In a classic bit of #market segmentation & the use of #anxiety inducing #health claims the #babyformula market seems rife with dodgy practices & a lack of effective regulation;
moreover, with the UK having one of the lowest rates of #breastfeeding in the world, we might wonder whether this is linked with other health issues we are confronting.
Not only do spurious health claims need to be stopped, we should ask whether formula is really the right way to go at all?
When I was in Barcelona I was in this dimly-lit market with so many things that were (quite literally) foreign to me. It wasn’t a tourist place; it was for locals. So they had all kinds of everyday kitchen supplies. I found this wall of goods especially enjoyable to look at.
❝Today, thanks to Android and ChromeOS, Linux is an important end-user operating system. But, before Linux, there were important Unix desktops, although most of them never made it. …❞
«Markets have been “replaced by digital trading platforms which look like, but are not, markets”. The moment you enter amazon.com “you exit #capitalism” and enter something that resembles a “feudal fief”: a digital world belonging to one man and his algorithm, which determines what products you will see and what products you won’t see.
If you are a seller, the #platform will determine how you can sell and which #customers you can approach. The terms in which you interact, share information and trade are dictated by an “algo” that “works for [Jeff Bezos’] bottom line”.
The capitalists who rely on this mode of selling are granted access to the digital estate by its virtual landowners, the Big Tech companies. And if “vassal capitalists” don’t abide by the laws of the estate, they are kicked out – removed from #Apple’s App Store or #Google’s search index – with disastrous consequences for their business.
Access to the “digital fief” comes at the cost of exorbitant rents. Varoufakis notes that many third-party developers on the Apple store, for example, pay 30% “on all their revenues”, while #Amazon charges its sellers “35% of revenues”. This, he argues, is like a medieval #feudal lord sending round the sheriff to collect a large chunk of his serfs’ produce because he owns the estate and everything within it.
This is not extracting profit through the production or provision of goods and services, as these platforms are not a “service” in the sense in which the term is used in economics. They are extracting rents in the form of the huge cuts they take from the capitalists on their platforms.
There is “no disinterested invisible hand of the #market” here. The Big Tech platforms are exempted from free-market competition. Their owners – “cloudalists” – increase their wealth and power at a dizzying pace with each click, exploiting a new form of rent-seeking made possible by the new algorithmically structured digital platforms. Parasitic on capitalist production, they are now dominating it.
But something even more transformative has happened, Varoufakis argues.
Even though most of us are regularly interacting with capitalists and earning wages via our labour, now, for the first time in history, all of us contribute to “the wealth and power of the new ruling class” through our “unpaid labour”.
Every time we use our cloud-linked devices – smartphones, laptops, #Alexa, Google Assistant, #Siri – we replenish the capital of the Big Tech cloudalists. This in turn increases their capacity to generate more wealth. How? We train their algorithms, which train us, to train them, and so on, in a feedback loop whose goal is to shape our desires and behaviour. They are “selling things to us while selling our attention to others”.»
📘 Massimo Asta and Pedro Ramos Pinto edited the book "The Value of Work since the 18th Century. Custom, Conflict, Measurement and Theory".
With examples ranging across several centuries and different parts of the globe, it shows how wages are influenced by the specific organization and processes of work, conflict and power, social status and hierarchies between workers, etc.
Renovated Food Hall has just (unofficially) opened at the Queen Victoria Market! Still setting up the shops but you can just wander inside to take a look
I spend a lot of time finding and testing recipes to sell online, at farmer's markets, and at the roadside stand I set up on my family's property in the summer.
That is in addition to other things I sell, like stickers and candles.
What are some things you would stop by and check out and consider buying, knowing it was created and produced locally?
I've already got vegetables down, anything excess from my garden I turn around and sell or give away. We also sell our chicken's eggs when we have an abundance.
But what about hot sauces? Baked goods? Home goods you could be interested in? Jewelry?
I don't intend to make a full time job out of selling these items, unless that is somehow how it pans out. Plus, being in Wisconsin, I can't just have a roadside stand up all year.
Another one with the #LongExposure feature on the #PixelCam. Not a big fan of the renovation work at this market in #Porto, but I guess it works for the pictures. 😅
Went to the Albert Park farmers market this morning. Oddly I never buy much at these things, it's mostly an excuse to meet up with friends who do buy stuff while I walk around admiring the produce and meeting dogs. So many dogs!
The Albert Park market is in a park once occupied by a gasworks, nice spot. Also easy to get to via the number 1 tram. 🚃