So let me see if I have got this right.
Your thesis is that the shortages we are seeing all over the place on a daily basis are due to a sudden and world wide decline in the availability and desire of folk to drive HGV.
The European legislation that restricted hours worked etc, came in August of 2020 with measures that include:
a requirement for drivers’ to ‘return home’ every 4 weeks;
a ban on taking regular weekly rest periods in the driver’s vehicle;
a new definition of ‘non-commercial carriage’;
more flexibility on the scheduling of the rest periods for some drivers on international carriage of goods;
new provisions for rests and breaks for drivers when journeys involve transport by ferry or by rail;
a new requirement to keep a full record of all other work.
https://www.backhousejones.co.uk/change ... gust-2020/There are numerous articles some of which you link to that support this thesis. Would you expect to find anything different. All the journalists tasked to explain why there are shortages in shops are looking for reasons and are parroting the same stuff world wide. But drivers do not, worldwide, all decide to retire at about the same time in such large numbers that freight supplies are crippled unless there is some new reason. The all retire at once argument makes no sense at all.
However, by imposing legislation across the freight industry as the Europeans have done creates an industry wide trouble and the folk who drive HGV start to earn less and have their lives messed with and decide that they don't want less money, forced behaviour and decide after trying it for a bit, that what was an attractive job is no longer so and they jack in and this then leads to a snowballing in the decline of freight transport and a quasi blockade that leads to the shortages we are seeing, With shortages we have the wealthy folk saying that they don't want to be without and so they will pay more to anyone who can deliver what ever they need. We then have the classic recipe for inflation: Too much money chasing too few goods.
Running in parallel with all of this is the indebtedness of most of the western democracies caused by the 2008 crisis and support measures taken and then by the Covid crisis and heavy spending by governments such that most nations have large sovereign debts.
There are ongoing costs of servicing the huge debt burdens which suck money from other projects to keep re-paying the interest and such and this impacts the ability of Governments to spend on other things. The level of debt is so large, in many cases several times GDP that the debt can not be paid off by more taxes. However, the effect of the debt can be reduced if the value of money is reduced, i.e. if there is substantial inflation.
The Great Reset is not being presented by crackpots but by the great and good in the world's governments:
https://www.weforum.org/great-resetIt talks about the need for:
There is an urgent need for global stakeholders to cooperate in simultaneously managing the direct consequences of the COVID-19 crisis. To improve the state of the world, the World Economic Forum is starting The Great Reset initiative.What does this mean? What are the direct consequences of the COVID-19 crisis? What does "managing the direct consequences" mean?
Primarily it means re-establishing the power and capability of the governments and that requires that the great burdens of sovereign debt are reduced and the way they have chosen to do this is to inflate money away. The problem for the governments has been how to create inflation. In the 1970's this was done by the OPEC tripling the price of crude and at the same time putting out a smoke screen that this was not about beating up the west for supporting Israel, but was instead a natural price rise caused by the arrival of peak oil. Predictions that by 2000 there would be no oil left. Folk went around and spoke on the media about how economies would collapse when the oil was gone and how justified OPEC was in putting up prices. By 2010, ten years after the expected end of oil, there was more oil being produced than ever before.
Meanwhile scientists had become alarmed at the change in the mix of world's atmosphere and CO2 has replaced peak oil as the thing experts all over the world relentless talk about while doing very little to fix it. Sure we are seeing much more renewables but moves towards a real UK renewable economy are being done by taxing consumers rather than raising equity capital, thereby generating a whole load of profits for the politicians friends and via kick backs for themselves and that same time impoverishing consumers. Currently in the UK for example we have very little storage, (no significant battery factories), which is essential for a renewable economy.
The politicians want to be able to spend on renewables, enriching themselves in the process, but are hampered by the excessive debt and are therefore doing what it takes to make this debt more manageable by creating inflation and are just as was done with peak oil spreading mis-information and marking anyone who speaks out about it as a mad conspiracy theorist or such, exactly what was done to anyone who said peak oil was a joke.
Regards,