I worded it so carefully to not have an argument, just for illustration, but...

Yes, you are correct, and you are not contradicting me: This is a system that makes sense on the surface. It's economically superior to pay some more money to a seed supplier to get a better yield on my fields.

But this economic advantage is captured by the seed supplier after all farmers moved to this new system where you are no longer able to rely on the previous' harvest seeds. Once everyone is on the economically superior system, the seed supplier can start capturing more of the value that is created by farming.

The point here is that Monsanto creates a superior yield in a crop. All your farmer peers move to use it, and now you have to too or get priced out of the market.

hence: > skew towards concentrating money towards those who already live a comfortable life. > skew

The word "farmers" is doing some heavy lifting here - might be some multinational, might be a small family making a living.

The point is not that the market is pricing out inefficient farms, the point is that it turns a millennia old practice on it's head and using government force to enable monopolies to remove competition.

Farmers use it because their time horizon is 1-5 years, but the government monopoly on seeds is more like 20 years.

It's skewed.

Easy to disagree and argue with these points, but the original question was why there are people opposed to GMOs and while GMOs are not the only patented organisms they are the most obvious for people to have concerns over the economics

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pfdietz 2 hours ago | parent [-]

I find the objection to patents on GMO plants to be completely indefensible.

If there was ever an area where patents are justified and necessary, this is it. This is a product that in normal operation manufactures itself. Without patent protection, the farmer would buy at most one batch to seed his fields, and then never again.

Objection to patents on GMO plants is just a way to object to GMO plants themselves without coming out and saying so directly.

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justinclift 2 hours ago | parent [-]

> This is a product that in normal operation manufactures itself. Without patent protection, the farmer would buy at most one batch to seed his fields, and then never again.

Isn't that a massive societal benefit vs rent seeking though?

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pfdietz an hour ago | parent [-]

If we got the seeds from the GMO fairy, yes.

If we have to get the seeds from expensive R&D that wouldn't occur without patent protection, then no.

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justinclift an hour ago | parent [-]

> then no.

Why not?

It's literally a self replicating system. Trying to control that for rent seeking purposes seems pretty unethical.

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pfdietz an hour ago | parent [-]

> Why not?

(rolls eyes)

Because if no one does the R&D to create the seeds they WON'T EXIST.

I would have thought that was 100% obvious, but apparently not!

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justinclift 35 minutes ago | parent [-]

> Because if no one does the R&D to create the seeds they WON'T EXIST.

Sure. If no-one does the R&D.

Perhaps if rent seeking is the mechanism for getting there, then it's better off if they don't? :)

	▲	pfdietz 12 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Yes, yes, let's imagine automated turbo communism where all inventions can be made outside the free market. Here in the real world, private firms are the source of things like this. Roundup Ready soybeans involved cooperation from multiple private firms that contributed various elements.