> Right - starving to death is always an option, nothing is forcing them. Free market at work! The free market is not a welfare system, though it can contribut

> Right - starving to death is always an option, nothing is forcing them. Free market at work! The free market is not a welfare system, though it can contribute a great deal to welfare, by keeping consumer prices down. It can support a welfare system by being sufficiently productive to raise taxes to pay for stuff. Meanwhile, those countries that do not employ a free market are poor across the board. Wealth is only achieved through corruption. That poverty is then blamed on "foreign intervention". Well, fair enough, but if your system can't handle that foreign intervention, it's still inferior. > It's not 1980, that's a fallacy and has been for a long time. By and large, "farmers" are large corporations printing money. Just because they're larger today doesn't mean they are printing money. It's a highly competitive business. Of course a large farm can be a bit more profitable due to economics of scale, but there's always pressure from the bottom, because the threshold to market entry isn't that high. Just try to accept that nothing is wrong with business profits per se. Let's say farming businesses have a 12% profit margin[1]. That's the price you pay for them to take the risk of running the business, and to do so efficiently. The profit margin reflects the real price of that service, just like the price of labor. Absent of any monopolies, it's a fair price. You couldn't get it any cheaper by, say, making the government do it. To the contrary. [1] https://farmdocdaily.illinois.edu/2018/08/operating-profit-margin-benchmarks.html https://farmdocdaily.illinois.edu/2018/08/operating-profit-m...