It sounds like Canadian regulators screwed this up pretty royally. The First Nations counterexample is fairly compelling: farmers able to sell directly to consu

It sounds like Canadian regulators screwed this up pretty royally. The First Nations counterexample is fairly compelling: farmers able to sell directly to consumers from a farmstand. That being said, I am a little tired of authors trying desperately to work an anti-capitalist bent into their pieces where it doesn't fit. Critiquing capitalism is trendy! But calling for market deregulation — which is exactly what the author seems to be calling for with the First Nations example (the Indigenous farmers aren't running socialist collectives where each grows weed according to their ability and to each is given weed according to their needs; they're running weed farming businesses and selling weed for profit) — is hardly a critique of "shareholder capitalism." The problem doesn't seem to be the shareholding — and the author's banal assumption that Indigenous-owned businesses have no shareholders seems a little racist — the problem is Canadian farmers aren't easily able to sell their product due to Canadian regulatory burdens, and are forced into relationships with the few giant wholesalers who are able to comply. I'm sure the farmers' shareholders would love it if the Canadian regulatory burdens were eased, and somehow I don't think it was them lobbying for the regulation in the first place.