Eggs US – Price – Chart • Hacker News Board

Re: Eggs US – Price – Chart

#551

Post by jmyeet » Wed, Feb 05, 2025, 9:13 PM UTC

mplanchard wrote: post #18

Fresh, local eggs have remained around the same price here. While more expensive than eggs from large producers in normal times, they are now often cheaper. This is a great reminder of how important it is to support local farmers and small operations, which increase the resilience of the system as a whole.

What I find endlessly fascinating is how often I see anti-capitalist sentiment, which your comment is, in the context of how often and how much people will defend capitalism and attack socialism. For the record, I don't know if the second part applies to you, specifically. This is a general observation.

Local food production is quintessential socialism: it is quite literally the workers (the farmers) owning the means of production (the farm).

When people hear that, they so often reject it with some variant of "no, that's a business; that's capitalism". Businesses (and markets) existed millenia before capitalism and exist in every economic system.

The defining characteristic of capitalism is exploitation by capital owners. In the eggs case, it's Cal-Maine Foods (or any other large company) owning the land and in all likelihood employing undocumented workers because they can pay them sub-minimum wage. At least that's how the likes of Tyson produces chicken.

It's also worth adding that something like avian flu is used to justify price hikes well beyond what the supply change would otherwise warrant.

Re: Eggs US – Price – Chart

#552

Post by autoexec » Wed, Feb 05, 2025, 9:20 PM UTC

renewiltord wrote: post #508

autoexec wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it doesn't. The largest egg producer in the nation had no infected birds. There was no shortage. The companies just conspired to restrict supply so that they could gouge consumers and stuff their pockets. They were ordered to pay millions in fines because of it ( https://www.cbsnews.com/news/egg-suppliers-ordered-to-pay-17... ) They successfully tricked you into thinking that their prices are set by supply and demand…

You've got this great opportunity to outcompete Aritzia and you're not doing it? They have no hold over you. When they conspire, just don't play along, like Zuck rejected Apple. Pick 50% their margin. You'll be a billionaire in a year.

Zuckerberg has no ethics and is just mad that apple's lack of ethics isn't working in his favor. A businessman with ethics has very little chance of dethroning an entrenched cartel within a corrupt industry. The hypothetical ethical business looking to outcompete their rivals may be the only one willing to set fair prices, but they also won't be able/willing to do what their competitors do. They won't exploit slaves/children/workers to make their products. They won't bribe governments to pass laws and regulations to keep out competition. They won't cut corners by using poisons in their products and manufacturing knowing it will harm their workers and consumers. They won't dump their waste into the ocean and pollute the environment. They won't collude to set prices, limit supply, or shut out anyone who doesn't play along.

The idea that you can defeat greedy corporations just by treating customers better is a fiction. There's always more money to be made by screwing over everyone at every opportunity, and there's no shortage of greedy people willing to do exactly that. It's why we need the kinds of laws, regulations, and enforcement that even the playing field and allow ethical companies to thrive.

You can't jump into the middle of a rigged game where the referees have been bought off and expect to win by following all of the rules. You have to stop the cheaters and the cheating first to even have a chance.

Re: Eggs US – Price – Chart

#553

Post by llamaimperative » Wed, Feb 05, 2025, 9:20 PM UTC

PaulHoule wrote: post #550

llamaimperative wrote: post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No disagreement there, it certainly helped lose the election. That still doesn’t mean the two positions are equal but opposite. For example, when Biden was elected there wasn’t a Cmd + F across the federal government for “Latino”.

A serious treatment of that requires considering what the Democratic party actually is . Wintrobe's book [1] has an analysis of a tinpot dictator who wants to steal everything a country has but has to spend some resources on buying people off and some on repression so that he can get away with it. Bill Clinton made a similar maneuver around 'triangulation' that amounts to trying to share as little of the spoils to ma…

I’m not sure what all this is about.

You have one party’s “extremism” which takes the form of bluehaired Twitterati saying stupid shit and, I guess, not getting sufficiently disowned by actual political leaders?

On the other hand you have an ongoing ACTUAL ideological purge of our government’s personnel, records, budget, and data, complete with watchwords (like “women”) and loyalty tests.

