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Comment by ska | Hacker News Reader

  They might say be operating a stall at a locally grown market, but it's the stall not the farm that's generating income.

That's assuming that the product is fungible. If your market stall can generate higher margins because you are the farmer, and/or due to the type of farming, this argument isn't so clean.

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I was going to say something very similar. People have a (faulty) fake radar and if you are trying to just remarket crops without raising them yourself, you better have a good sales line if the next stall over is a family selling the produce that they have grown themselves. People like to meet and support the person who is responsible for the entire process.

> higher margins because you are the farmer

That's an argument to pretend to be a farmer, while also buying from a 3rd party. Another benefit is as a tax doge.

fraud is always an option I suppose.

In a society of high trust, fraud can be an easy way to steal resources. If too many people do it, trust breaks down and everyone is worse off. Building a society where outside the family/tribe trust is the default position is hard, but the West has gone some distance in solving it. Unfortunately we seem to be regressing a bit of late.

It's very common for people selling food at farmers markets to farm some, but not all of the food they are selling. If nothing else some years some crops will fail.

Remember, specialization increases efficiency. As long as what was sold is the same thing as what's being described aka Local / Organic / whatever I don't see this as fraud.

Advertising replaces trust. This is how the modern economy works -- people buy the lies.

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