Perspective

Whatever we do, wherever we go, whatever we think we carry our past with us. All of our thoughts and actions carry tendrils that reach back into the past. Most tendrils may only go back into recent living memory, a large number may go back a few generations, a few may go back a long way to medieval times, such as the times of the plague, and one or two may stretch way back into the mist of time, the stone age or even beyond. We are inescapably tied to our past. It shapes and determines how we think for the future.

Today we are plagued by short-termism. This country in particular has no long-term investment view. What is the least input required to be able take out the grosses benefit, that is the ruling mantra. Our ancestors took pride in what they produced, mostly, they put all their skills into making something to hand on to the next generation. What they produced was their measure of worth, their public mark of where they stood in their community. Not for them the quick cheap fix, stuff it in nobody will notice or care. We have inherited those quality products and now routinely trash them with contempt. Today the labour cost is king whilst thousands are idle or employed in lowgrade drudgery work. But hey technology is changing so fast there is no point in making things to last anymore and robots do a much more consistent and faster job than any human. What do I care, nothing to do with me, I will just buy the next model upgrade and see if that works any better.

Sitting on top of this economic model that drives our culture are the Supermarkets, exploiting to the very limits, promoting and using every psychological trick to encourage us to revel in this throw away society. Buy more, buy cheaper, buy because its not going to be there tomorrow, buy, buy. To placate the institutional shareholdings who only look for the percentage gain this minute to the next minute and most certainly have no stake in a week, month or even a years strategy let alone any long term goal. The Supermarkets need to keeping increasing the amount they sell day by day. Squeezing their suppliers and manufacturers to cut corners, to cut standards, to cut quality, anything to reduce costs by that pence here or there. Cutting until just before the point of customer drift. Maintaining high standards and expectations, promoting a strive to improve quality and experience just are not their agenda. Lulled as we are into this false security of trusting our run-of-the-mill supplier, the Supermarket outlet. They are doing what is best for us. Ha. In our name they are corrupting the quality of life we depend on. They do not have a balance sheet on the numbers of people kept in production employment, the plunder of raw resources, the wanton accumulation of discard's to be tipped, they are just exploiting the economic model. The model which states labour is an key expense and throwaway is cheaper then longevity. 

Just remember there is nothing intrinsic about labour being a dominate cost factor, just as there nothing intrinsic about cheap throwaway technology. We are bright enough and creative enough to devise alternative economic models, if we choose to. Models, just for example, that reward local production, that reward least use of raw materials, that have long shelf life's, that have upgradeable platforms or reusable core components. There are lots of other options to consider, if we had the will. If we chose not to treat our Earth as infinite landfill site and face the reality of diminishing natural resources. We could if only we cared. We might then rediscover a pride in what we passed on to our children.

What it is worth

We should be daily on guard against our instinctive presumption that what we asked to pay for something equates in anyway to what it is worth. By the time the seller has added on his profit, made allowance for stocking space and expected rate of turnover, the distributor has taken off his slice for double handling, storage waiting for and then transporting, and, assuming there are no middlemen taking a slice before handing on, the prime producer has to cover the advertising, product packaging, verification of standards met, recoup his product design, plant rightoff and premises, insurance against adverse events, stocking levels only then do we get to the nitty gritty, the payroll to produce and the purchase and stocking of the raw materials;finally we get close to the 'value' of the product.

We expect an intimate relationship between what we pay for something and it what it costs in terms of labour and raw materials, yet what is costs actually is ethereal. A figure derived from gut or more probably prior experience of what degree of ancillary costs can be born by the expected market, and still sell and still make a profit. It has a lot closer relationship to the vagaries of house selling, what does the market bear or expect for this size house in this location. Pricing is not hard wired to actual costs but is pitched at market expectations and precedences. 

This divorce from the actual cost of things is not just about the products we buy, but as I have explored previously in Government Savings, it is also true of the cost of how we choose to manage and administer ourselves. The 'cost' of government is not a balance sheet figure derived from what it takes to run or administer a set of procedures but reflects a historic norm. This is what has been relied on in the past to produce this end result and that with these adjustments this what it costs us now.

We got here for a sliding progression of perfectly reasonable and at the time right and fully justifiable choices. Right here and now being required to pay what others expect is their due and entitlement just does not seem right. Clearly we cannot go back to barter. Can you imagine the furore at the Supermarket as we all came in with our trade goods to exchange for our weekly shop. Equally we just cannot make and keep contact with the worldwide spread of sources and suppliers to individually barter an exchange for all those everyday items we now so desperately depend. Yet we have to get back to making some connection to what it actually costs, for something, as against what the marketplace thiks it can get away with.

I take heart from EBay. There is a model here, the dutch auction, products are offered at an optimum price then, depending on stock levels, degrees of demand and closeness to spoiling date, the price decreases until the consumers decides that it is worth it. Services might operate in an inverse way, with the rate for the service increasing until some provider snaps it up. Quality is the bug bear, we know only too well how the supermarkets dumb down the specification until it is a pale shadow of its former, introductory, self. With the growth of consumer feedback and instant consumer vitriol when things are wrong, maybe there is is this growing tool that will keep suppliers and providers sharp on their toes. Maybe, just maybe they can claim back from the domineering supermarkets, accountability for the what they provide. That would be the dawn of a new age.

Vegetables

What on earth, vegetables? Stay with me, a long time ago we started buying our vegetables from a livestock market stall that went on to become our town's only surviving fruit and vegetable shop, Granny Smith's. Recently the freshness of the produce on display has become more and more of an issue. The logistics for the greengrocer are hard, buy what is available and cheap in the food market and then sell it, gauging local demand just right and you make money. Get it wrong and you have moulding stock on hand or over priced against competitors or just as bad, you run out and have to turn customers away. Don't shed too many tears there was always a high mark-up to cover the inevitable stock wastage which is why, the good ones who knew their customers always used to make money.

Times have changed and now money is tight. The Supermarket have changed all the ground rules. They cream off the top quality stock. They set a roughly even price all year round, priced high to cover costs off season but not too high for when prices dip in mid-season. The traditional greengrocer has to compete against that scenario, seeking the just off prime stock or that price that will knock the socks off the Supermarkets pricing. A tough competitive world but it does not stop there, only the good can survive.

Once upon a day the produce came off the field into the market, sold and was in the shop that day or the next, fast turnover. Things are no longer like that, Supermarkets buy from around the world, move produce around, distribute from vast central warehouses, splitting into orders for individual shops and they must have certainty that the produce will last and be fresh for the days shelf time they have set. The producers are under enormous pressure to provide produce that will stay fresh for the shelf time dictated by their 'only' client, the Supermarket.

I have never managed to grow tomatoes where all the fruit were evenly ripe, none over-ripe, none under-ripe and all on the same truss but now they are everywhere, vine ripened trusses. Stay firm for weeks then suddenly collapse in a way I have never experienced before. Conspiratory theory or is this indicative that our food is no longer what it used to be be, straight off the fields. English apples on sale in March that after a couple of days go from crisp to woolly inedible? Peaches, to ripen in basket, that just sit and do not ripen and then collapse in a soggy mess. A long time ago I discover by chance that cauliflower is not straight off the field but is routinely dipped so it keeps better. I think that is the current state of our food, processed to keep and make profits for the seller.
Not so good for the consumer, you cannot trust your eye to spot fresh food from food that had been manipulated to stay "fresh".