Recent searches
Search options
While farmers are angry at the Govt. for changing inheritance tax arrangements for farm land (whose impact is the subject to, shall we say, some disagreement).... farmers should really be angry at:
those who convinced them Brexit was a good idea;
Non-farming investors driving up land prices to store value (hello Mr Dyson);
and the supermarket oligopoly driving farm gate prices down.
Once again they're being used as sock puppets by those with a different agenda....
@ChrisMayLA6 They should start their own coop, to compete with the super market oligopoly.
In these times of green thinking, they should have an enormous marketing advantage when it comes to customers buying directly from the farmers.
yes we have a pretty heathy farmers' market sector, although its difficult to go up against the supermarkets, especially for consumers where price is the big issue - the farmers' market are for the most part a very middle-class/woke sector
@ChrisMayLA6 Ah, yes, that makes sense. The power of economy of scale (or the lack thereof).
I wonder how much of a difference in price there would be between driving to a farm and buying eggs, vs supermarket prices?
In sweden, in order to have clean hands during the recent high inflation era, the distributors were the ones to increase their prices.
The supermarkets (who are owned by the same group as the distributors) could all say, very sweetly and innocently, "we don't increase our
@ChrisMayLA6 margins, it's the distributor who is squeezing us", while conveniently neglecting to mention that they belong to the same group. ;)
Much the same in the UK.... but here we also have the 'problem' of political policy to keep food prices low, but allowing supermarkets to maintain profits, which has seen low wage/zero hours contract dominate much supermarket workforce, while also driving down farm prices... the only people really making money are the big supermarkets investors, everyone else has been curt to the bone - its a classic oligopoly, passing risk/cost downwards
@ChrisMayLA6 This is very interesting. Currently there are lots of political processes involving a close look into IT and if the global IT giants are monopolies or oligopolies.
I wonder why this standard has not been applied to the very few, huge, supermarket chains that dominate every country?
I wonder what the result would be if the same standards of judgments would be applied to supermarket chains as are currently applied to global IT-companies such as Google and Microsoft?
It would be great if they were - here the Competition & Market Authority has conducted a review, and concluded there were some element of oligopoly but stopped short of any enforced disinvestment or forced competition, on the basis that the low prices so engineered, were in the best interest of consumers - taking a shirt term view rather than a longer time view of the health or otherwise of the UK's food system.
@ChrisMayLA6 This is troubling. But a disadvantage of our current democratic system is that it is engineered, from the ground up, to work with _at most_ a 4 years view.
Anything beyond that, does not pay to care about.
Yes, I'd agree - for all its positives democracy usually fails on long-term vision, with some infrequent exceptions.... which might I guess lead us back to reforming how representation works (or on a more pragmatic level, how voting & parties work in different democratic systems)
@ChrisMayLA6 What are those infrequent exceptions? Can we learn anything from them?
In terms of long term thinking, do you think that is a cultural issue? I mean, do you think it could be possible to "educate ourselves" to become more long term overall?
The key long-term exception that would be cited in the UK would, be the formation of the welfare state any the Labour Govt (though in the end with Tory support) during the post-war period - high costly at the time, but as a downpayment on increased property & economic success laid the foundations for the 50s & 60s and to some extent the 70s (although short-termism by then had reasserted itself).
Lesson: you need a major catastrophe to get the long-tern its focus?
@ChrisMayLA6 I think that sounds reasonable. I wonder if there were any more long term plans that happened after WW2?
On a daker note, corona seems to have accelerated surveillance and the abolishment of privacy and freedom of speech in many countries. If not abolishment, at least severe restrictions in some countries.
Yes, with Covid we're back to a balance between public health measures (surveillance, mandatory health measures) & personal freedom.... the freedom to avoid such measures is a but like the 'freedom' to shout 'fire' in a crowded theatre.
@ChrisMayLA6 Hmm, didn't we discuss the fire in the theater argument and agreed to disagree? I have a vague memory, and in case it is what we did, I would like to spare you the repetition, only to end up at the same point. ;)
Just tried to find that exchange but like you I suspect I may have made that remark before - I'll go for consistency rather than repetition 