Coyote Blog

Often, the dominance of markets by bland and uninteresting mass-market products is blamed on capitalism.  This makes no sense to most business people, since if there really was a pent up demand for variety and smaller-batch products, someone would try to make money doing so.  One only has to look at the explosion of craft beers over the last 30 years to see this effect, and its one that is only being reinforced by modern technologies that allow lower costs for smaller batch production.

If one wants to put the blame anywhere, one might look at the government, where there is an interesting clash brewing on the Left between those who like local, small-batch products and the regulatory state the Left built.  For example, via Overlawyered

Homa Dashtaki [a producer of small-batch yogurt] was eager to demonstrate that her yogurt was safe and healthful, but complying with California regulations turned out to be not so easy. In fact, authorities told her that she would face possible prosecution unless she established a “Grade A dairy facility” employing processes more commonly found in factories. A highlight: she’d have to install a pasteurizer even though she made her yogurt from milk that was already pasteurized. What’s more, California law makes it illegal to pasteurize milk twice, so there went any hope of continuing her straightforward way of obtaining milk, namely bringing it home from a fancy grocery store.

Ms Dashtaki is pondering whether to move to another state, one whose rules allow for artisanal products. She would not be the first entrepreneur to flee the Golden State.

This is sort of like the old Mad magazine Spy v. Spy, but relabeled Left vs. Left.  Exactly the same dynamics are at work in organic farming as well as hand-crafted artisan toys (which are affected substantially by the recent toy regulations passed after the Chinese lead panic).