Comment by Pica_soO | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Pica_soO | Hacker News Reader

Taking a bread loaf. What a horrible choice. If anything is as far away from a free market - its the food and power supply markets.

There are incentives by near all states for constant overproduction. The remainder is shipped off as animal-food or gift to poor countries (basically produce bound charity). And that's just the farmers. The millers have vanished in Germany over the last 20 years until there where just a few left. Those few do stuff with the flour to get it up to decent "quality" >> https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehl#Zusatzstoffe_.28Mehlbehan...

Now its reached the baker, one of those jobs i did before i learned to code. Let me assure you, that the market will not cover you, if you are to exotic and small. We had one customer asking for gluten free bread- and my boss said no, cause it would have become ridiculous expensive and the customer was unwilling to pay more. By now super-markets have the stuff, but its produced by factory bakery's. Which are quite "something" if you listened in on the chat among those who learned baker there. Production has to roll no matter what. Mice squished dead in the bun machine? Kärcher to the rescue, steam and water - and go. Adding cheap substances, instead of expensive ones - surely the market would behave against that.

The invisible hand also doesn't regulate for invisible effects. Alot of shortsighted agents result in shortsighted behavior. My current boss, a really nice guy, has wrestled for years with chronic skin inflammation- and wonder of wonders, it vanishes if he did not buy factory products- try it- buy the raw ingredients and produce your own food.

So yeah, the health of the customer is a secondary concern, if the state is not watching - as in the US. Food Diseases taking out every 1000 Person- the invisible hand gives you the invisible thumbs up for that. https://wwwn.cdc.gov/foodborneoutbreaks/

Poor flour, with lots of ergot, that's okay as long as you dont get caught, if you dislike that - talk to the hand. You can market it as bio- and in that case your customers are lucky, if your field is next to a conventional farm, getting windswept by fungicides.

So, after carefully thinking- and comparing it with reality, this video must be a parody.

Your arguments against markets can be boiled down to:

1. It's not actually a TRUE free market, which is tough to argue but seemingly would invalidate all your next points. I think "free" is a relative term compared to the state-run model of food production.

2. Gluten free bread was not available in your bakery because it was too expensive and customer was unwilling to pay more (markets working). But gluten free bread is available at other retailers (markets working again)

3. Cheap ingredients are bad and more expensive ingredients are worth the extra cost, which is really a value judgement that you are free to make by buying bread from your baker (markets working)

4. Market doesn't regulate "invisible effects" but you don't state any support that the alternative (presumably food czar) would be able to capture "invisible effects"

5. Food safety is more of a concern and better managed by some "food czar" than the individuals effected. When in practice, food safety is better managed by a "last time I ate this I got sick" approach to choice. Food safety is much better in market economies.

Overall, the main problem with your argument is that it compares market conditions to a perfect ideal without any account for cost and practicality

1. The argument for constant overproduction, and non-availability of a real free market is called: starvation. If to many farmers give up, and speculants on futures can hold grain back, people starve. Has happened several times. One could argue, that this has positive outcomes as well- ideologues are less energetic on a purely capitalistic diet. PS: Because there is always a counter example that markets could work- here is one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emperor_Norton

2. That example is one of a working market yes. But as you can see in medicine for rare diseases, no, not everybody gets a chance to buy what they need. In a pure free market, you have to pray for a rich person to get the same exotic sickness as you, to get help.

3. Yes, but the result of those wrong micro-judgments, piles via insurance upon society. Or its getting paid by having horrendous security payments, to keep those struck with the avalanche of their bad decisions, becoming poor from taking whats yours (The US approach).

4. Invisible effects, which i stated a nice example and you in intellectual dishonesty submitted, include very small accumulating negative effects or negative effects on the allmende, which come back later.

5. No, the food czar can be gambled too. I heard from some colleagues how in factory bakery's, when the health inspector arrives, clothing is adjusted and other violating points are "fixed" for the time of the inspection. But there is room for improvement there. In a free market, if all bakers just agree on the lowest common level of product, they churn out health bomb after health bomb and nothing happens to them. At which point i presume you would point to the jurisdiction of the nightwatch state- which by virtue of the free market could be bribed out of existence.

My perfect ideal is not very perfect, its just a acknowledge that there must be machinery that reigns in corroding elements, while leaving the positive aspects of the market largely intact.

I will leave you with the nice results a free market has created, and which you will hail as a great opportunity to sell health apps and bypass surgery. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obesity_in_the_United_States

I may take the right with others so inclined to opt-out this ideology.

You make a good point. Communist countries tend not to have a lot of obesity.

Eh, i m not arguing pro communism, im arguing for some bureaucratic oversight as it happens in the EU and Germany.

Its fascinating that fanatics always see just the other extreme. There are shades of grey, and i m arguing for a quite sophisticated machinery printed in black and white - in such a fashion that it looks grey if zoomed out enough.

1. Over-production happens because farmer in modern politics are efficent at lobbying politicans. In actualy market economies we basically don't have starvation. Speculation might cause starvation in countries that are not well integrated into the market, but then again without a world wide market for grain (that enables speculators to exist in the first place) many of those countries would just not have access to that supply in the first place.

2. Almost all technology is first limited and expensive and the gets cheap and mass produced. There is no magic way around this problem, its simply impossible. Medicine is a difficule topic and economically very different because of intellectual property being such a complicated subject. That said, if you look at the long term, the massiv expantion of live in countries is defently connected to the efficent distribution of lots of medicine to all levels of the population. You seem to focus on the problem we have now but ignore the trend.

Even a bad and cheap AIDS treatment now is better then almost anything available not that long ago.

3. It's hard to determain what the best solution here is. The problem is just to complicated. Their is some level of balance that society needs to find. Whatever process of law generation your society have needs to come up with this balance. I want argue that the one the US or anybody else has is perfect, but they seem pretty functional overall. More so then alternatives.

4. "if all bakers just agree". Your argument totally fails into the water if you say 'if all just agree', the hole point is that they can easly just all agree. The larger the market, the harder it is to agree. Even if they agree, every single one of them has a insentive to break the agreement. If you actually study the history of this sort of agreements you will see that they almost always break down even if the emerge (witch they almost never do).

Your argument seems to boils down to "markets working."

But they're not working for everyone. For example, the current housing market is working for large real estate companies that had the capital to buy up risk laden foreclosed homes. It's often not working for working class renters.

Again, not working compared to what?

In the cartoon, an example is given of bread using all the wheat that is needed for pizza dough.

Well, for people I know who work 40 hours a week and are still homeless, compared to anything.

The commodification of homes and neighborhoods is pushing people to participate economically in ways that cut short time for other important life stuff: self care, raising children, building healthy relationships, cleaning, cooking, creating, gardening. There is plenty of space to live, but these markets are making it very difficult for people to make the kinds of decentralized arrangements the cartoon espouses.

I don't think it's commodification. In cities where the government doesn't artificially make it hard to build new houses, housing is much more affordable.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com