Re: Eggs US – Price – Chart

#554

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Feb 05, 2025, 9:21 PM UTC

dml2135 wrote: post #434

mullingitover wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Vegetarians don’t eat meat (including fish, although some religious sects have a marketing deal with fishermen to count fish as a vegetable for some reason), do eat animal products. Vegans don’t eat meat and also don’t eat animal products.

I always found this a funny etymological thing. Going just by the words themselves, if you asked me to guess which was which, I'd say they should be reversed -- "vegetarian" seems to clearly imply "eats a diet made up of vegetables" whereas "vegan" is more ambiguous and seems to fit "mostly eats vegetables but also will eat some non-meat animal products". But what I'm guessing happened is that the less-strict diet ca…

[deleted]

Re: Eggs US – Price – Chart

#555

Post by stickmangallows » Wed, Feb 05, 2025, 9:24 PM UTC

PyWoody wrote: post #154

zie wrote: post #104

Fake/Vegetarian eggs are priced the same here, so I made the switch and am only using fake eggs now for most of my cooking.

Are there any particular brands that you like?

I use different things based on what it's for. Ground flax seeds for baking, aquafaba for souffles, tofu with black salt for scrambles, "Just Egg!" for egg wash when frying, and maple syrup for egg wash on breads. Of those, I mostly bake, so keeping the flax seeds around is much more convenient for me than regularly buying eggs anyway.

Re: Eggs US – Price – Chart

#556

Post by Frost1x » Wed, Feb 05, 2025, 9:33 PM UTC

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #110

afavour wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is also a great defense against something like bird flu. When you centralize operations a disease can spread through a population like wildfire. When it's a number of smaller, separate operations the impact is lessened.

Really raises the question - should vital infrastructure, like food production, be built in an attempt to maximize profit or resiliency? Have things swung too far in one direction?

We as thoughtful human beings can consider non-extreme points where we find other optimizations that aren’t necessarily around profit or resiliency. We can create a new metric called “human progress mertric” where we consider profit as a strong driver but also put weight on things like resiliency and allow profit to slide a bit so our real goal is better achieved.

Rarely ever, IMO, are worthwhile goals entirely profit optimized or resiliency optimized. Some blend tends to be best, and sometimes you can even have both simultaneously (they’re not always inherently mutually exclusive, although those taking in the winnings may want it to be).

Re: Eggs US – Price – Chart

#557

Post by tcmart14 » Wed, Feb 05, 2025, 9:34 PM UTC

TylerE wrote: post #477

hammock wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they don't want to charge more though?

When their gas prices go up, their equipment goes up, their feed goes up, etc, they won’t have any choice.

I wonder though, in specifically this instance, if the price of their feed is going down because of how many chickens have been culled or just flat out died from disease.

But yea, if other cost rise, they will need to rise prices.

Re: Eggs US – Price – Chart

#558

Post by sva_ » Wed, Feb 05, 2025, 9:37 PM UTC

ars wrote: post #186

colonial wrote: post #109

Yup, bird flu moment. I'm very glad my family put up a chicken coop in our backyard years ago; we get a ~carton a day, and they last forever even outside the fridge due to the natural "sealant" still being intact. Hopefully store prices will come down as the year goes on and flocks bounce back.

The commercial eggs also last forever outside the fridge. That thing about the natural sealant is a widely believed myth. Source: I leave my commercial eggs outside the fridge, and they last with zero problems.

> source: anecdote/survivorship bias

Re: Eggs US – Price – Chart

#559

Post by jl6 » Wed, Feb 05, 2025, 9:41 PM UTC

llamaimperative wrote: post #529

jl6 wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no executive order banning use of the words women and female.

Thanks for sharing your contortions! Honestly impressed with your candor, I appreciate it.

I replied to someone who thought the words had been banned and scientists would have to use phrases like “ovulating person”.

It seemed to be based on taking your post (“scrub all mentions of the word "women"”) at face value.

You understand now that that isn’t true? That the word “women” is not being scrubbed, and nobody has asked for it to be scrubbed?

Re: Eggs US – Price – Chart

#560

Post by blondie9x » Wed, Feb 05, 2025, 9:43 PM UTC

The impacts of climate change are real. We have known for a long time that as the climate worsened animals would be more vulnerable to illness that live outside and have to deal with a destabilizing environment.