I'm seeing a resurgence of competition on quality too. I personally purchase organic grass fed glass bottled milk from local farms. Sounds snobby and onerous, but it's available at any Whole Foods.
Quality food is truly worth it. Milk should not be a commodity. I know it's a bit more expensive, but I promise eating quality reduces the need for quantity.
Our bodies are starving on this poorly made junk commodity food.
"Between 1960 and 1998, the average share of disposable personal income spent on total food by Americans, on average, fell from 17.0 to 10.1 percent, driven by a declining share of income spent on food at home."
In 2019, it was 9.5%, with modest decreases on spending for food at home and increases in spending on food away from home.
I think you mean if you are willing to buy it regularly without sampling. We bought a few brands prior to our current buying pattern.
I am not willing to buy milk without sampling. Currently we have two that we like. Basically, one has extra fat added, but the other comes in a reusable (literally return for reuse) glass bottle. If only I could get both.
Even high quality milk is a commodity although a niche commodity.
Think of it this way. There is an art piece that is being produced millions of times and people even buy it multiple times. It's a commodity because it's consistent. It's always the same.
If every art work was different then it wouldn't be a commodity.
The same applies to specific brands. They are a niche commodity. Each pack of milk is identical. The amount of milk you buy is the same in each pack (within tolerances of course). You don't care which cow ended up producing the milk. If each pack of milk was labeled with the cow it came from and each pack had a different quantity of milk it wouldn't be a commodity.
I'm not incredulous, I have no doubt that someone might have specific preferences for milk.
I'm arguing that 'commodity' isn't a bad word, because it means 'consistent' and similar, not 'low quality', as your up thread comment implies.
If you don't investigate every package, you are taking commoditization for granted, there's trust that it will be what it is supposed to be. That's it's done at the level of the individual farm is all the better, they are able to deliver commercial volumes to Whole Foods with consistent (predictable) quality.
No, it isn't. The price is never the problem. It's like saying that when someone stabs you only the pain is the problem. The problem is that you are wounded, not that you are in pain which is just a symptom.
Get this into your head. The price is just a convenient fiction that lets us organize efficiently. If the price is too low then that means other competitors are working far more efficiently than you do. If the price is too high it means that the market isn't efficient enough. The price is just the messenger, it's a whisteblower that only speaks the truth. If you shut it up, it's like wearing a blindfold. You have gained nothing. There is also a limit to how efficient a market can be, if your price limit is so low that it's not physically possible to be efficient enough to even enter the market you can expect supply to shrink. If you put a price minimum then you allow inefficiency to creep in because you mandate that being efficient below a certain point is illegal.
How does this reflect physical reality (yes, the market isn't physical reality, it's just information that is used to organize physical reality)? Physical reality tells us that we have too much milk. The excess milk has to be consumed or production has to be reduced. You have to do either of these things.
> I think we’ve generally agreed that slavery is morally wrong and people should be paid for their work.
This is a non sequitur? Slaves are all, without exception, paid for their work. In most cases, though with some exceptions, they're paid at least partially in currency.
> Slaves are all, without exception, paid for their work.
My understanding of slavery and “[being] paid” is substantially different than yours.
> In most cases, though with some exceptions, they're paid at least partially in currency.
I’m not sure this is true either, but contributing food and housing for slaves is not in any sense paying them, but maintaining them as property, since food and housing is a necessary expense (they wouldn’t be functional slaves otherwise). Its more akin to maintenance on machines.
I think what you’re getting at is that while their labor is compelled, they are somehow compensated for it. Is that a fair statement of your assertion?
> I’m not sure this is true either, but contributing food and housing for slaves is not in any sense paying them, but maintaining them as property, since food and housing is a necessary expense (they wouldn’t be functional slaves otherwise). Its more akin to maintenance on machines.
I can most fully agree with that last sentence. It's very much like maintenance on machines. But I don't think employers see as much difference between labor wages and machine maintenance as you do.
Certainly food and housing are necessary expenses, but there's a lot of room for interpretation there. You can make a business judgment about how well to feed or house your slaves -- or particular favored slaves -- in much the same way that one company might differ with another company over how much to invest in employee morale.
> I think what you’re getting at is that while their labor is compelled, they are somehow compensated for it.
It's a little more complex. Slaves can be compensated in numerous ways; one very common way in the American South was to allow them to practice sharecropping. That would be labor that was not compelled, but from which the slave was entitled to keep some of the gains, whether for direct consumption or commercial sale. (As opposed to ordinary labor, which definitely was compelled and all of the gains of which went to the landowner.)
This model extended to slaves who could provide skilled labor. Their labor was in general not compelled; they often worked as independent contractors, dealing with customers directly. Like the sharecroppers, they were entitled to keep a portion of their earnings, and the rest went to their owner.
