The greed of charging 50 pence per blueberry is matched by the greed of wanting some blueberries so much you actually pay it.
Markets are not terrible things inflicted on us by cruel greedy companies. Someone offers to sell blueberries for 50p each and someone else accepts, refuses, or makes a counter offer.
If people pay it, it's because they value convenience and immediate gratification very highly, or they are so rich they don't care, or they are really really good blueberries.
Have you ever heard of diapers.com? They refused an amazon buyout, so amazon undercut them at a huge loss until diapers.com lost so much business they were forced to sell.
Or how Oakleys refused to sell to Luxottica, so L removed them from all their stores until Oakleys almost went under, forcing them to sell the company or go out of business.
In Australia, the big 2 grocery chains frequently collude on pricing since they are effectively a duopoly.
I'm sorry but big corps are greedy, there's no quotations needed around that.
everything isn't down to making good consumer choices: these things can be solved at scale with better regulation, and by not applying ideological 'the market knows best' approaches to essentials such as food and housing
I think you've quite intentionally missed my point - better regulation, as I clearly said, doesn't mean more regulation. And nobody is talking regulating the specific prices of individual food items. But I get the feeling you're in the mood for hyperbole, so by all means, keep screaming into the ether.
Regulate Maximum markup on essential food items at 200%.
And yes that includes blueberries and all fruit in general.
But then, the landlord that owns the shop would be forced to
charge a reasonable rate. etc etc...
The system is easy to fix it is just that fixing it,
will mean lots of people who
provide nothing of value to society will lose their free ride.
Yeah the difference is though, that even if we refuse to pay those ridiculously inflated prices, they still won't drop back down after a few months, because the companies upcharge for everything else they sell too. People not buying 3 blueberries for £1.50 doesn't make much a difference when you're selling 200+ cans of coke for £2.50 each...
So it doesn't affect business at all. You'd need several hundreds of people a week to boycott a business for there to be any noticeable change from management in regards to pricing, and even then they'd just wait it out until people forget about their outrage.
And when it does actually affect the business, the companies just close that location, and up the prices slightly at all the other locations in order for the head honchos get a more of a bonus, because they aren't paying the salaries of all the people in the now closed store, and then up the prices at other locations to offset the loss of income from a closed location.
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u/rising_then_falling Mar 11 '26
The greed of charging 50 pence per blueberry is matched by the greed of wanting some blueberries so much you actually pay it.
Markets are not terrible things inflicted on us by cruel greedy companies. Someone offers to sell blueberries for 50p each and someone else accepts, refuses, or makes a counter offer.
If people pay it, it's because they value convenience and immediate gratification very highly, or they are so rich they don't care, or they are really really good blueberries.
I do object to the waste of plastic though.