Marketers love to entice potential consumers to try their product by adding an endless string of qualifiers. We have all heard commercials wherein the widget is claimed to be the “number one all metal, blue colored, American made, union produced, hand crafted, widget sold in the greater Anytown, USA area!”
It looks like this marketing strategy is going to be used against them. If you define the market narrowly enough, you are bound to find a “monopoly.” That is just what the Obama Justice Department is planning to do to the genetically modified seed market.
The Wall Street Journal reports that investigators will be examining the genetically modified seed market to determine if a monopoly exists.
Monsanto’s name was not mentioned but these comments were made in Monsanto’s home town at a, farmer advocacy group known as the Organization for Competitive Markets, convention. And since the OCM is funded and supported by Monsanto’s biggest competitor in the genetically engineered seed market, DuPont, it is clear whom the administration intends to target.
The OCM has been whining about Monsanto raising their prices for their seed products to compensate for their lost revenue now that Roundup is off patent (Tucker and Kinsella surely have something to say about this). Also among their concerns, as a condition of purchase, farmers must agree not to replant harvested seeds the next year. Bear in mind that these farmers are freely entering into a voluntary contract which, if they did not feel was worth the price, they could instead opt to purchase DuPont’s genetically engineered seeds. The fact that these farmers are still agreeing to these terms indicates that the costs imposed by Monsanto are less than the benefit derived from their superior product.
Unfortunately, if Jim Cramer’s Mad Money is any indicator of public perception, the Government will have considerable popular support. The Trotskyist, who masquerades on TV as the communist’s parody of a greedy capitalist, took the predictable position of the proletariat vs. the evil corporation. How dare they expect to be able to charge a premium for their superior product? How dare they allow these poor, taxpayer subsidized, farmers to willingly purchase their product and increase their crop yields? We cannot allow this to stand in the USSA!
See for yourself… have a laugh.
