This Note argues that the current framework in antitrust—specifically its pegging competition to “consumer welfare,” defined as short-term price effects—is unequipped to capture the architecture of market power in the modern economy
Ever since the disastrous law and economics movement took over in the 1970s, anti-trust has been about low consumer prices. Basically, and simplifying quite a bit, it didn’t matter how big a corporation got, whether they were part of an oligarchical or monopolistic market structure, as long as they could prove their prices weren’t extorting consumers, it was all good.
In Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox, she basically criticizes that economic perspective as permitting anti-competitive practices, consolidation of market power, and harm to consumers as a consequence.
Amazon, after all, rose to prominence by legitimately offering consumers lower prices on books, basically by reducing distribution costs and not owning any physical stores. It passed the savings onto consumers. So, there’s nothing inherently wrong with offering lower prices on stuff.
The problem, according to Khan, is that Amazon has continued to offer lower prices to consumers as it grew larger and larger and into the massive platform it is today…most of the time. Some of those lower prices may have been legitimately obtained…but the FTC is suing Amazon because it has employed its monopoly to price competitors and then shift to charging consumers more.
Under the old anti-trust paradigm, low consumer prices were all that mattered. Under Lina Khan, market structure and consumer prices matter. A monopoly that maintains low prices is as anti-competitive as any monopoly, and negatively impacts our economy.
So, it’s not so much that anti trust has been given teeth, but that, under Khan’s leadership, the FTC is much more likely to attempt the bite. And she started with Amazon, which is a bold move.
It’s not inherently bad, at least from the user’s perspective, but Windows Defender will make you click “more info” or something before giving you the “run anyways” button since it thinks it’s a risk. I’ve never gotten a virus doing this, though
On MacOs it’s so stupid. Instead of double-clicking on the new program to open it, you need to right-click and hit “Open” from the drop down menu. Only then does it even give you the option to open the program anyway.
The thing is that the botanical definition of berries doesn’t match perfectly with the everyday definition. That doesn’t make the latter wrong, it just has other applications
Come up with an everyday definition for berry that includes strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries but excludes grapes, figs, and cherry tomatoes without identifying any particular fruit by name.
I mean, it isn’t meaningless, just culturally subjective and lacking a rigerous definition. Berries are a set of specific fruit, which fruit being included being determined by the culture in question base on percieved similarities and historic uses. We use it to quickly bring up the specific group and whatever vague characteristics we percieve them to share.
So, the definition for berries that you seek is simply “the fruit people you’re interested in would point at and identify as a berry”, which is a vague definition and not rigerous at all, but most people would in fact think of the same thing you do if you say “I put berries on top of my cake”. If I ask my wife “hey, on your way home swing by the store and buy some berries, any type will do”, she will not bring a watermelon. She in fact will buy what we both agree are berries, and so the word has useful meaning.
You’ll find most classifications humans have do this too. The real world is really good at refusing to fit into the neat boxes we made to classify it and the things in it, and yet we can still use them fine enough as long as we don’t get lost in semantics and wondering if a hot dog is a sandwich or cereal soup.
I could try to but I don’t need to. The fact that you could easily name some fruits that aren’t berries is proof enough that you have a concept of what a berry is and what isn’t. Coming up with a definition would be the next step.
So I agree that “definition” is the wrong word. I should have said “concept”. Besides: what’s wrong with definitions that are just a list of elements?
I mean personally I always thought it was fucking stupid that a strawberry is the same kind of thing as a blueberry but a grape isn’t. Apparently Iceland agrees.
It’s all a social construct. It exists because and as long as we all agree on it. So it’s flexible and not set in stone, nor scientifically falsifiable
Yeah, it’s like the whole “tomatoes are actually a fruit” thing. So are zucchinis and eggplants, but nobody ever brings that up. It’s always tomatoes.
There’s a botanical definition and a culinary definition. So, that doesn’t mean that somebody who calls a tomato a vegetable is wrong. And don’t put any tomatoes in my fruit salad!
Vegetable is also exclusively a culinary definition. Vegetables are essentially any edible plant structure that are not sweet and aren’t the seeds directly (which are grains or nuts). Typically vegetables are flowers, leaves, stems, or roots, but some non-sweet fruits like cucumbers, peppers, and green beans are also squarely in the vegetable category despite definitely being fruits, no reason they can’t be both.
Carrots, corn, and peas all poke holes in that definition. It’s a culinary definition but also an arbitrary and subjective one, trying to define rules just makes it more ridiculous.
And the concept of a vegetable varies culturally. I live in Germany and I consider mais vegetables (it feels weird to call it corn in this context since other grains aren’t). In Romania (and elsewhere I guess) potatoes are a vegetable which they aren’t for me.
IDK…you have some pretty strong hydrochloric acid in your stomach that’s not dissolving you, but im pretty sure it would melt you if i dipped you in a vat of it.
