Opinion of High Fructose Corn Syrup manufacturers

[John Dibble]

F**K F**K F**K - can we please stop dividing the world into freedom F**KING fighter and horrible F**KING people? The real F**KING world isn't that G simple, so I would F**KING appreciate it if people would stop making these F**KING ff/hp polls.

As to my opinion of HFCS manufacturers, they are neither freedom fighters or horrible people - they're just people trying to make money. The government drove up the price of sugar through tariffs and drove down the cost of HFCS by subsidizing corn, so what the hell do you expect to happen? You make this stuff cheaper than regular sugar and it's going to be expected that manufacturers are going to use it. Don't blame your manufacturers, blame the government for artificially altering the market environment. That's the F**KING reality, and no F**KING ff/hp poll is gonna fit the reality of the situation.

*This has been a F**KING service announcement by the People for F**KING Common Sense*

[John Dibble]

Freedom Fighters, it's called capitalsim BRTD. If you don't like it go to a Communist haven (that really isn't Communist).

No, theoretically under capitalism (at least with what capitalists claim) we'd have choices, meaning both soda sold with real sugar and HFCS in the US. We don't, we only have one choice. How is that any different than a communist country where they only distribute soda with HFCS?

Wrong. Theoretically under capitalism choices would exist if there was sufficient demand for other choices. Since the large majority of soda drinkers don't care about HFCS, largely due to them not really knowing or just not caring about what they are consuming, there isn't really a high demand for soda with no HFCS, so basic economics dictate that few if any producers will bother producing it. We do have choice in brand however because there is sufficient demand for soda, so many producers will produce it and try to get people to buy their brand. If a large enough portion of the market started demanding and pressuring manufacturers to produce soda with real sugar, or sugar became cheaper than HFCS(as I said, blame the government for this not being the case with their tariffs and subsidies), producers would use real sugar in at least some of their products.

So if you're gonna blame anyone, blame the government for creating the condition of HFCS being cheaper and blame the people who consume soda for not caring what's in it, not the producers who are trying to make a living.

[John Dibble]

Wrong. Theoretically under capitalism choices would exist if there was sufficient demand for other choices.

Correct, which is why there is very little choice under capitalism, and in fact the practical effect of capitalism is similar to communism - huge, monolithic organizations and very little choice for the individual.  Just look at the architecture - compare the american strip mall to the Soviet apartment block!

There's actually quite a variety of choice under capitalism. Soda with sugar in it just happens to be one of the areas where there isn't many, or any, available choices in this country(I'll note to you that in other countries, the same applies to soda with HFCS - you don't have it available) because there's not enough demand. However there is still a variety of different brands and flavors - tons of choices.

As far as architecture goes, I see plenty of choice there. I see lots of different styles of buildings. Strip-malls are a poor example, becuase they're designed to be cheap to build, not pleasing to the eye. If you want, you can hire an architect to design your own house - I know people who've done that, and the results were quite lovely. Hell, I could go look at Atlanta and see the variety of differing building architectures.

Choice exists in capitalism when there's demand for different choices. For most products, there is a variety of choices. Just because you are unable to get your particular niche supplied does not imply lack of choices, it only implies you aren't getting the choices you want. You can call the majority tasteless if you want, but the majority still gets sufficient choices to meet their demands.

[John Dibble]

So, back to HFCS. I say it's time to end corn subsidies. Americans are too fat to be subsidizing food. Maybe if corn products weren't so cheap, people wouldn't be so fat. I'd like to do it gradually so that people have time to adjust, but the subsidies have to go.

Impossible - ADM owns the GOP.

Not impossible, but highly unlikely - too many interest groups like corn subsidies. The more likely step would be to end tariffs on imported sugar. Another step for consideration would be to give tax breaks to manufacturers that use real sugar instead of HFCS since the corn subsidies wouldn't be ended.