I’ve seen reports of rising prices and reduced availability of all sorts of items, and the interpretation I’ve been hearing is that it’s due to inflation caused by rampant money printing.

I don’t agree with this assessment, because in order to have inflation, you would need to have printed money distributed as salaries or stimulus, to which the sellers would react by raising the prices to compensate for the dilution of the value of money. So far, I’ve actually seen inflation but it’s been contained to the very select few asset categories, because the banking system is designed to prevent people who actually need money to get it, because they are deemed “high risk”, and the entire banking system is designed around the various safeguards that essentially guarantee that all the cheap credit will be available only to the select few “blue chip” players, and they are the ones who are swimming in all this low-interest credit, supposedly created to boost the economy. What this means is that the necessary prerequisite of inflation – the increased volume and speed of circulation of money across the entire populace – does not exist. And yet, we do indeed have the opportunity to witness the increased retail prices and reduced availability of an increasing number of items. So, what’s going on?

I think what’s going on is actually worse than inflation – we’re seeing the collapse of the entire economic system, we’re seeing it contract into a black hole. The governments kept imposing various anti-capitalist rules, with all kinds of excuses – whether it’s sanctions, or fighting carbon, or fighting covid, but what they managed to do is disrupt the routine of supply and demand to the point where production became more expensive, transport became more expensive, and we now have spikes in demand that result in higher orders from the manufacturers, which raises the prices because the production just isn’t scaled for such spikes, and then those spikes clog up the transport lines, creating random and chaotic delays across the board, which then in turn creates shortages due to time delay between order and delivery, which in turn raises the retail prices. Also, there are serious labour issues due to lockdowns, among other things.

So, the entire supply-demand that usually follows predictable principles is now aggravated by the length of the global supply lines and the resulting delays, and the entire thing is magnified by the fact that all kinds of communists in power are competing with each other in introducing more anty-capitalist, anti-energy, anti-efficiency laws, and the entire machine might actually grind to a halt, to their great pleasure, and our great misfortune. Basically, capitalism normally reacts to high demand by immediately delivering high supply of goods and services, which keeps the prices either constant or lower, and now the machine is disrupted to the point where it just can’t deliver, so the obvious thing in case of reduced supply is to raise the prices. Also, the cost of staying in business in the lockdown era has increased, and the businesses can either raise the prices or close.

So, as much new money gets printed, the only places that manifest inflation are the stock market and the real estate market, because that’s where the ones with access to all that credit get to spend it, which creates huge but localized bubbles. But if we’re talking about the prices of the retail goods and services, they have nothing to do with inflation; yet, becuse the governments will eventually find a way to pour money into the pockets of consumers in order to “stimulate” consumption, and then inflation will explode in the retail market as well.

What we are seeing is a result of a socialist conspiracy to sabotage capitalism.