I once told my cousin that eventually your fingers fall off and you grow in your adult fingers. I told him like how his dad(physical laborer) has big hands/ fingers eventually his would be like that. He believed me but asked my other cousin when he got home who just confirmed it to him. Now we both are kinda jerks maybe but this comic could totally happen.
Because you are designed to seek out salt and sugar as a survival trait; then decided to mass produce it and put it into everything. Now your tastebuds have been ruined, even the standard apple/banana has been genetically modified to have more sugar
iirc the modern banana is actually a less flavorful variety than centuries past, but not for selective breeding reasons. The more popular variety, the Gros Michel, was susceptible to a certain fungus that wiped it out by the 60s. Those apparently tasted closer to the artificial banana flavoring that is still used today and in fact are what that flavoring was based on (albeit probably quite a bit more sugary and concentrated since it’s still a candy flavoring).
And then you have other produce like apples and tomatoes being bred for size and yield, since that will both net more profit and feed more people. This often necessarily means that the produce will lose flavor in the process, as well as nutritional value by weight since the size/yield increase is mostly just the crop taking up more water. (I think the genetic modification you mentioned is in some part meant to correct that inverse relationship between yield and nutritional density, but I’d have to read up more on the subject.)
So I think you can just as much argue that it’s not our tastebuds being ruined so much as produce itself being considerably less appealing to them.
You can buy Gros Michel bananas still you just have to put in some effort. If you are in the USA and have the cash the Miami Fruit Co ships them when they grow them. I haven’t checked but I believe they are in banana season.
Like many other cultures, bananas and apples were selectively reproduced to obtain fruits with more to eat. Corn, carrots, every single kale and cabbage, potatoes, oranges and even strawberries can go into this basket.
The wild banana has almost nothing to eat, being filled with large seeds and we can still find wild apples, by nature very tart but still edible. Every single cereal we plant and harvest today was originally nothing more than a wild grass.
But to call the work of millenia and who knows how many generations of farmers genetic modifications is a bit over the top.
GMOs are very recent introductions and normally for obtaining pest, drought or disease (more) resistant plants.
The wild banana has almost nothing to eat, being filled with large seeds and we can still find wild apples, by nature very tart but still edible. Every single cereal we plant and harvest today was originally nothing more than a wild grass.
I cannot help thinking about the first proto-human that started munching on the tips of wild grass.
“Hey Unk, check out Krug over there, chewin on the grass. That shit’s messed up.”
Our ancestors were primarily leaf eaters, so moving to grass wouldn’t be that unusual. But let’s picture the first proto-human that decided to go for the carcass of another animal, either killed by a predator or by fire or lightning. That would have been an event.
If we are to go back far enough, we are bound to find an ancestor mostly herbivore. On that level, going for the scenario I mentioned would have been some event.
Selective breeding increases the frequency of a given set of genes, already present in a species, in order to better manifest specific, more advantageous - either nature or human chosen - traits.
Random mutations can occur when biological reproduction happens but unless extreme and radical - which often prove fatal for the offspring - are not relevant for the species in the immediate.
These principles are applicable to both plants and animals.
Now grafting takes a part of one plant - usually a small branch - uses another plant to provide the root system - usually something that grows much faster than the graft - and this process multiplies asexually the plant from which the branch was oroginally cut. No genes are carried over between the two plants.
This is valid to get a bunch of trees out of a single one in a very short time but it will not introduce new genes into the crop.
Quince trees are often used as root stock to graft other trees, like pear and apple. If the seeds from those grafted trees were to be sprouted, planted and nurtured to maturity, apples or pears would grow but of completely new varieties. The quince trees used to provide the root for grafting would provide zero genes to the new varieties.
Can you expand on why you consider grafting as a tool for genetic manipulation?
Last time I was taught about biology, selective breeding was a process through which, over a long period of time, individuals with favorable traits were multiplied in order to increase the prevalence of such traits.
The genes were already introduced, hence, no modification. Already existing characteristics were allowed to further express and refine.
Genetic modification, to my understanding, implies introducing genetic information into the genome of an organism to produce another with traits previously completely absent in the species.
Selection vs manipulation.
I’ll concede there are a few cases where the lines blurr, like the golden rice, where a gene that codified the production of vitamin A in the grain was/is already inactive or so receassive, in order to have it express again would require gene manipulation but I think a selective production program was put forward in an attempt to bring out that gene again.
I think you two have different images in your minds. You say “genetically modify” as in “modify the food through choosing which genes are to prevail”, while the other means “modify genes directly to affect the food”, and in that sense selective breeding isn’t GMO because no genes have been modified, but rather encouraged. You modify the genetic structure of future generations through natural means, not the organism directly.
Don’t know what scientists say, I just see the other comment downvoted when they have a fair point.
The problem is I have so many tabs that I’ll never open again either. Eventually I close a window to start fresh whatever the purpose of that window was for.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s great that Disney via the government has stopped fucking us out of our culture. But we’re talking about 100+ year old cartoons. So yeah, Disney won.
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