Hacker News Reader

Comment by 317070 | Hacker News Reader

Why is capitalism failing us here? Why do we need to grow our own?

Do you not have a farmer's market near you? Good tomatoes are available if you want them, and they are in season.

Because market forces, of course, and they look like this: https://newsroom.nmsu.edu/news/nmsu-developing-perfect-green...

A chile pepper optimized for mechanical harvest, because right now the fruit needs to be cut from the stem, but if you can shake it off you can spare yourself the farmworker.

Simple: quality tomatoes are hard to transport and they don’t last when on the shelf. The closest thing to a “real” farm tomato you can buy at a reasonable price is “Kumato” from Trader Joe’s. It’s a pale imitation of a real tomato picked off the plant when it’s ripe, but at least it reminds me of it, whereas a “regular” store bought tomato doesn’t taste anything like the real thing.

Letting a tomato go fully ripe on the plant is an easy way to attract birds and lose a substantial amount of the crop. There’s no reason for it either. Once the tomato reaches the breaker stage (starting to change colour) it is internally cut off from the mother plant and will not be adversely affected by being harvested.

If we’re talking the peak flavor tomato that “capitalism” purportedly can’t produce, that is only available when you pick it from the vine, already ripe. It is true that tomatoes will ripen if picked “brown”, but they’re less flavorful than vine ripened. Source: picked a few tons of tomatoes every summer as a kid.

Source: anecdotal

Anecdotal is when someone else told you something and you used that data without verifying. The correct term in this case is “empirical”.

No, that would be hearsay.

Anecdotal is when an anecdote is used.

No I’m talking the flavour of the tomatoes from my back yard, some of which I picked brown and others I picked fully red. They tasted identical once ripened indoors. But you don’t need to take my word for it. Google tomato breaker stage.

The difference between store bought tomatoes and home grown is the cultivar. Mine are heirloom tomatoes. They’re much uglier and softer than store bought beefsteak tomatoes, but way tastier. There’s no way these would ever ship because they turn ripe for a few days and then turn to mush. They also bruise incredibly easily.

Because it is capitalism. Really good tomatoes are at their best for a few days only which makes them hell to transport. That's why modern tomatoes are bred for color ans size, but inside they are actually green with very hard core and very little natural sugar.

Why can I buy fresh fish and seafood, but not fresh tomatoes?

I’ve not been myself but I’ve heard that in Japan it’s common to give fruit as a gift and that as a result there’s very high end fruit available for purchase. You can go into a store and spend the equivalent of $50 on the best looking and tasting melon you’ve ever had.

One thing to look for are local farms that have subscription services. Some give you a box of seasonal veggies each month, which will be very fresh.

Capitalism gives you perfectly uniform porno-tomatoes and watered ketchupy tomato sauce. No surprise, capitalism extract profits on all ends - production, storage, and distribution and it doesn't result with tasty aromatic tomatoes.

Capitalism would absolutely love to give you delicious and peak-quality tomatoes. If consumers were willing to pay the additional cost needed to harvest and handle more heirloom-variety tomatoes, there would be a huge incentive to provide them.

If people aren't willing to pay the premium needed, then the revealed preference is for the easily harvestable varieties. Farmers markets and local producers that sell to fewer people who will pay that premium are likewise capitalism's answer to this problem (i.e. saying "Industrial agriculture can't meet the consumers' needs, but local farmers can.")

Capitalism need not be industrial-scale, it just needs to fill consumer demand somehow (which is why small business are so crucial)

Capitalism gives me options. I can get expensive tasty locally grown tomatoes when in season, if I want, while still being able to get really cheap tomatoes at any time of the year.

Because economy alone can't solve all our problems? Someone probably promised you it will, but that's scam.

Capitalism has given us the most "efficient" tomato for the market. If you want to optimize for something else, you're trying to solve a different problem.

It's not, at least not where I live, in Switzerland. There are many different varieties to choose from in the supermarket nowadays, from cheap and tasteless to more expensive and tasty. It's the same in the Netherlands by the way.

The problem is not capitalism, it is the preference of the consumers in your area.

> Why is capitalism failing us here?

It can't even bring housing and healthcare for all, tasty tomatoes is way down the list lmao

Capitalism isn't the reason your housing costs so much; that's because of crappy government regulations (i.e. Euclidean zoning) and NIMBYs. Remove the regulations and let landowners do what they want with land and it'll be fixed; that's how it works here in Japan.

