Elf Sternberg

Why? What Wendor has described is exactly the opposite of a "free market economy." There's a governmental dictate there that completely distorts the price of orange juice and milk and restrains the marketplace from setting the price according to the what people are willing to pay for the product.

The law sounds like a payoff to Coca-Cola and other bottlers and shippers, guaranteeing them price breaks on shipping. What they've done creates the illusion that, for those products, the price of shipping is immaterial-- when in fact it is the largest cost investment for the producer at this point.

A free market is one where people pay what they feel a product is worth and the manufacturer feels they can get for it. If they have to ship the product, that cost is part of the calculation. The government here has artificially widenend the market by raising the price locally-- this has the effect of marginally raising the price while widely widening the market. Which is good for the manfacturers, because a marginal price increase (which discourages buyers) is massively offset by the wider market (which encourages more people to become buyers).

But it's not a free market. It's distorted by the government mandate. It discourages the emergence of local markets and competitors by entrenching the existing shipping interests. And it discourages the creation of boutique resources, such as those seen with beef or cheese, for those of us who really like "the good stuff," because it has completely overruled in law the fact that there are tiers of quality and Minute Maid is somewhere near the bottom.