Here is BBRU 218, collated by Redemption Blues.

This caught my eye. Feminist Suzi FemAcadem gives her robust thoughts on more HMG food and health nagging, but includes this line:

It should not be cheaper to go to Iceland and fill your freezer with frozen, processed foods than be able to buy fresh vegetables and lean meats/fish to cook for your family.

Ah. The tell-tale should.

Compare buying carrots in Iceland and a health-food shop.

In each case you are paying for, yes, carrots. But also for a small slice of the costs of growing, nourishing, picking, packaging, transporting, marketing those carrots, plus a small slice of the labour, rental and other costs of running the shop.

It follows that the cost of the actual carrots is a small part of what you are paying for. After all, growing carrots is a fairly primitive task – plant some in the garden and they may well grow, even if you forget about them.

So the price in Iceland probably should be different from the price in other shops, but whether it should be higher or lower depends on gazillions of other transactions now, and no political-ethical conclusion can be drawn from the trivial fact that it is different, be it higher or lower.

In any case, if feminists want men and women alike to work (if they choose to do so) they can not be surprised if those who do work have less time for shopping/cooking and other mundane household tasks, hence an inclination on their part to ‘ration’ the time spent doing so. So convenience shops like Iceland help make ‘working families’ a reality.

And is it not a bit of a middle-class stereotype to assume that frozen food is less nutritious that non-frozen food?

The strong case for Evolution (see Mr Noisy’s The Blind Watchmaker) is that it explains how complexity can arise from seemingly unrelated actions and interactions.

The strong case for Markets is the same: only the myriad unrelenting quest for small advantages and new ideas creates the complexity needed for feminist and non-feminist BBRU bloggers alike to be spared from depending on growing their own carrots – and hoping that they are not rotten.

So how odd it is that many of those who insist on the ‘progressive’ truth of Evolution and rail against simplistic ‘conservative’ Religion are exactly the same people who rail against the complexity of Markets and call for the simplicity of Collectivist Socialism.

Some confusion here?

Or am I missing something?