this post was submitted on 31 Aug 2023
129 points (87.3% liked)
Asklemmy
43963 readers
2379 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
OP's comment isn't directly exclusive with stopping subsidies, though. I could agree with not subsidising corn but not having to regulate a fairly harmless product.
A good example is Crisco, a 100% transfat cooking oil that corporations pushed for decades.
I think government should be a strong regulator in terms of breaking up monopolies. I also agree that the subsidies impact the free market. It's a bit of a complicated subject because price of food being volatile has often led to revolutions in the past.
So governments have a lot of incentive to subsidize food staples like corn or dairy. Without the subsidies we may see a sharp increase in inflation, at least temporarily. And whichever administration carries this out is virtually guaranteed to lose the next election.
Perhaps a better solution is instead of subsidies, we have a sort of basic command economy for staples while still allowing a private market for luxury food items. Not sure. Haven't thought about this much.
I don't like subsidies because groups that get fat off government's teat end up buying up our politicians and we start looking more like China where private & state power become intertwined. But maybe it's a necessary evil when it comes to food, I'm not sure.