I think the implication of the last panel is supposed to be that the apple seller can't stop everyone, but if this was really an accurate satire, he'd chop down every tree, sue everyone that picked the apples, and then go back to selling his giant flavorless GMO apples for $5 a piece
The hell of it is, some people would still be happy to buy his apples. Look, I ain't got time or health insurance to be fucking around climbing an apple tree, here's some cash, apples pls. But that's not good enough for the investors, who want guaranteed 5% growth every quarter, so now we've got to pour kerosene on the extra apples and force people to go hungry.
You've read The Vines of Wrath.
It's The Grapes of Being A Bit Miffed actually
Much better than the sequel, The Apricots of Annoyance.
The porn Adaptation, Plums of Pleasure, is a banger though, pun intended.
Fun fact: A stable company may appear to be growing by ~3% a year if you don't account for inflation.
I guess that's a silver lining because then investors don't see a stable company as stagnating.
Congratulations, you just discovered nominal value.
Are you really trying to put forth the incredibly naive proposition that the stock market is not aware of inflation?
I... guess so?
Why does it matter if an apple is modified or not?
Modifying plants for better yields, less water usage, higher resistance to pests, better taste, and so on. Seems like a great idea in my mind.
Either way this comic is bad. It's stupidly easy to just plant an apple tree in your back/front yard, if you have one. Apples aren't that picky about where they want to be planted.
They should have gone for a better analogy if they are trying to say something.
Why does it matter if an apple is modified or not?
In general, I am not opposed to GMOs. All those benefits would be great. But in practice, companies aren't modifying the product to be better for the consumer, they're modifying it to sell better, and cost less to produce. That basically means bigger, and less diverse, which actually ends up making them less resistant to pests and disease
the problem isn't gmo. the problem is the profit motivation that will invite disaster.
Wait until you learn that we've been genetically modifying our food via selective breeding for as long as we've had agriculture.
And staying "fresh" longer etc.
the apple seller can’t stop everyone
I bet the Once-ler wouldn't have that attitude.
MFer needs a super-axe-hacker. Then he could whack down four apple trees in one smacker.
Originally I thought the joke was that after chopping down the one tree, eventually he had a shitload of trees grow (from the fallen apples), but guess not.
but if this was really an accurate satire, he'd chop down every tree, sue everyone that picked the apples, and then go back to selling his giant flavorless GMO apples for $5 a piece
Only if he couldn't figure out a way to rent apples to customers.
Yeah, I see this comic and find myself wishing we lived in such a world.
I feel like this is a metaphor, I'm just not sure for what yet.
Bottled water?
What's the bottled-water equivalent of chopping down a single apple tree in a forest of apple trees though?
The apples represent feet pics. It's a tough market so the businessman only wants his feet pics to be sold in a sea of feet pics on the internet.
Selling digital goods in a nutshell, when things are infinitely reproducible, you'll never run out of trees.
This comic makes so little sense it's underflowed back to funny for me.
Hell yeah, this is the free gifts of nature in a nutshell.
[...] the “free gift of Nature to capital.” Capitalist exploitation and accumulation, as Marx explains, ultimately depend on capital’s usurping of nature’s gifts for itself, thereby monopolizing the means of production and wealth in its entirety
Probably better sources, but this is the first best one I found.
So... farming is a free gift from nature?
Close. Farming is labour, which is what gives economic value to the free gifts. The capitalists skim excess value from this process in the form of wage theft and other fuckery.
I'm simplifying, but yeah.
No, natural capital is - soil particularly.
This person is correct. Land and the natural process of nature are free gifts.
they cant stop all of us
And how many bottles of water did you buy this week?
im lucky enough to have potable tap water, so none
None. I just buy a big (>500ml) durable non-plastic water bottle once and use it until it stops being breaks or something. Why don't more people do this (genuine question, wondering if there are actual reasons)?
Actual reasons such as not having easy, free access to safe water refills? That's the case for a lot of people.
Perfectly reasonable to buy plastic water bottles in that situation. I hadn't thought of that.
I suppose he was already grumpy because he was the only one who'd forgot about Dress Like Homer Simpson Or Peter Griffin Day at the orchard.
My experience is that apple trees aren't that thick.
Your apple mom is though, heyoo
I'm not 14 years old enough to get this
She sells sea shells down by the sea shore
But the value of these shells will fall
The main question around this comic that makes it hard for me to derive a message is, who planted/cared for/owns the apple trees?
I’m reminded of a speech from Gus in Better Call Saul, where technically a tree from his homeland was wild, but he was the one that made the effort to water and care for it before a critter started stealing from it.
I wouldn't follow ethics in business advice from a meth dealer explaining why he killed a wild animal.
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