- Capitalism and Alternatives -

What controls our limited range of choices?

Posted by: Deep Dad Nine on August 31, 1999 at 13:36:12:

I'd like to here some explanations to the following phenomena:

I'm walking through cereal isle in the grocery store and can't help but notice that 90% of the brands available have conspicuously simular packaging schemes, have nearly identical ingredients, and are sold for exactly the same price (to the penny). Is this pathetic lack of quality and range of choice the result of free enterprise (an unregulated monopoly)? Too much government regulation of the cereal industry? Too much control OF the government BY private interests? Are these exorbitantly priced, half empty, gaudy cardboard boxes of nutrient deficient balls of sugar the result of consumer demand?

“Mmmm…..yummm, some sugar coated shit balls for breakfast! And only $4.00 for a few bowls full! And I love opening it up at home and finding it half empty! What a great deal! Here son, gorge yourself on some processed crap and see if you can work yourself into manic sugar buzz while I get ready for work every morning.”

I’m not just picking on cereal here. It seems obvious to me that many of our key markets in the U.S. suffer from the same problem i.e.

Salesman: “Which piece of shit brand of widget X do you want, sir?”
Consumer: “Uhhhh………da BLUE one.”

Certainly the automobile industry is a case in point, no? How do the Ayn Rand capitalists in this room deal with the obvious suppression of alternative automobile and transportation technologies? How do you explain the complete dominance of the inferior, money sucking, planet killing gas combustion engine since its inception 100 years ago?



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