I noted more than a few binoculars focused this morning on the military airfield outside my Caracas hotel. It’s likely they were searching the ground for evidence of the military coup I heard whispers about last night in the hotel bar; but who knows in Caracas. Even the journalist interviewing me this morning made reference to the challenges of living in a Communist country; Venezuela is in midst of crisis. The recently botched election recalls the passionate controversy of George Bush’s results in Florida in 2004, except it’s unimaginably worse.
In 2013, I can’t think of a well-grounded leftist intellectual that can defend actualization of the Karl Marx syndrome we witnessed in the 20th Century. Russia, the former Soviet Republics, and Eastern Europe have all moved on. By most gauges, shedding this ideology has brought improvement and positive change. Poland grew faster last year than any other nation in Europe, which in the midst of our recession may not be saying much, but still says a lot. Of the three Asian remnants of Communist ideology, China and Vietnam have cherry-picked through Das Kapital and added doses of Confucian and Keynesian economics to craft some semblance of prosperity. North Korea has abandoned all logical thought; the only question is how much of the rest of the world they intend to take with them when they go.
Yet dear reader, this is a newsletter about retail, so here is our thread. In my trip to the supermarket in Caracas this afternoon, there was no coffee of any variety on the shelf, and the reek of rotting meat was stomach turning. People wait in long disorganized lines for basic food supplies. We are witness to the tragedy of governmental pricing control for food; Venezuela has gone from an exporter of food to an importer over the course of its Chavezian transformation. Today, much of its basic food needs are imported from the United States.
My economist colleagues predict that global food prices will increase country by country by 10% to 20% over the next year. While the precise number is anyone’s guess, it’s a fact that food costs are increasing by at least twice the rate that global wages increase. How are we going to continue to feed ourselves?
The answer, in part, rests in the world of retail where for almost 30 years we have watched a concerted effort to engineer both value and fair profits from the supply chain. From growing, to trucking, to minimizing waste and mechanizing the modern warehouse, the degree to which the increased costs of basic food commodities have been passed on to the consumer have been limited for us living in First World nations. Thank Walmart, Tesco and Auchan; but also thank the farmers markets, the slow food movement, and the advent of local community-supported agriculture (CSA) organizations.
At both ends of the First World retail spectrum, we are watching innovation and reinvention driven by competition and local entrepreneurship. At best, we ask government to get out of the way. We’d rather have the local farmers market manager certify a farmer’s products than the FDA, although we need to embrace both in the flawed, but preferable, world of Capitalism.
Journalists keep asking me –- whether it’s here or in Shanghai —how are we going to feed ourselves in the next five years, both from the standpoint of cost and safety? My answer is always the same: Price controls are not the answer, but organized retail can, and will, do its part. The process takes time, but it does work. The places that will feel the most pain over the five years are those where global organized retail is not playing a transformational role in a local economy. India is a prime example. Open markets provide incentive and examples for local merchant organizations to do it often better and faster. They provide farmers with stable prices, drastically cut down on spoilage, and most importantly, help get their offerings on dinner tables everywhere while making a profit.
When I arrived at Simón Bolívar International, I was expecting a sturdy intelligence officer with a serious face to meet me at passport control. I did not expect the smiling young woman with braces that giggled when I presented my thick, well-worn passport. She greeted me warmly after a long flight, stamped my passport and let me pass, welcoming me to her country. She deserves better.
The Incredible Universe was…well, pretty incredible. There was no store like it ever before – and there’s not likely to be one like it ever again.
That would be the Walmart behemoth, still the one and only behemoth of its size in the world, the last I took count. At about $61 billion in annual revenues, Amazon is still a puny contender to Walmart’s nearly $500 billion. But, relatively puny as they might be, they scared the pants off Walmart several years ago when it was rumored they were about to open brick-and-mortar stores.
