spread it.

In Margaret Visser's excellent Much Depends on Dinner, the history of margarine is related.

A cheap butter substitute terrified the dairy industry. As margarine became widely available commercially, the butter people did everything they could to stop it. They bought laws that taxed the stuff and enforced prominent labeling. In at least once place they required that margarine be placed apart from other groceries in a special closed off "Margarine Zone" of the market so that people would be humiliated to go in, revealing that they were cutting costs. And most of all, the color of margarine was regulated. It couldn't look like butter, so the yellow coloring was either totally absent or in a tiny dot in one corner of the bag of goo so that consumers had to knead the package for some time to get it all yellow before putting it in the fridge. To this day, margarine cannot be butter-colored in some places.

What was the result? Today margarine is everywhere that butter is sold. There is still very good money to be made from butter. There is also good money to be made selling margarine and similar substitutes. Everyone knows the difference. The butter industry was not destroyed; they just lost some market share. Had they invested in the margarine business at the beginning most of their loss would have been stopped.

The Internet is margarine to a long list of industries. The music industry stands to lose retail distribution, which is not only a great place to add marginal costs but the place where their unpleasant friends in organized crime collect their money. The movie industry likewise loses its chain to theatres and all the incidental revenue there. Anyone with a job that ends in "Agent" who doesn't work for the government is threatened.

The car dealers might be threatened too, but they've already got laws in every state in the U.S. restricting auto manufacturers to selling only through dealers; they're in a stronger position than the dairy farmers.

Wine distributors are trying to "margarine" wineries with specious laws as well, because they find themselves disintermediated.

It might be good for business people who feel threatened by these changes to spend an hour with Visser's book and take a lesson from margarine.

and this just in

Shamyce Nathaniel <psychosexual@planethalflife.com> would like to let me (whom she thinks is named Rollin Keaton) know that:

Love isn't just for the smart of talented, but for all the amimals God created

I'm glad that's working out for your, Shamyce, but I didn't really need to know about the illiterate bestiality on Planet Halflife. Keep it to yourself next time, will ya?

best,

Rollin

attention lovers of decay 'n' doom

The world's worst theme park post is back up and available. Come with us to Fantazy Land, Alexandria Egypt's second best family attraction!

rhinoceros

Behind me two women talk about their "awesome" pastor. In front of me another woman reads with the Life Application Bible and a Josh McDowell apologetics text called "A Ready Defense" stacked next to her. The parking lot is full of ichthyomobiles.

The groupthink is dreary. I feel like the last one in Orange County who's not an evangelical Protestant Konservative Kristian Klone.

what the

This editorial writer wants us to believe that the increase in obesity in the U.S. is due to illegal immigration.

His idea is 581% insane: The "obesity epidemic" is a result of illegal immigrants doing housework, causing householders to become fat. After you've finished chewing through your biteblock considering that thought, I'd like to point out two pretty awesome things from that article:

1. He uses the phrase "modest proposal" without bothering to recall what it means or looking it up, thus causing unintentional satire and laff riots among people who have read a book. If anyone there cared, I'd write a letter to the editor suggesting that the illegals be fed their employers.
   
   
2. His qualification for the article is that he is a former professor at Georgetown. I translate this, as I said to the Aardvark, as: "Alfred Tella is blogging furiously among empty pizza boxes in Falls Church, VA".
   
   
3. It shows that the right wing as represented by this paper has long since crossed over into a perfect ideological crazytown in which the only thing that matters is political correctness. Illegals? bad. Obesity? bad. Therefore they're both part of the SAME bad! Comrade, the lack of flair on your uniform indicates counterrevolutionary kulak landlordism. If you cannot see the connection it will be necessary to reeducate you.