The squeaky wheeled "trolleygarchy"

Thanks to Stephen Glenn for pointing me to this lovely new descriptive word for the supermarket giants, and to the Lib Dem media release website for highlighting this issue via Tim Farron.  But I'm afraid unlike Stephen or Tim I cannot actually see just in what way the Lib Dems have any better policies than the other two vacuous parties on the issue of how to protect our farmers from exploitation by the supermarket oligrarchy, or, as the title says, the "trolleygarchy".

What I do see is all three parties falling over themselves to think of new things for the state to do to address some perceived problem that even the Competition Commission seems to have suggested was not such a big issue.  But I suppose it was a farming conference so they're bound to have been wanting to promise these potential voters that they would each do something to defend their interests in return for their earth salted votes - such is what politicians do.

But it provides a useful example as to what the real, liberal, process should be to such issues.  Why on earth are we, or anyone else, calling for more regulation, more bureaucracy, more costs?  Why don't we look at how this market got to this position?  At the state's role previously and now, in disadvantaging one group and protecting the other.  And see whether there are things the state should stop doing to make this a fairer market rather than creating another state bureaucracy to try and fix problems still being created by state action?

For on both the demand and the supply side of the market for this most basic of commodities, the food that keeps us all alive, we find a trail of evidence leading back to state action that has made it ever more likely that these giant retailers would emerge in the first place and dominate from then.  Not that I am saying that big is necessarily bad of course - if they are delivering what consumers want at the right price and quality, they could have a monopoly for all I care, so long as there are no barriers for others to enter the market should they see that efficiency slip and see a way of doing better for the consumer. 

But they have had help in achieving that dominance.  There's a huge amount of food regulation that, inevitably, the bigger firm is better placed to meet, and not just to meet, but to lobby regulators to suit them too.  On the demand side, state mismanagement of everything from money supply to housing markets has resulted in a vanishingly small number of households now being able to house themselves on one income, and so hard pressed home-makers juggling jobs and home life demand more convenience foods.  No longer is a leisurely trip to a local market for raw ingredients, freshness and quality decided by eye, nose and trust in the local man or woman behind the counter, followed by an hour by the stove and time to feed the family all at once the familiar way of doing things.  So there is more demand for, and thence regulation of, more conveniently packaged and ready-prepared food - ever more ranges to stock; ever larger stores to accommodate them.

On the supply side, we caved into the EU some years ago now in losing most of our local abattoirs, so farmers are more likely to have to sell into a mass market with smaller margins than be able to sell more locally with fewer middle-men taking a cut.  The fact that we do not charge for road use means that there are benefits of scale in moving food in huge quantities around the country, again meaning you are less likely to sell direct to local retailers, but through buying groups that aggregate whole regional and even national production and put pressure on prices.  This same factor means we are happier jumping in the car and traveling ten miles to a superstore than patronising local stores in a local supply chain - and those out of town stores are not fairly taxed on their land use, as they can offer massive free car parks with no rates on them.

As premium produce tends to be more labour intensive, our tax system, based on employment, creates big disincentives in an already narrow margin industry to employing those extra people and getting better prices for premium goods.  And on the retail side, low skill jobs that sometimes probably would not be worth the minimum wage to smaller retailers can be better afforded by big operators offering shift work and annualised hours to enable them to operate when family owned retailers would all want to be in bed because their overheads for waiting up for one romantic couple in aisle three at three in the morning are just too high.

So, whilst it is obvious that this is all a lot more complicated that merely being about defending the farmer against the trolleygarchy, it should also be quite clear that the trail of blame as often as not lies in earlier and ongoing state action that helps protect the big retailers and squeeze the farmers - we have not even looked at the history of land subsidy (how do farmers expect to make money out of things that only a few years ago, relatively speaking, we kept lakes and mountains of across Europe?).  Instead of having yet more bureaucracy and regulation, the liberal response should be to look at where the market is already heavily skewed by state action and stop doing it!

Employment regulation, food laws and "consumer protection" (once it was enough to ensure that the meat wasn't green and smelly when you bought it, now it all expires days or weeks before it would actually be unfit and so in thrown out), transport policy, taxation policy, the openness of our political system to lobbying for favours - always benefiting the bigger players, all these need looking at before another layer of regulatory bollocks is imposed.

But has anyone spotted the little irony - that one of the biggest retailers the farmers are complaining about, ASDA, was once a farmers' collective, and their last Chief Executive was also a Tory MP!

Powered by Qumana