The world according to monsanto.

[Kade]

And yet even though the vast majority of consumers would prefer to buy rBGH free dairy products, the labelling is not in common practice. Could that be because Monsanto has the capability of bringing millions of dollars worth of expensive lawsuits, so that win or loose any company who chooses to label, is punished?

That would be the end effect of a free market my friend, not government regulation.

 

[LittleLightShining]

And yet even though the vast majority of consumers would prefer to buy rBGH free dairy products, the labelling is not in common practice. Could that be because Monsanto has the capability of bringing millions of dollars worth of expensive lawsuits, so that win or loose any company who chooses to label, is punished?

Well, yes, if you really look at what they've done. They've basically made it very, very expensive to label a product rBGH-free because there is an additional disclaimer that must be printed on the label with it. Then if the processor omits the disclaimer they can sue.

 

[GunnyFreedom]

That would be the end effect of a free market my friend, not government regulation.

Um, no. In a truly free market there would be more power on the part of the people to have such claims dismissed as spurious so that affected companies do not have to spends millions defending themselves over and over and over again until they decide that 'winning is too expensive' and they just cave.

 

[Kade]

Um, no. In a truly free market there would be more power on the part of the people to have such claims dismissed as spurious so that affected companies do not have to spends millions defending themselves over and over and over again until they decide that 'winning is too expensive' and they just cave.

Is this speculative GunnyFreedom, or theoretical?

Don't get terse with me please, I'm being serious. How do the people have claims dismissed in a free market? Are you saying people don't have the right to civil suits? Civil suits are vastly different than court cases involving local, state, national law.

The free market allows Monsanto to actively protect their interests. They are using whatever tools they may, all you are saying is that a different kind of restriction would stop them all together... I disagree.

 

[GunnyFreedom]

It occurs to me that it is only government who enforces the adjudication of lawsuits. If the power were truly with the people, then once the people clarified their disgust with the practice of a given set of spurious punitive lawsuits, and can perhaps lobby the .gov to refrain from enforcing them, if the .gov issues a statement that they will not enforce any adjudication of these lawsuits then the people who get sued by them can just ignore them in peace instead of paying millions of dollars to defend themselves.

Or possibly only pay hundreds of dollars to prove why their suit belongs to the 'no enforcement' class.

The bottom line is that it's the .gov inundated marketplace that gives companies like Monsanto their power. Patent law, intended to cover certain unique inventions, now covers strings of genetic material, which means that if the wind happens to blow Monsanto pollen onto a non-Monsanto field, the next generation of seed exposes the farmer to a Monsanto patent lawsuit. The .gov is not SUPPOSED to have the power to patent a living organism!

If there was no patent power there, there could be no patent lawsuits there.

It all boils down to the .gov claiming too much power (power not laid out in the COnstitution!) which allows Monsanto to use those overclaims as enforcement power to their own benefit.

 

[Mini-Me]

It occurs to me that it is only government who enforces the adjudication of lawsuits. If the power were truly with the people, then once the people clarified their disgust with the practice of a given set of spurious punitive lawsuits, and can perhaps lobby the .gov to refrain from enforcing them, if the .gov issues a statement that they will not enforce any adjudication of these lawsuits then the people who get sued by them can just ignore them in peace instead of paying millions of dollars to defend themselves.

Or possibly only pay hundreds of dollars to prove why their suit belongs to the 'no enforcement' class.

The bottom line is that it's the .gov inundated marketplace that gives companies like Monsanto their power. Patent law, intended to cover certain unique inventions, now covers strings of genetic material, which means that if the wind happens to blow Monsanto pollen onto a non-Monsanto field, the next generation of seed exposes the farmer to a Monsanto patent lawsuit. The .gov is not SUPPOSED to have the power to patent a living organism!

If there was no patent power there, there could be no patent lawsuits there.

It all boils down to the .gov claiming too much power (power not laid out in the COnstitution!) which allows Monsanto to use those overclaims as enforcement power to their own benefit.

I still haven't seen the documentary, but I will...I've hated Monsanto ever since learning about aspartame...

Anyway, I wanted to quote GunnyFreedom for truth. Kade, every coercive legal tool Monsanto is using has nothing to do with the free market and everything to do with the government. After all, they're legal tools, not free market competitive tools. To elaborate:

Patents are alien to a free market - they're an example of government intervention giving someone exclusive privilege to market something. While patents can be useful to an extent to encourage innovation and progress in the arts and sciences, corporations have been able to lobby our unbelievably powerful federal government to make patent (and copyright, and trademark, etc.) laws more and more draconian. Would lobbying still exist under a truly free market? Yes - but corporations themselves would not! After all, corporations are also alien to a free market. They're government-mandated constructs that give their owners privileges and immunities others do not have, at the expense of everyone else's fundamental rights.

