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Economies of scale, when viewed from the perspective of a cattle beast in a feed lot are a horrible thing in agriculture. Modern industrial agriculture with it
by worik 5y ago
Economies of scale, when viewed from the perspective of a cattle beast in a feed lot are a horrible thing in agriculture.
Modern industrial agriculture with its expensive inputs, ruination of land, and abuse of live stock is a quite horrifying thing and is impoverishing the people responsible for the base of our food supply.
It is the most efficient in terms of output per input, but not by most other measures.
- s1artibartfast 5y agoBut you don't need to be a monopoly or even a big company to have an awful feedlots, monocrop farming, ect.
- colordrops 5y agoWhat you say is true in theory but not in aggregate. It's no different from any other business in that respect. Look at companies in a field you are familiar with and you will find that the very large ones are a lot more impersonal, ruthlessly efficient, and amoral.
- s1artibartfast 5y agoThat's the huristic I'm pushing back on: Big = bad, efficient = bad, ect. Some problems are indeed exaserbated at scale, others are not. I think this is especially true for the ag industry and the issues mentioned up thread. You can bust up the biggest factory farms into 100 smaller companies, but they would still have the same practices. Same with monocrop farming.
- longwick 5y agoBut at least the concentration of wealth would not occur, and right now wealth = power, which often means anti competitive practices like simply buying competitors.
- s1artibartfast 5y agoI'm not sure that true either. All the same people could own 100 farms as easily as one. They would just be independent companies.
- warglebargle 5y agoif you have 2 big companies they’re “too big to fail” and can better whether lawsuits with massive legal teams, settlement money, pr firms… if you have a thousand smaller companies you can bankrupt 100 and be ok
- s1artibartfast 5y agoWanting to avoid companies that are "too big to fail" is a perfectly valid reason to favor smaller companies. Most of the reasons above are not.
- warglebargle 5y agoa lot of it can be rolled into “diversity is better” IMO - lots of diverse types of leaders, diverse strategies, perspectives, risks, failures, etc… mega large companies don’t give us as much benefit as they’d like us to think… I’d even argue that they’re worst in most ways for 99% of the people involved
- s1artibartfast 5y agoI prefer a more competitive, dynamic, and diverse market for almost all products as well. However, most of this thread is pie in the sky wishful thinking that busting big corps will solve all of societies ills. Attribution of these ills to mega corps often ignores the actual problem and obfuscates the real solutions.
- warglebargle 5y agosure but you also have to consider that big corps often lobby against solutions… busting them up isn’t the sole solution, but it probably helps
- s1artibartfast 5y agoI think it could help with some issues, and perhaps hurt with others. I grew up in a farming community and even mom and pop farms paid into national associations with a strong lobbying arm. on the up side, at least these associations favor policy that is usually good for the industry at large. That said, I think the real solution is making sure that government officials are accountable and not for sale. No amount of big company busting would fix that problem.
- fallingknife 5y agoThat may be, but no politician is stupid enough to be the one who causes food prices to go up.