01/22/07
Reading Paul Jacob this weekend, on the idiocies of regulated tomatoes, I was reminded of something H.L. Mencken wrote:
No one in this world, so far as I know — and I have researched the records for years, and employed agents to help me — has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.
So I'm tempted to interpret the rationale of the Florida Tomato Commission along those lines. It assumes that consumers are stupid. They cannot learn to discriminate properly about tomatoes. Some ugly tomatoes taste better than pretty tomatoes. Yes. Paul Jacob is right. But surely not all. So this government-sponsored tomato cartel prohibits ugly tomatoes.
And thus they ensure a minimum standard. Sure, the tomatoes that come from Florida, year-around, are better than no tomatoes at all, I suppose. To me they taste bland. I tend to buy those sold on the vine, and skip the rest. But it is interesting how the standard set by the commission help the established businessmen (as Jacob asserts) more than the consumers. For, were there no such regulation, it is quite possible that competing tomatoes would be sold, with a variety of standards, and that some of those tomatoes would be better, way better, than what is standard now.
Of course, many consumers would be confused.
But my attitude is, well, forget about the stupid consumers. If a person won't learn how to choose, screw 'm.
I hazard, though, that, were we not protected by cartel builders like the Florida Tomato Commission (isn't Jacob wrong to call the organization, simply, a cartel? — it's a cartel-builder, no?), tomato producers would have to advertise informationally. They might have to provide leaflets (and websites, etc.) explaining how to choose the tastiest, most nutritious tomato.
American consumers are pretty stupid, I admit. And it's easy to conspire against them, so to speak, accommodating their stupidity by setting up stupid rules, like the No Ugly Tomato rule.
But what would consumers be like had they not been treated with contempt by the government? Farmers' jobs might be harder, and they'd have to engage in more marketing, and some people would be turned off from buying tomatoes altogether. Most consumers, though, would learn.
After all, people not unreasonably discriminate in buying MP3 players. Surely they can figure out how to choose tasty tomatoes, too.
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