But the question still stands - are we better off today than we were in 1776, 1876, or 1976? Superior produce can still be purchased at premium prices but the pricing makes it unaffordable for those with modest incomes. Having mass produced corn of an acceptable grade makes it widely affordable and so cheap, that we can export it to countries that can't grow their own corn.7Wannabe5 wrote: ↑Wed Jun 12, 2019 5:06 amPrior to the invention of large scale grain storage and thus the commodities market in Chicago in the 19th century, American farmers sent their goods to market in sacks marked with their own hallmark. You didn't buy a bushel of Grade B Field Corn #2, you bought sacks of a particular corn grown in a particular year from a particular farmer. So, there was no such thing as the universal "price of apples." As soon as any product or service becomes commodified, packaged and processed in a non-differentiated way, the price and the pay and quality level goes down to minimum, and any non-conforming unit of production is shunted to the dumpster. The science of economics demands the existence of uniform products and uniform providers of labor in order to make the math work, and, sadly, our reality is coming more and more to meet the demands of this reductionist philosophy.
In all economic systems there are tradeoffs. So are we better off having unequal pricing, hallmark apples, and an uneven distribution of apples to the general population? Or are we better off having apples that are widely available, of acceptable taste and quality, and priced within reach of even the most modest of salaries? Given people's behavior, there will be intersection of price and quality that is widely acceptable to the general population. There comes a point that an increase in quality no longer justifies an outlay of cash especially when that cash has other demands on it.