to spend. We spent so hard we overwhelmed the supply side’s ability to keep up with demand. And now, the headlines are screaming that we’re supposed to be shocked that inflation has taken hold and the price of good and services is increasing. Beyond the few classes I had to take as part of a social science major, I’m not a student of economics… even so, the results of increasing demand, limited supply, and boatloads of money in circulation is almost entirely predictable, no?

3. The waiting. Here I sit. About seven hours after getting the COVID-19 booster jammed into my arm. I feel fine, with barely even a sore arm to show for my trouble. What I do have, though, is the uncomfortable period of waiting. My first COVID shot was a non event. After getting my second Moderna shot way back in March, I had a bit of an aching arm, but went to bed and woke up the next morning feeling fine. Exactly twenty-four hours after the jab, though, I got to experience the unpleasant hit-by-a-bus feeling advertised as a potential side effect – chills, aches, lethargy – pretty much the full list with the merciful exception of nausea. That one skipped me, somehow. In any case, I’m sitting here, waiting to see what things look like around lunchtime tomorrow. Prevention is worth a pound of cure and all that, but I’m trying to mentally prepare for another lost day.

Prior experience not required…

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Ask me anything posts rarely disappoint. They often lead me down rabbit holes that I’d otherwise never end up finding. Today’s post is one of those.

If I’m absolutely honest, I wasn’t expecting to write a post about flour and yeast this week. Baking isn’t a skill I have. I wish it was, but my forays into anything involving baked goods have so often ended in disaster that I let other people make my bread and bring in the Amish experts when I need anything fancy. That there was a disruption in the flour and yeast universe just wasn’t something that was on my radar until someone asked my thoughts on the supply being bought up by “people… with no prior experience.”

Being generally a free market kind of guy, my initial response is mostly that I don’t care who is buying products at a micro level and that sooner or later the supply chain will shift to accommodate new demand realities. Digging a bit deeper though, I don’t think having a whole slew of new home bakers out there is necessarily the worst thing that could happen. Whether it’s baking, cooking, or running a nuclear power plant, there was always a time when the people doing those things had no prior experience. Excluding them from the market is bad business – and will decrease the number of potential people in the future bringing baked goods to work once the Great Plague is over. In other words, everyone has to start somewhere… and where better than a point in life when we all have wide open stretches of staying indoors and needing something to occupy the hours.

From a slightly different perspective, I think the broader lesson to be learned here – about yeast, cleaning supplies, or toilet paper – is that it’s probably a good idea to have a little more than we think we’ll need from week to week or month to month. Just in time delivery works well for a lot of products, but when it comes to the basics of everyday life, keeping what you already know you’re going to use in 30 to 60 days on hand suddenly doesn’t feel like a terrible idea, does it?

I’m making a list and checking it twice…

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I probably put more effort than is strictly necessary into traveling. Even a million years ago when I was traveling for work on a regular basis, I was the guy who showed up at the airport with a giant suitcase that pushed the 50 pound weight limit for a four day trip. It got exponentially worse when I lived in the center part of the country and most of the trips suddenly because reachable if I were willing to put in a long day’s drive. Then I’d fill the bed of the truck with all manner of stuff that I might possibly need, or more often just things that would make the hotel room feel more like home. If I couldn’t actually be at home, that was the next best alternative.

Seriously, I’d show up at five star hotels, slide into their valet line, and proceed with an unpacking experience that looked like a cross between the arrival of a gypsy caravan and the journeys of Lawrence of Arabia. What can I tell you, I’m believe in my own comfort… and for me, that generally means having the right things on hand whenever I might want or need them.

Here we are many years since those trips of old… but the impulse to take the whole house with me is as strong as ever. That’s why I’ve been working on my Christmas List for the better part of a week now. It’s not a list of presents, of course, but rather my planned packing list.

The list these days is a little different. It consists mostly of dog beds, dog food, dog toys, dog medication, crates, bowels, leashes, harnesses, and then the usual allotment of books, electronics, charging cables, and a few changes of clothes. In other words, mostly things that I could personally live without, but would really prefer not to if it’s avoidable.

This year I’ve gone so far as to have some of the requirements shipped ahead. Yes, thanks to Amazon I have pre-positioned certain dog related items at our holiday destination so we can just fall in on it when we arrive. Then all I’ll have to decide is whether to abandon it in place or repackage it for backhaul. It turns out you can take the boy out of logistics, but you can’t really shake the logistics out of the boy.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to start thinking about the Tetris-style load planning I’ll need to sort out to make sure everything is safely stowed in the truck cab or at least protected from the weather under the bed cover.

Obviously I have no idea how normal people travel.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. No paper towels. I’m all for environmental responsibility where it makes sense. I recycle. I’m replacing all the light bulbs in my house with LEDs. The new water heater I installed is ridiculously efficient (and has the price tag to match). Some things, though, are beyond the pale. I know that keeping old fashioned paper towels in your public restrooms is a hassle. They’re expensive, they end up all over the floor, and they become bags and bags of trash to be disposed of… even knowing that, I just don’t care. All I want to do after taking a wiz is wash my hands and be able to dry them. The underpowered, barely functional “hot air dryer” just doesn’t cut it since I don’t have 43 minutes to thoroughly dry my hands each time I used the facilities. Public restrooms are an unfortunate necessity. I don’t expect them to be gold plated but for the love of Pete, I’d like to be able to dry my hands.

2. The demand side. Given my predisposition towards fairly conservative economic principles I can safely be called something of a supply sider. Watching the US Coast Guard show off the nearly half billion dollars wort of cocaine and heroin interdicted last month, though, I’m not sure the who “drug thing” is something that we can fight principally from the supply side. As long as there’s a demand, the suppliers are going to find a means and method of supplying that demand – at an increasingly high cost on both sides. I’m not enough of a libertarian to think that flat out legalization of everything is a good idea, but it increasingly strikes me that to get after the issue with drugs means going after it on the demand side. Pouring increasingly large amounts of money into chasing the supply would seem to only garner continuingly middling results. I have no idea what the answer to the demand side is – treatment, sure, that will work in some cases. Start letting the addicts drop dead, or what I like to cheerily think of as letting Darwin have his due? OK, maybe it’s hard medicine but perhaps best in the long run if it means that subset of the population is no longer thieving and whoring and begging, which might help alleviate the impression that every city and small town in the country is well along the process of turning into a filth ridden hell hole.

3. The NFL. Stories are popping up on a number of news sites about the ratings hit the NFL has taken this year. Some sources are blaming the weather, others the rise of “activist” players. As someone who hasn’t watched a professional football game from start to finish since the late 1990s, I don’t really have a dog in the fight, but I can make a few observations. First and foremost, the NFL is a ratings driver. It’s not in danger of going out of business any time soon. With that said, the league would be well served to remember that despite the outward appearance of a nation of fierce team loyalists, the product they offer is entertainment and it’s subject to the same market forces that influence every other competitor out there trying to put their hands on viewer’s wallets. There has probably never been a time when there are more and better entertainment options available to the average American consumer than we have today. The fact that a game run by billionaires, played by millionaires, and marketed to the great swath of Americans who think of themselves as middle class is losing some of its grip on the market shouldn’t in any way be surprising. A good first step in bringing fans back into the fold would seem to be to making sure the paid performers don’t offend their viewers by dragging politics into what would otherwise be a nice mindless Sunday’s entertainment. Don’t put a stick in the eye of the people who you want to hand over enormous sums of money feels like it should be Rule #1.