Feds Shake Down Farmer For Free Raisins

This is beyond ridiculous. The demand to keep the prices, at a certain rate, goes to the point where the government forces raisin farmers to give up their crops for free. The government literally gives the farmers nothing for their raisins, all in order to keep the price at a certain level. This is where I don't understand folks wanting an invisible hand to control the market, when the free market can bring prices down. It's literally common sense.

What's even more asinine is the fact the government isn't even paying them for the crops. In fact, now the government wants this farmer to pay them plus give back roughly 4 years worth of crops to them. Is this truly the bullying tactics that folks want in their economy? This is why I continue to fight for a freer market, forget these bully antics, it's just not working.

 

OK, Big Government fans. What possible defense is there for this one?

 

Progressive fascists LOVE this sort of Big Fed intervention / market manipulating stuff.....so they can scream
OMG....SEE...the free market doesn't work!!

 

What right does that farmer have to keep raisins for himself when there are other, less fortunate (maybe even oppressed) folks that have been disenfranchised from being able to obtain cheap (raisins)? It's the moral duty of the government to take those raisins and get some fines as icing on the cake. Without the marvelous government involved in setting prices who knows what horrible catastrophe could arise in the raisin industry?

 

Time to trot out one of my old sigs...

"unfairness" and "inequity" are inherent byproducts of individual natural rights and liberty...
to "fix" the former, progressives must trample all over the latter.

 

It's the raisin growers 'Raisin Administrative Committee' own rules that they negotiated with Dept Of Agriculture to enforce ... If you want to play a hand of poker you have to pay the ante. If you want to join the raisin growers game you need to play by their rules. Far from some progressive evil big government plot. Breitbart is for idiots.


quoted from - http://www.ams.usda.gov/AMSv1.0/ams...e=TemplateN&page=FVMarketingOrderIndexRaisins

The Raisin Administrative Committee is comprised of 35 members representing producers; 10 members representing handlers of varying sizes; 1 member representing the Raisin Bargaining Association (RBA); and 1 public member. Members serve 2-year terms of office that begin on May 1. Producer and handler members are nominated at meetings and by mail ballots.

 

Remember the raisin farmer didn't build that.

 

I was hoping I wouldn't have to explain it to any of you, but you can bet its not 47 dope smoking free love commie hippies controlling the committee..Sunmaid and DelMonte are definitely protecting their commodity just like say... ExxonMobile, Conoco & Chevron would ream you for trying to supply state police cruiser fleets with 1$/gallon gasoline contracts. You should be cheering for big business on this one, right? Breitbart is for idiots.

 

The law is the law; if they didn't agree with it, they should have worked using the system to change the laws to their liking; in the meantime they should have complied until the laws were changed. I don't like the amount of water taxes assessed to me, but the law say's i have to pay it, so I do. I'm working within the system to try to get the laws on water taxation changed. Its what they should have done.

 

I too was hoping not to have to explain it to "common good" state collectivists (progressives)....again.

How does any of that occur WITHOUT your beloved and REQUIRED coercive central planners being receptive to special interest lobbyists?

It is not "Big Industry" who have the guns.

 

Your "coercive central planners" are RAC, DOA is only enforcement.

Check it out..Sunmaid has so many board members they have their own code designation lol

http://www.raisins.org/index.php/members/committee-members

 

List the armed industries who compel me...by law and threats of imprisonment...to comply with their agendas.

 

True, I backed off that unevidenced accusation (not before you got your reply in, sorry)... but RAC does make the rules.. DOA is enforcement of them. See OP, fines, not imprisonment.

 

Law doesn't automatically make it justifiable. If there is a way to lower the cost of said good, nothing should prevent it. The problem is, the amount of inflation that is currently occurring, the farmers want to charge more for their goods, so they can get more money for it. So those farmers who over produce have to give up their produce for nothing, all because the committee and the Department of Agriculture want to control the price of raisins. It's absurd.

Small farmers are losing money everyday, the price of produce continues to go up, and the big farmers are squashing all of the small farmers out of the market. Then, folks wonder why it costs so much for their produce at the grocery store, it's because of stuff like this. That's the whole point of this thread. In a free market, there are no price controls. The producers charge what they feel is the best price for the goods they produce. Then it's up to the consumer to determine if the price is reasonable or not. That's the idea of a living & breathing economy. I don't need an invisible hand to tell me what the price of something should be, I can easily determine it myself.

 

But, we NEED those Raisins! How else am I going to eat my raisins after the nuclear war?

 

Granted, if you don't feel that the regulations make it justifiable, then work to get them changed. But because you don't agree with the regulations/laws doesn't mean you can just ignore them due to the consequences.

 

Well, let me see...um, prices have to stay at "acceptable" levels otherwise there will be "price gouging" and "exploitation".

 

What a servile mentality. If you had been in charge during the colonial days, we'd still be living under English rule.

 

So you argue that it's immoral to violate a legislative or administrative decree, which you conflate with "the law"?

 

And Rosa Parks would be sitting in the back of the bus. That criminal! She should have worked to change the law, not violated it, thus making a victim of those good, law abiding white folk.

 

It's not a regulation. This is a group of folks who decided 'Hey, I want to be able to charge X amount of money for raisins. In order to do that, I need to get the government involved so I can ensure that only a certain amount of raisins is on the market. That way, I can create a false illusion that I have to charge you more for the good because there isn't enough to go around'. This isn't a needed regulation, this is an unneeded regulation that creates an imbalance in the normal supply & demand philosophy.

Again, you're missing the entire premise of this thread. This thread has little to do with the overall context of the regulation, what it deals with is the difference between government regulation & the free market. If there was a free market, then the price of raisins would go down. Not only that, we'd may even see the price of grapes go down, considering that's how raisins are created. So, inadvertently, this could be creating an artificial bubble of prices on grapes, by having this type of government regulation.

What I'm trying to showcase to everyone is the difference between a government regulated market and a free one. Each one has it's own risks, I don't think anyone will argue that point. However, if the benefits outweigh the risks, shouldn't folks want to go that route versus the worse?

 

Most leftists would think the opposite. Why should anyone be forced to pay for raisins? Government should give out all raisins for free. For that matter, all food should be free, just like healthcare. You deserve access to no-cost, high quality raisins at someone else's expense.

 

Very true. I mean, why not just make so much more free (IE: Car, house, daycare)? America has unlimited money and debt isn't a problem, we're not really bankrupt. Let the Federal Reserve keep printing out more money, it isn't harming anyone, right?

 

"...government involved in setting prices..."

Taxcutter notes:
Coercive government price fixing was a feature of the failed Soviet Union.

 

You may want to aks President Bush and the GOP Congress why they didn't put a stop to this regulation in 2002? That would have solved the whole mess, wouldn't it?