Japanese queue for hours as rice shortage deepens

Clarification: They are queuing for cheap rice.

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.

10000 yen is 60 EUR.
- Or 69 freedom buckaroos for 22 pounds of rice
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.
- Not just Asia, Italians and Spaniards are also quite particular about rice.
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.
for cheap rice
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's 22lbs for $69. Yikes
Oh so it's only poor people who are struggling. Not to worry then. Back to it lads.

Japan’s long-standing efforts to protect domestic farmers from outside competition, including limiting imports of foreign rice

Here’s the why in case anyone is wondering. It’s not a global issue.

Was gonna say… Every local store near me has literal pallets of rice available.
- Of course part of that is the fact that Western diets don't really involved anywhere near the quantity that the Japanese consume it at.
  After all rice pudding was invented to try and use rice up, because no one was eating it.
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.
- They do, of course. There's plenty of rice of other kinds.
Japan seems hell bent on not taking any steps to improve things. They have serious issues with population demographics and they are really shit about allowing immigrants in to work in the likes of agriculture.

Self-inflicted crisis

Not quite, because the reason they don't want to buy from overseas is because they've had three decades trapped in a deflation crisis. So every time they buy anything from overseas it shows the weak buying power of the Japanese yen (which is a product of the deflationary "lost years").
...so there's a unique economic context for why they're acting this way.
- Deflation makes currency stronger, not weaker. That's part of the issue with it when it comes to a domestic economy, because it means this start becoming drastically cheaper over time, but it's only a problem if people keep waiting for prices to drop. It also devalues stocks, so large corporations don't like it either, and if you have a lot of money, it's not as competitive anymore locally with the average person's money either. Landlords also lose out because real estate value stalls (btw this is part of the reason for why Japan's mega cities exist - deflation has made it so nearly everyone can afford to live in the main city rather than needing to spread out to cheaper areas because inflation causes rent prices to increase via real estate value also increasing).
  Buying overseas helps prevent deflation, but Japan has a protectionism type economy in general. Currency reserves from other countries buying exports heavily is what keeps things stable.
  In the rice case, it's purely to protect the local rice economy because deflation has made the yen strong, and allowing cheaper rice from a country with a weaker currency would make local rice unable to ever have the hopes of competing for any profit whatsoever, probably not even at break-even.
- I guess when your currency is weak you need to focus on domestic independence and be very judicious about foreign purchasing.
- Well they stagnated abd everyone else went up. It actually a really interesting case study in how a stagnated economy can run and why it can't.
- The average consumer doesn't care about that aspect though.

Hey, it's that thing that contributed to the French revolution!

Rice shortage?
- let them eat rice cakes
- Staple carb. It's supposed to be the bare minimum in cheap and regularly consumed food. After that society's just a few missed meals away from people rioting.
- Failed wheat harvest which caused a bread shortage.
  Bread was a staple food in 18th century France.
  I'm not quite sure if it is similar to the rice shortage in Japan today however. When the French couldn't eat bread in the 18th century they went hungry, but when the Japanese today can't buy rice they can just buy a different carb.
  Its the difference between barely scraping by on bread, and being inconvenienced by not being able to buy cheap rice.

Omg look at their basket on wheels

AKA shopping trolleys

Protectionism. Louisiana makes plenty of rice.

Rice grown in former plantation states tends to be very high in arsenic, a holdover from the cotton-growing days.
For US-grown rice, my understanding is that California-grown is much safer to consume.
- So that's why we always rinse the rice. Interesting. Will have to get some Cali rice.
Yeah, but that's all for local gumbo production, oh and Zataran's.
/s

https://youtu.be/l4vTQV3HjKU

Capitalism everywhere is failing

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 ≠ Free Market
  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.