Corporate Greed 2, Toast

Corporate Greed 2, Toast
by
Robin Hall


My last note about corporate greed mentioned something like a paradigm change in rechargeable batteries. Paradigm is a bit large for this but its accurate.

Today's observation concerns bread and toasters. Not that many years back, most bread was about the same size. Toasters could then be made the same size. The economy of scale which is a wonderful part of our US economy and keeps our prices down kept our toaster prices down too.

Toasters last a very long time. There is no need to replace them until they die.

I think manufacturers came up with another way to sell more toasters. Convince bread makers to make bigger bread that didn't fit in older toasters. Toast eaters got tricked and bought bigger toasters rather than regular sized bread.

However, the bread makers saw a flaw. Bread was bread, more or less. SO they began to offer dozens of types of bread, even to local stupidmarkets.

How many of you toast eaters noticed, rebelled and kept buying regular sized bread? Raise your hand.

Bigger bread needs bigger toasters. More toasters are sold. More types of bread are sold. Almost everyone wins.

Several snags. Toasters must be bought when they are not needed. The bread, being bigger, adds calories to our diet.

What became of our old toasters? The junk yard. The junk yard is filling up. More junk yards are needed. There is not room for more junk yards.

We spend more on both bigger toasters and bigger bread. We eat more bread. We get fatter.

Big business is making us fatter. How many of us are able to observe the bigger bread slices, cut them in half or so and eat that sort of sandwich?

I mean, really, a sandwich is a sandwich isn't it? AND we like two slices of toast with breakfast or a BLT. Its just bread, isn't it? Isn't it?