France Retirement Age: 60

Abdul Alhazred wrote:

DrMatt wrote:

Abdul Alhazred wrote:

If people aren't buying, they lower the price. Particularly something perishable.
This is true even for a monopoly.

You just convinced me to go look for a CSA.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community- ... griculture

Well, maybe not having food would be a good thing for some of us, for a while. It would certainly create some teeny tiny amount of market pressure.

Speaking of which: Which will sell bottled breathable air first--Pepsico or The Coca-Cola Corporation?

Well, maybe not having food would be a good thing for some of us, for a while. It would certainly create some teeny tiny amount of market pressure.

From such market pressure came the Chinese revolution of 1948. The warlords hoarding the rice failed to respond to market signals. And the revolution brought the price down by increasing the available supply, at least until they had to grow some more.

Meanwhile in the USA in 2012, a monopoly on (for example) bread is limited by the fact that there is other stuff to eat.

Abdul Alhazred wrote:

Well, maybe not having food would be a good thing for some of us, for a while. It would certainly create some teeny tiny amount of market pressure.

From such market pressure came the Chinese revolution of 1948. The warlords hoarding the rice failed to respond to market signals. And the revolution brought the price down by increasing the available supply, at least until they had to grow some more.

Meanwhile in the USA in 2012, a monopoly on (for example) bread is limited by the fact that there is other stuff to eat.

Sold by the same oligopoly. Or not. In a free market, there would be no Farm Bill.

Supply and demand apply even in a command economy.

So hock me no chainik about a "free market".

Cool Hand wrote:

ed wrote:

asthmatic camel wrote:

Consumers decide how much profit is excessive, unless they're served by a monopoly or cartel for essentials. They buy or they don't.

No. Consumers define the fair market price. Profit varies as a function of that.

I have a book for you to read. It's by William Poundstone, who mainly digests what experts have researched and reported and then feeds it to laypersons. It's called Priceless: The Myth of Fairvalue and was first published in 2010, so it's current and relevant. One of the many myths it dispels is the notion from Macroeconomics about the demand curve and how fair markets determine price. Price is entirely artificial, as humans are terrible at assigning values to goods and services. We're good at being sensitive to relative changes, but without referents, we would have no idea how much a loaf of bread is worth. Psychological factors like anchoring play a much greater role in the determination of price than any of us would care to admit, traditional economics be damned.

CH

Sorry, I gave a gross simplification. These guys are right: the greatest explanatory power in looking at relationships that influence sales lies in some sort of relative price measure. Its sorta complicated.

Cool Hand wrote:

Again, without referents, without knowing in advance based on your lifetime of experience how much a loaf of bread is supposed to cost, you would have no idea. No one would. You might have a good intuitive sense that a loaf of bread shouldn't cost as much as a house, but you would suck at assigning an arbitrary quantitative value to it, or even one relative to the price of a house, after assigning some qualitative value to that. We all suck at that. We are very good at sensing changes in the price, however, because we're intuitively sensitive to relative changes, but not to intuiting the appropriate absolute quantitative price.

CH

You could make a TV game show based on that concept!

WildCat wrote:

Cool Hand wrote:

Again, without referents, without knowing in advance based on your lifetime of experience how much a loaf of bread is supposed to cost, you would have no idea. No one would. You might have a good intuitive sense that a loaf of bread shouldn't cost as much as a house, but you would suck at assigning an arbitrary quantitative value to it, or even one relative to the price of a house, after assigning some qualitative value to that. We all suck at that. We are very good at sensing changes in the price, however, because we're intuitively sensitive to relative changes, but not to intuiting the appropriate absolute quantitative price.

CH

You could make a TV game show based on that concept!

But would there be any rhyme or reason to it other than guessing games?

BTW, DrMatt.

Your supposed set-the-price-of-bread conspiracy cannot (or at any rate does not) prevent retailers from marking down overstocks.

I guess that is one problem Communism didn't have. Too much bread. But they still had supply and demand behavior.

Abdul Alhazred wrote:

BTW, DrMatt.

Your supposed set-the-price-of-bread conspiracy cannot (or at any rate does not) prevent retailers from marking down overstocks.

I guess that is one problem Communism didn't have. Too much bread. But they still had supply and demand behavior.

So what exactly is the relationship of the farm bill to Soviet-style agriculture? Spell it out.

DrMatt wrote:

So what exactly is the relationship of the farm bill to Soviet-style agriculture? Spell it out.

Neither one is a "free market", but only one is consistent with having enough to eat.

The closest thing that ever existed in the real world to your straw "free market" is the Soviet era black market.

Abdul Alhazred wrote:

DrMatt wrote:

So what exactly is the relationship of the farm bill to Soviet-style agriculture? Spell it out.

Neither one is a "free market", but only one is consistent with having enough to eat.

The closest thing that ever existed in the real world to your straw "free market" is the Soviet era black market.

The farm bill has nothing at all to do" with "enough to eat".

DrMatt wrote:

The farm bill has nothing at all to do" with "enough to eat".

Beg pardon.

It is consistent with having enough to eat.