mistermack wrote:That "Grocer" article is complete bollocks.
How can you compare eras like that? How can you compare the price of grapes, when there was no way of refrigerating them and flying them around the world, like we do now? No refrigerated giant container ships?
People in those days simply didn't eat those items. Even basic things like the price of bread are affected by the technology, and the fossil fuels that enable bulk transport.
Er, the Romans used grapes rather a lot I believe.
Besides, all that technology is capitalism in action. The economies of scale are served by technology which lowers the per-unit labor input and cost, which lowers the end price.
It took days or weeks for one man to plow 40 acres with a mule and a plow, plant by hand, tend and harvest by hand and transport by horse cart. The same time-value of labor now yields hundreds or thousands of acres planted, tended, harvested and transported by the same single individual.
I don't know the exact figures, but never before in the history of mankind has a single acre of cropland been so productive.
That's capitalism at work.
So, the article is correct.
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How many people must Capitalism be failing before it can be declared "not for for purpose"?