анонимный вопрос

This question complements my yesterday’s post about the movement for the free distribution of discounted food very well, so I chose this specific one from the queue.

Either at the very end of the 19th or the very beginning of the 20th century in the USA, there was a craze for exposé publications in the press. Journalists specializing in this were called “muckrakers,” and they ruined more than a few careers back then. For the most part, “muck” was to be interpreted figuratively as political dishonesty, but today we are interested in a case where muck appeared in a publication in its literal sense. We are talking about a series of publications regarding the terrible unsanitary conditions in slaughterhouses, sausage production, and so on. The extensive press campaign led to the federal government introducing sanitary standards for food production, and indeed, US citizens today are a society that pays enormous attention to the quality and safety of products.

In the United States at the beginning of the last century, a country with a huge proportion of poor immigrants arriving in pursuit of their American dream, the vast majority of the population had a simple requirement for food: it had to be cheap and available in abundance. The state first began to regulate food quality, and by the turn of the thirties, it moved on to regulating both price and quantity, as a result of which during the Great Depression, government agents engaged in destroying food on a massive scale to prevent its price from dropping. Thus, as usual, the road to serfdom was paved with good intentions.

But how could the free market have worked instead to improve food quality? Of course, through the exploitation of such base human traits as vanity and greed. Muckrakers publish reports about unsanitary conditions in slaughterhouses. An enterprising, greedy meat packer opens a slaughterhouse maintained in such cleanliness and order that even the rats tie napkins before eating, invites journalists there, and pays for a series of promotional reports: buy meat only from Butcher & Co, owners of the cleanest slaughterhouse in both Americas! The meat is sold in a branded store at triple the price, vain nouveau riche (America is a land of opportunity!) shop only there, Mr. Butcher gradually expands production, competitors begin to press him, and after some five years, the thought that slaughterhouses could be filthy already seems completely unthinkable.

I am exaggerating, of course, but agree that one can provide many examples of when free competition led to increased quality, and the desire to maintain low costs led to the development of technology, and there is certainly no reason for food production to be some strange exception. First, a certain product or service appears as a luxury item, but after some time, thanks to competition and market expansion, it becomes a complete commonplace and an essential attribute of civilization.