5 ms·

Or you can buy something else and the company can go bust.

by jamespo 12y ago

pavlov 12y ago
Still, you can only buy something else within the range of options on the market. Ideally companies adjust their product lines based on customer demand. In reality it's mostly determined by other factors like supply chain, internal politics, competitor envy, random advice from consultants, need to meet quarterly growth goals, etc. For example, high-fructose corn syrup has become a major ingredient of many American food products within the past 20+ years. That didn't happen because of consumer demand, and consumers don't have an easy way to vote against it.
- maxerickson 12y ago
  Consumers could have demanded products without corn syrup in them. It turns out they don't care. If people did care, those other factors probably would have had to take a back seat to consumer demand. So I don't think you can say that it was irrelevant to the rise of HFCS. (You can argue that people are ill informed and blah blah blah, but that's still them not caring enough to demand whatever it is you think they should be more informed about)
  - TheOtherHobbes 12y ago
    People aren't just ill-informed - they live under a perpetual onslaught of advertising. Try taking away the advertising if you want to give people a free choice. Or balance it with an equivalent level of glossy but fact-based media persuasion about the true effects of HFCS, smoking, etc.
    - maxerickson 12y ago
      I don't understand what advertising has to do with HFCS. Sure, Coke and Pepsi blast ads all the time, but do the arithmetic, they save a couple cents using HFCS over cane sugar. They aren't advertising to get people to accept HFCS, they are advertising to increase consumption of their sugared drinks. If there was reasonably widespread resistance to HFCS they would just switch. (The arithmetic: there's about 1 pound of sugar in a 12 pack of coke. That's ~$0.50 of cost, max: http://www.sugaralliance.org/us-sugar-prices/ http://www.sugaralliance.org/us-sugar-prices/. HFCS saves a lot of that cost, ~$0.40 of it: http://www.cornnaturally.com/pdf/hfcs-in-the-us.pdf http://www.cornnaturally.com/pdf/hfcs-in-the-us.pdf . So a typical can of soda could use cane sugar for ~$0.03. Note that I've picked a hostile price for cane sugar.)
  - maxerickson 12y ago
    A similar situation: http://www.france24.com/en/20150218-nestle-usa-strips-artificial-bits-chocolate-candy/ http://www.france24.com/en/20150218-nestle-usa-strips-artifi...
- icebraining 12y ago
  For example, high-fructose corn syrup has become a major ingredient of many American food products within the past 20+ years. That didn't happen because of consumer demand, and consumers don't have an easy way to vote against it. That's a pretty bad example, since that was in good part a result of the action of elected governments that have kept the price of sugar way above the market price, through tariffs, quotas and subsidies. I suppose it's true that consumers don't have an easy way to vote against it, but it is a result of the US' "democratic" process. On a related note, there was a recent Econtalk episode with Daniel Sumner, professor of Agricultural and Resource Economics at University of California, on that subject: http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2015/02/daniel_sumner_o.html http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2015/02/daniel_sumner_o.htm...
  - DanBC 12y ago
    Don't the scare quote you chose to use around democracy make you think that actually HFCS is a good example and that everyday people actually have very little power to change the way sugar and HFCS is regulated?
    - icebraining 12y ago
      I think it's a bad example of a result of the type of factors that pavlov listed (supply chain, internal politics, competitor envy, random advice from consultants, need to meet quarterly growth goals, etc). Legal restrictions in the marketplace are categorically different from internal company policies, and the lack of power that people have changing the former does not imply a lack of power changing or overriding the latter.

Or you can buy something else and the company can go bust.

by jamespo 12y ago

Or you can buy something else and the company can go bust.

Still, you can only buy something else within the range of options on the market. Ideally companies adjust their product lines based on customer demand. In reality it's mostly determined by other factors like supply chain, internal politics, competitor envy, random advice from consultants, need to meet quarterly growth goals, etc. For example, high-fructose corn syrup has become a major ingredient of many American food products within the past 20+ years. That didn't happen because of consumer demand, and consumers don't have an easy way to vote against it.

maxerickson 12y ago
Consumers could have demanded products without corn syrup in them. It turns out they don't care. If people did care, those other factors probably would have had to take a back seat to consumer demand. So I don't think you can say that it was irrelevant to the rise of HFCS. (You can argue that people are ill informed and blah blah blah, but that's still them not caring enough to demand whatever it is you think they should be more informed about)
- TheOtherHobbes 12y ago
  People aren't just ill-informed - they live under a perpetual onslaught of advertising. Try taking away the advertising if you want to give people a free choice. Or balance it with an equivalent level of glossy but fact-based media persuasion about the true effects of HFCS, smoking, etc.
  - maxerickson 12y ago
    I don't understand what advertising has to do with HFCS. Sure, Coke and Pepsi blast ads all the time, but do the arithmetic, they save a couple cents using HFCS over cane sugar. They aren't advertising to get people to accept HFCS, they are advertising to increase consumption of their sugared drinks. If there was reasonably widespread resistance to HFCS they would just switch. (The arithmetic: there's about 1 pound of sugar in a 12 pack of coke. That's ~$0.50 of cost, max: http://www.sugaralliance.org/us-sugar-prices/ http://www.sugaralliance.org/us-sugar-prices/. HFCS saves a lot of that cost, ~$0.40 of it: http://www.cornnaturally.com/pdf/hfcs-in-the-us.pdf http://www.cornnaturally.com/pdf/hfcs-in-the-us.pdf . So a typical can of soda could use cane sugar for ~$0.03. Note that I've picked a hostile price for cane sugar.)
- maxerickson 12y ago
  A similar situation: http://www.france24.com/en/20150218-nestle-usa-strips-artificial-bits-chocolate-candy/ http://www.france24.com/en/20150218-nestle-usa-strips-artifi...
icebraining 12y ago
For example, high-fructose corn syrup has become a major ingredient of many American food products within the past 20+ years. That didn't happen because of consumer demand, and consumers don't have an easy way to vote against it. That's a pretty bad example, since that was in good part a result of the action of elected governments that have kept the price of sugar way above the market price, through tariffs, quotas and subsidies. I suppose it's true that consumers don't have an easy way to vote against it, but it is a result of the US' "democratic" process. On a related note, there was a recent Econtalk episode with Daniel Sumner, professor of Agricultural and Resource Economics at University of California, on that subject: http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2015/02/daniel_sumner_o.html http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2015/02/daniel_sumner_o.htm...
- DanBC 12y ago
  Don't the scare quote you chose to use around democracy make you think that actually HFCS is a good example and that everyday people actually have very little power to change the way sugar and HFCS is regulated?
  - icebraining 12y ago
    I think it's a bad example of a result of the type of factors that pavlov listed (supply chain, internal politics, competitor envy, random advice from consultants, need to meet quarterly growth goals, etc). Legal restrictions in the marketplace are categorically different from internal company policies, and the lack of power that people have changing the former does not imply a lack of power changing or overriding the latter.