---
An ordinary slave has some money in his pocket. It might not be very much, or it might be quite a lot -- a slave who administrates a complex organization (presumably for his master the owner of the organization) is a person of much higher status and wealth than peasants have, and in Mamluk Turkey the sultan was, technically, a slave. [1] Slavery isn't about wages or lack of wages.
Slaves are generally distinctive in three ways:
- Slaves are not free to leave.
- A slave's owner has the right to compel their labor by various means, even if that right is not exercised. (And as a corollary, an owner has the right to visit certain punishments on a slave for pretty much whatever reason.)
- If a slave commits a crime, the slave's owner is legally responsible for that crime.
Not all three are required; obviously the Chinese emperor would not be responsible for a crime committed by a eunuch. But these characteristics are much more typical of slaves than unpaid labor is. (Someone to whom only the first point applies is, for reasons not entirely clear to me, called "serf" rather than "slave".)
[1] The Mamluks were a caste of steppe nomads captured in slave raids, and constituted the military. To be eligible to be sultan, you had to be one of them, and you had to have been born free on the steppe, captured, and enslaved -- children of Mamluks inherited the caste status, but those born into slavery were not eligible to rule.
> But I don't think employers see as much difference between labor wages and machine maintenance as you do.
Of course they do. When labor is voluntary, the wage is agreed upon by all parties to the transaction. When labor is not voluntary then only the compelling party need agree.
> You can make a business judgment about how well to feed or house your slaves -- or particular favored slaves -- in much the same way that one company might differ with another company over how much to invest in employee morale.
This is like saying a rapist can choose to give their victim jewelry just like a husband can choose to give his wife jewelry. It ignores all essential differences in order to make a comparison that doesn’t exist.
> Slaves can be compensated in numerous ways; one very common way in the American South was to allow them to practice sharecropping. That would be labor that was not compelled, but from which the slave was entitled to keep some of the gains, whether for direct consumption or commercial sale. (As opposed to ordinary labor, which definitely was compelled and all of the gains of which went to the landowner.)
This model extended to slaves who could provide skilled labor. Their labor was in general not compelled; they often worked as independent contractors, dealing with customers directly. Like the sharecroppers, they were entitled to keep a portion of their earnings, and the rest went to their owner.
I’m aware of sharecropping and manumission but I think you’re contradicting yourself when you assert that the slave’s labor was not compelled. It was always subject to compulsion, meaning it was compelled in fact even if it may have taken the form of noncompulsory labor. The slave was still subject to compulsion. There was no option for the slave to decline the arrangement and be free from consequences imposed by the slave owner. A man steals my TV from my house, he’s a thief and he stole from me. Observing that he did not also steal my toaster is irrelevant.
> But these characteristics are much more typical of slaves than unpaid labor is.
You’re neglecting that “compulsory labor” is unpaid labor. You’re asserting a distinction without a difference.
> A man steals my TV from my house, he’s a thief and he stole from me. Observing that he did not also steal my toaster is irrelevant.
A man works as a blacksmith, manufacturing items as demanded by customers and, in every case, exchanging them for cash, which he keeps. Saying his labor is unpaid is false.
It is true because payment is something that one receives as part of an agreement. Slaves, by definition, aren’t able to agree to things unless their owner also agrees.
> Slavery is a legal status, not a salary status.
Correct. Salary is a concept that only applies to free men.
can't speak for gruez, but a couple off the top of my head:
-set standards that all members abide by, potentially bypassing "tragedy of the commons'-style coordination problems
-share information which, in a more cutthroat environment, would be considered "trade secrets".
Not sure how these would apply to the dairy industry specifically; it just seems overly broad to say that price fixing is the only plausible form of cooperation.
Look into the effects of your ideas, and you'll see them wind up in rising prices. Your first example, excluding industry members who don't meet a particular standard, is one of the most typical forms of "colluding to raise prices" you could possibly think of, often expressed in the form of professional certification.
The only things an economic organization can do are raise prices and lower costs. For a labor union, costs are labor; from the consumer end the workers' "lower costs" mean less work is being done, which shows up as higher prices for consumers.
By arguing from the standpoint of raising or lowering prices you're being very reductive. Doctors form trade associations too, and yes the prices for a certified doctor are much higher, but the quality of care is also standardized and usually higher to match. OP wasn't making the point that industry associations don't raise prices. OP was pointing out that most industry associations are formed to try to make things better. And that might result in increased prices, but that's a side-effect and not the goal.
Setting standards and price fixing are different things. You can have fair competition within a marketplace with rules and standards. Price fixing is when all sellers agree to not sell below a certain price, which is a problem pretty much regardless of a marketplace's rules.
