[Retric]

Logistic chains are being optimized and thus shortened behind the scenes as a cost saving measure.

Even then distance is a terrible measure on it’s own. Suppose a local farmer drives 100 lb of food 25 miles to a farmers market in a 25 MPG truck. They just spent 1 gallon per 100lb of food. A semi driving 2000 miles at 6.5 MPG is moving 34,000 pounds is at 1 gallon per 110 lb of food. And that’s just the surface a farmer needs to drive his truck home, where semi’s try to have useful cargo on the return trip. Granted the farmer might haul more food etc, but the semi could haul more and probably isn’t traveling that far etc.

Further distribution chains aren’t about a single good, grocery stores for example get bulk delivery of multiple goods from distributors. When you include people driving to a farmers market who also drive to a grocery store, farmer’s markets often become much worse for the environment than the giant logistics chain their trying to improve upon.

The real solution is to add taxes for the externalities you care about not simply wing it via feel good assumptions.

[beaconstudios]

Taxes for externalities do not solve power imbalances caused by centralisation.

As for economies of long distance transportation, this is as a result of investment into those forms of transport as a result of centralised bargaining power and economies of scale. It's not like long distance transport has an inherent efficiency benefit over short distance, it's just more amendable to centralization.

[Retric]

Power imbalance is a function of capitalism, they can setup a setup a cooperative but the prices wouldn’t change much. The issue is if they sell a commodity in bulk they get a bulk commodity pricing.

Efficiency in long distance transportation is inherently a function of scale. Very quickly you find it’s often more environmentally friendly to do longer distances with full loads than short distances with nearly empty or much smaller trucks/trains/boats/ etc. A farmer > collection point > train to regional distribution points > truck to local distributor works. A farmer isn’t going to say fill up a train on his own, and a train stop per farm isn’t going to work.

At the outer end N to M transactions between distributors with one product sending to different distributors with multiple products works. A grocery store getting deliveries from hundreds of farmers runs into issues especially when people want out of season fruits and vegetables.

The downsides of this model is it’s difficult to supply goods that decay quickly. A farmers market physically next to the farm can sell fresh food that would never work in a grocery stores supply chain. But people driving to every farm is a different inefficiency thus seasonal farmers markets.

[beaconstudios]

> Power imbalance is a function of capitalism

True - I think we're better-served in some areas by consciously avoiding pure market competition in service to ideals like fair compensation or environmentalism.

> Efficiency in long distance transportation is inherently a function of scale. Very quickly you find it’s often more environmentally friendly to do longer distances with full loads than short distances with nearly empty or much smaller trucks/trains/boats/ etc. A farmer > collection point > train to regional distribution points > truck to local distributor works. A farmer isn’t going to say fill up a train on his own, and a train stop per farm isn’t going to work.

True. What I'm talking about is shortening logistic chains though, not increasing distribution of logistics. Maybe a farmer's market is a bad example because typically the farmers drive their own crops to market - I was thinking an alternative to supermarkets where rather than the accumulate-transport-distribute pipeline that you described, sale happens directly after accumulation of goods into a locally-central store or market. That accumulation can happen the same way it does now, but you remove or reduce the international shipping and distribution from ISO containers that's inherent to a global market with subsidised transport.