Still, I do agree with you (Kade) that - even in a free market without corporations as they exist today - patents, trademarks, and copyrights are some dangerous tools that could still be exploited by lobbyists and special interests (but they can't be "fixed" by allowing for regulations - they ARE regulations!). In general, the more power the government has to regulate, the more the biggest and baddest fish will leverage that power through lobbying to stomp all over everyone else. Although patents and copyright laws are fully Constitutional, I do wonder if the risk for lobby-bullying is so high at the federal level that they should be moved to the state level. That way, states could freely compete with each other on how strongly to enforce patents, trademarks, and copyrights and for how long. I'd sure love to see the RIAA's hissy fit on that one. In the absence of such a strong, centralized lobbying presence, the states would hopefully find a perfect equilibrium where the laws were strong enough to provide an incentive for innovation and progress (i.e. protect inventors enough to reimburse R&D money and a bit more, etc.) yet weak enough that they don't go overboard and destroy competition (and therefore innovation and progress). The usefulness of "exclusive privilege" laws seems to me to look a bit like a bell curve...

Anyway, in a truly free market with less regulations and "exclusivity" privileges, there would be a lot fewer things that megacorps could legitimately sue for in the first place. Without government running amok with obscure regulations, there would not even be any question about whether it's legal to market your products as rGBH free! Of course it should be legal - after all, as long as you tell the truth on your label (false advertising is a breach of an implicit contract between the producer and buyer), you should be able to put whatever the hell you want on it! You should even be able to directly reference your competitors' products and write in as much detail as you have room for about how much those products suck - so long as the facts are correct. For instance, the regulations prohibiting companies to directly reference competing products have everything to do with protecting the market leader from scrutiny. The only reason it's even possible for Monsanto to intimidate competitors in this case is because it's brandishing the regulatory power of the government as a spiked club. Getting rid of regulations means taking away that legal club, and supporting regulations means continuing to hand them purchasable legal power.

There's no magic bullet for corrupt judges (that I know of), but allowing the federal government to [unconstitutionally] regulate markets will only strengthen the coercive role of government (and the role of megacorporations in almost literally writing such rules and regulations), making the problem much worse and giving corporations like Monsanto much more leverage. No regulation can fix the problem of corrupt judges that seriously consider lawsuits by megacorporations against smalltime farmers whose fields have been contaminated with "patented crops" - but with sane patent laws, we could at least start reining in patents. Then we can start tarring and feathering judges and bringing some in who respect the property rights of small-time farmers...but fixing the laws would be a start.

Bottom line: Some problems are not easy to solve completely, but allowing the federal government to have arbitrary regulating powers can certainly exacerbate them.

 

[XNavyNuke]

Pressure from Monsanto results in ouster of major farm show host in fly-over country.

Farm Broadcaster Ousted after Ripping Monsanto’s Goon Squads

But in an interview with Corporate Crime Reporter, Lear admits that the Monsanto issue is what drove his buddy Brownfield out.

“If the Monsanto issue had not come up, we would not be here today,” Lear said.

Lear said that the President of Learfield Communications, Roger Gardner, talked recently with John Raines, Monsanto’s director of public affairs.

“John Raines talked to Roger Gardner about the difficulties they felt Brownfield is giving them,” Lear said. “(Gardner) told me he talked to John Raines about the Vanity Fair article.”

“The pressure I got came from the president of the news division, Stan Koenigsfeld,” Lear said. “Stan is the guy that has responsibility for selling and maintaining the financial viability of our news division. Stan is a no nonsense guy. So, Stan comes in and says – why are we doing this? Why do we continue to do this? We give him all of these things and he spits in our face by lambasting our good advertisers, without giving them an opportunity for fair and balanced reporting. And it is not reporting – it’s just entertainment. Why do we continue to do this?”

XNN

 

[thuja]

Pressure from Monsanto results in ouster of major farm show host in fly-over country.

Farm Broadcaster Ousted after Ripping Monsanto’s Goon Squads



XNN

http"//corporatecrimereporter.com/monsanto043008.htm www.derrybrownfield.com

 

[libertyjam]

//bump



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