The "Wii shortage" & the "food shortage"

[Hannah Bell]

For the last few weeks, many people have posted articles about the global "food shortage," some in dire tones, attributing it to overpopulation, resource depletion, etc. Some have gone so far as to suggest "we" should not send "them" "our" food, as allowing "them" to live simply makes the problem worse.

Ignoring for the moment the fact that the US has been a NET FOOD IMPORTER since 2004:

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/2/9/211544/4045

despite having a low population density & plenty of good agricultural land, let's look at the food shortage though the lens of the "Wii shortage".

In the article below, what's the problem? Is there any absolute shortage of Wiis? are there no resources & factories to produce wiis, no expertise to design them, no tankers to ship them, no folks in the us willing to make them?

No. The problem, supposedly, is exchange rates make the us an unprofitable market - i.e. americans can't pay the price the owners want. Now, the owners could make more wiis & sell them for less - but they've decided not to, probably because the manufactured "shortage" actually makes the limited supply more desirable, status-wise = superprofits.

So: the problem is: americans are suddenly "too poor" to afford wiis.

Those who prefer starving people to taking on the problem of global inequality, please consider: africa is a resource-rich continent, much of it less densely populated than the US (34/km2), let alone Western Europe or Japan (300+km/2). africans know how to farm, how to hunt & dress meat, how to utilize resources.

If they're starving, why would that be?

niemoller's aphorism: "and then, there was no one left to speak out for me."



Wii shortage may finally be near an end

03:03 PM CDT on Saturday, March 29, 2008
By VICTOR GODINEZ / Staff writer [email protected]

...the analyst, Michael Pachter at Wedbush Morgan, said the real culprit for the Wii shortage in the U.S. is the weak dollar.

With a weak dollar, foreign companies that sell their goods in the U.S. for dollars and then convert those dollars to their native currencies get a smaller profit than if they sell their products in countries with strong currencies of their own (such as Europe with the euro). In other words, Nintendo makes a bigger profit on Wiis sold in Europe than on Wiis sold in the U.S.

So Nintendo, Mr. Pachter said, has been behaving perfectly rationally by sending excess Wii consoles to Europe to satisfy the more profitable consumers there.

But now that demand in Europe is subsiding to normal levels, those surplus consoles will be redirected to American gamers...No one wants to hear that they're second-class customers, but that's exactly what we American gamers are right now.

...Regardless, if you can't find a Wii this weekend at Wal-Mart, you can blame the French (and Germans, Italians and all the rest).


http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/DN-gamer_0329gl.ART.State.Edition1.464cd43.html?npc