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Comment by _heimdall | Hacker News Reader

> We do not have true free market in the US

Totally agree there. To me that's a problem, but I know for many they see that as a good thing.

> When all grocery stores jack up prices, what choice do people have?

A rather surprising fact about food, it doesn't just come from grocery stores. Farmers markets, gardening, hunting, raising chickens, etc are absolutely options.

Almost all of human history was devoid of grocery stores entirely. Local markets are a different story, but then you are often dealing with people from your community and not massive corporations that don't know who you are and only care about profit.

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> Farmers markets, gardening, hunting, raising chickens, etc are absolutely options.

You’ve never seriously tried those things.

Farmers market prices? Get out.

Gardening? The time investment to keep a garden large enough to make a significant dent in one’s grocery bill is prohibitive.

Have fun having your life revolve around raising livestock.

Hunting, maybe if you live near public game lands, have the tools and desire to butcher your own meat.

In all cases the economies of scale in industrial farming trumps local operations.

We may just live in very different places. When I lived in Seattle farmers market prices were crazy. Living in a different part of the country and in a part of town closer to farmers, our prices are much better. We also use a local CSA, $20 per week for a decent amount of whatever is in season.

I also have a pretty large garden, we don't spend all that much time on it. We don't plant as intensively as most people think about. We don't till and keep the dirt bare, its more of a food forest at this point but we do still plant annual produce in rows in some areas. We spend maybe 3 hours per week total in the garden during the summer.

Raising livestock doesn't mean your life has to revolve around them, its all up to how you choose to raise them and what you raise.

> In all cases the economies of scale in industrial farming trumps local operations.

Have you ever been to an industrial farm, feed lot, chicken house, or slaughterhouse? If not I'd hold judgement on the value of that scale until you see how the animals are actually raised and treated. I'd extend that to crop fields as well, though its harder to empathize with what a plant when they're so different from us.

In totality, we have choices. But that does not account for individual circumstances, and ignores the way that work life in the US has shaped people's lives. Not everyone has the luxury of being able to raise chickens, hunt for food, spend their time and money at farmer's markets, etc. Capitalism in America is very much designed to keep people from having time or money or ability to actually change their circumstances.

What you're describing is effectively a form of slavery.

I very much agree with how you describe our system. Though I would see that as the fundamental problem to fix, something like grocery stores acting like greedy corporations is a tiny, distracting problem when its part of a system that has hints of slavery.

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