Conversely, the reason American healthcare is such a disaster is because of really bad regulation. Developed nations have shown that good healthcare systems require strong regulation, but not shitty regulation like the US has.

The world isn't the USA, yet the housing problem is impacting most of the west

It definitely is more than partially brought by capitalism and what comes with it: greed, speculation, &c.

The flat I'm renting right now in Germany is owned by a company who owns 200k flats, the main shareholder in this company is Black Rock. Now explain to me why my german salary paying a german rent benefits private shareholders in NYC ? Rent doubled in ten years...

>Now explain to me why my german salary paying a german rent benefits private shareholders in NYC ? Rent doubled in ten years...

It's simple supply and demand. Your city doesn't allow building many more units even though demand is high and growing; this greatly increases property values, and creates a potential for big profits for investors. A company of private shareholders in NYC sees this investment opportunity and buys properties up so they can reap the profits. You probably also have some relatively weak tenant legal protections, making it easy to raise rents.

If you don't like it, your city should allow more construction. But western cities don't want to do that, because of NIMBYs, "neighborhood character", shitty zoning laws, etc., so we get what we're seeing here.

> '...the reason American healthcare is such a disaster...'

Can you give an example of the sort of regulation making our health systems a disaster?

Like all free market failures, the culprit is regulation. Regulated food, local and weekend markets reduced competition by discouraging and removing small retailers until large supermarket chains remained de facto monopolies.

Those chains must serve very large number of customers so they must focus on produce that is easy to pick, store and sell. Looks good and survives (even gets ripe during) transit. Taste is often secondary.

You wanna fight that? Fight all regulations for small and local producers, even if it sounds like it’s well intended (hygiene, quality standards, subventions). Talk to your representative about it too. Finally, buy local and from smallest producer you can find.

You seriously think that small shops would be competitive if there were no subsidies? No hygiene I could maybe buy, but it goes hand in hand with quality, and there is practically no regulation for that: it's self imposed by the consumer picking pretty produce.

The consumer learns very quickly what they like. Eat a good tomato, you’ll look for one next time. The local fruit shop was even a joke in Seinfeld, I believe.

The closing of the small grocery store and producer can be mostly attributed to regulation.

No. They can be attributed to not being able to compete against big chains despite heavy regulation in favor of small businesses.

Big chains can offer what the average consumer wants in greater variety and cheaper, at more places and longer hours. They can gauge prices, do better marketing, have better stock, and wage price wars. They have more power, and what's the purpose of that if not abusing it?

Less regulation would just mean even worse food and less small shops.

Chains have whole departments dedicated to compliance. They chew through any new regulation you throw at them.

I get my groceries from a tiny neighbor market here in Eastern Europe. Usually from women of surrounding villages. Their main worries are in this order: raising market space fees (these go to the city) and new checks and rules they need to follow.

While I think there may be something to that, I think there's a simpler, more "it's just normal capitalism" explanation:

Making deals with every local small-time producer would be a big pain. Why do that when you can make a single deal with a giant monster of a tomato producer, and sell their tomatoes (especially since as the sibling comment points out, local tomatoes won't be as pretty and as uniform in quality)? There's economies of scale, prices are lower, the supply chain will be simpler, it's all better for the supermarket chain.

Small grocery shops can and will deal with small producers. The fact we are losing both in favor of giant chains is largely due to regulation and subsidies.

Otherwise we’d have plenty of boutique retailers and producers charging more for better quality produce optimized for different factors.

I don't understand what is regulated here, so that it prevents small sellers from being competitive. Is it packaging?

He is complaining about grading of fruit, so that the buyer doesn't have to inspect every single delivery but can instead order X fruit, grade Y, and it will conform to standard.

Nonsense. Like many market failures it is about consumers facing decisions but lack good information to make their purchase decision or need to optimize over too many competing product parameters.

For supermarket produce there isn't a good way to judge product quality before buying. There is some quality improvement with paying more but usually the improvement is very little compared to the price increment. For instance, a supermarket might sell tomatos at 2.99 for regular tomatos and 4.99 for a premium/organic variety. The taste will only marginally differ so that only few people buy premium. This prevents economies of scale for the better product to drive down the price.

Very little about this is about regulation.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com