I can go to any supermarket in my city and buy rice. I just have to be willing to pay four times what I’m used to for it. It is getting harder to find supermarkets still selling 10kg bags because those things are approaching ¥10,000.
Japan has had a more severe shortage of potato chips than this.
Isn't it not just cheap rice, but cheap Japanese rice? People in Asia are very particular about rice. They should be, rice from Japan, China, Cambodia, Taiwan, etc. all have a different taste. Nationalism plays in to it, but they are different. I think rice might be the ultimate Terroir crop.
But isn’t this just the definition of a shortage? The thing becomes scarce and so what IS available becomes incredibly expensive? I don’t see the differentiation you are trying to make. Wild price inflation happens when there is in fact not enough of the thing to go around.
That is wild! In Denmark I buy rice for 15 kr (~2€) / kg. Granted, it's probably nowhere near the quality of Japanese rice. But still, what a price difference.
Setting aside the rice shortage, the Japanese government has laws in place to keep rice prices high for... I have no idea why. A big part of the shortage is that blowing up in their faces.
Maybe they should have had a plan B for situations like this. It's great to take care of your own, but this is a perfect example as to why you can't put all your eggs into one basket.
You can't call it free market capitalism when you're literally restricting who can and can not import rice and then getting upset at yourself for the self-inflicted starvation. This isn't capitalism, it's the very definition of Protectionism, and yes: closed-matket protectionists are failing everywhere, from Brexiteers to MAGA morons, to closed-market rice farmers.
This isn't to say that unfettered Capitalism is the answer, or that all protectionist policies are bad. Any policy taken to the extreme is guilty of the real sin: not learning from the strengths and weaknesses of the systems they rail against and using them to build a more robust and functional middle ground.
Capitalism, by definition, is the pursuit and hoarding of wealth at all costs. This is ideologically opposed to the concept of a free market, because it will inevitably lead to captured markets and trusts.
While I agree that this particular scenario is unrelated to Capitalism as it is a matter of national protectionism, I’m simply taking umbrage with using “free market” and “capitalism” in a sentence together. Capitalism will always ultimately kill a free market.
I'm still flabbergasted by everyone still trying to hold onto a economic system designed by elites. Yall would be the 1760s worker arguing for just a few tweeks to a system not ment for the vast majority of people. Or you're just part of the in group that benefits you more than others. Capitalism has reached its logical conclusion just like every form that came before. The sooner we accept and realize it the better.