Your hypothetical situation is not very hypothetical. We already let food rot to get the benefits from letting it rot. Accounting for the whole production proce

Your hypothetical situation is not very hypothetical. We already let food rot to get the benefits from letting it rot. Accounting for the whole production process we throw away 1.3 billion tons per year.[0] In Before the wall came down I see a supermarket in East Germany where products in the process of expiring got new price tags 2 or 3 times. But in the west for as far as I know we just put the vegetables and the fruits on display, people can pay what it says on the label, and the rest is all thrown away, every day, all of it. If food doesn't fit the high standards set in that scheme is it thrown away even before it goes there. Then, much of the food that does get sold expires before it is eaten. To simplify: The supermarket has to guess if you are going to buy the strawberries. If you chose beans in stead the strawberries go in the bin. The supermarket will try sell you the strawberries a few more times but eventually they will just remove them from the assortment and a scale down of the strawberry production will follow. [0] - http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/74192/icode/ http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/74192/icode/