> It just means the buffer is somewhere other than where you assume it's necessary.
The rest was an example of one place you might see such a buffer. In practice, there are many such buffers, of varying capacity and time duration. For transportation, there’s the households who have 3 cars but could get by with only 2: they’ll sell their extra car once the price makes it worth their while. There’s the cyclist who’d like to have a car for out-of-city trips, but decides to hold off until inventory catches up (a demand-side buffer, if you will). Many more “buffers” could be imagined.
And, well, the market libertarian might feel really satisfied over the last year of commodity prices. Sure, supply constricted and prices rose, but at no point did we see any mass crises where people became stranded somewhere because they had no transportation option. For the vast majority of people, they just had to make convenience/cost tradeoffs that were a little bit different than before.
> but at no point did we see any mass crises where people became stranded somewhere because they had no transportation option.
You are just not paying enough attention. As prices rise the poor become poorer. How can you possibly claim that nobody is stranded by the increase of prices?
I think we’re maybe speaking past each other. I don’t disagree that things have become more expensive — and hence that the poor can own relatively less than they could before.
But, no. I haven’t heard stories of people being stranded in mass. I meant that word literally — because of the context of transportation — if that wasn’t clear? Even in the days of mass lockdown: I saw huge lines at food banks in suburban and even rural areas, but even those who are in a position to wait four hours for a few days of essential goods seem to have still found ways to get there. That observation is subject to some obvious biases, and yes I’m sure some people did fall through the cracks, fatally. But no: I truly haven’t witnessed what I would consider mass crises caused by people losing access to transportation. Despite massive shocks to a system of JIT manufacturing, there wasn’t a collapse of the supply side in the sense that you would have expected had you looked at inventory, divided by the rate of consumption, and thought “that’s how many weeks it’ll be until anyone who doesn’t own some form of transportation will be physically stranded”. Whatever services and goods existed two years ago, equivalents can by and large still be found today, albeit at a possibly-increased price or a possibly-decreased utility. They may have dimmed, but “the lights stayed on”. Is the world free of problems? No.
> It just means the buffer is somewhere other than where you assume it's necessary.
The rest was an example of one place you might see such a buffer. In practice, there are many such buffers, of varying capacity and time duration. For transportation, there’s the households who have 3 cars but could get by with only 2: they’ll sell their extra car once the price makes it worth their while. There’s the cyclist who’d like to have a car for out-of-city trips, but decides to hold off until inventory catches up (a demand-side buffer, if you will). Many more “buffers” could be imagined.
And, well, the market libertarian might feel really satisfied over the last year of commodity prices. Sure, supply constricted and prices rose, but at no point did we see any mass crises where people became stranded somewhere because they had no transportation option. For the vast majority of people, they just had to make convenience/cost tradeoffs that were a little bit different than before.