What is It About Red Fruit and Economics?
---
A while back there was a bit of a brouhaha over an obnoxious market intervention by Florida farmer-bureaucrats over whether a delicious but ugly tomato could be legally shipped outside the state.
Well now we see the reverse phenomenon regarding apples:
Of course, the apple conundrum does not implicate any un-libertarian government interventionism the way the Florida tomato story did. But both stories can make the same point:
What the market does, the market can also undo. In other words, markets are dynamic, and that dynamism is in large part what makes capitalism superior to all other economic models.
The apples are the easier example: The quest for higher profits led some less-competent apple growers to misread the market and presume that consumers valued appearance more than taste. They were wrong. Is there any doubt that either these same or some other subsequent growers will now steer their efforts towards improved taste? Those who don't will make less money or maybe even go out of business. Exactly as it should be.
Compare the tomato incident. Here you have a tomato farmer who came up with a better product, sought the higher profits that follow from better satisfying consumer desires and was succeeding. Until those who could not compete with him stopped trying and opted instead to circumvent the market rather than participate in it fairly.
Two paths to the same outcome: beautiful untasty fruit. But what about the paths from that outcome? They will diverge rather than converge.
The economic path will respond to market forces and eventually put the "delicious" back in "red delicious apples." The political path, meanwhile, is by definition impervious to market forces, indeed was designed to thwart market forces. Which means no tasty tomatoes regardless of how much consumers may want them.
In conclusion: capitalism is yummy, but politicians leave a bad taste in your mouth.
Hat tip to Marginal Revolution.
Well now we see the reverse phenomenon regarding apples:
Who's to blame for the decline of Red Delicious? Everyone, it seems. Consumers were drawn to the eye candy of brilliantly red apples, so supermarket chains paid more for them. Thus, breeders and nurseries patented and propagated the most rubied mutations, or "sports," that they could find, and growers bought them by the millions, knowing that these thick-skinned wonders also would store for ages.Ugly but delicious tomatoes, beautiful but unappetizing apples. Go figure.
"Did they do it because it has less flavor? Obviously not," said Eugene M. Kupferman, a post-harvest specialist at Washington State University's tree fruit research center in Wenatchee, Wash. "They did it because it has better legs and they are getting more money for it."
Of course, the apple conundrum does not implicate any un-libertarian government interventionism the way the Florida tomato story did. But both stories can make the same point:
What the market does, the market can also undo. In other words, markets are dynamic, and that dynamism is in large part what makes capitalism superior to all other economic models.
The apples are the easier example: The quest for higher profits led some less-competent apple growers to misread the market and presume that consumers valued appearance more than taste. They were wrong. Is there any doubt that either these same or some other subsequent growers will now steer their efforts towards improved taste? Those who don't will make less money or maybe even go out of business. Exactly as it should be.
Compare the tomato incident. Here you have a tomato farmer who came up with a better product, sought the higher profits that follow from better satisfying consumer desires and was succeeding. Until those who could not compete with him stopped trying and opted instead to circumvent the market rather than participate in it fairly.
Two paths to the same outcome: beautiful untasty fruit. But what about the paths from that outcome? They will diverge rather than converge.
The economic path will respond to market forces and eventually put the "delicious" back in "red delicious apples." The political path, meanwhile, is by definition impervious to market forces, indeed was designed to thwart market forces. Which means no tasty tomatoes regardless of how much consumers may want them.
In conclusion: capitalism is yummy, but politicians leave a bad taste in your mouth.
Hat tip to Marginal Revolution.
Related Posts (on one page):
- Markets In Everything: Not Quite the Tooth Fairy
- Markets In Everything: The Greatest Invention Since...
- What is It About Red Fruit and Economics?
- You Say "Tomato," I Say "Unconstitutional"
Posted by KipEsquire on
8 August 2005
To comment on this post, please visit the new blogsite.
