Modern Woes
Lifted from the comments, some beverage-related economics news:
This is like the entire left versus right debate on markets pic.twitter.com/5PlEn1uWS5
— wanye (@xwanyex) April 29, 2026
What things actually cost is “incredibly rightwing,” apparently.
As Rafi says in reply,
The inability to grasp how things work is quite remarkable. There’s an air of imperviousness. And it does, I think, capture something of broader attitudes. Certainly, I’ve had several not dissimilar conversations.
I’m now poking at the implication that the All Powerful State should have an army of po-faced minions patrolling the nation’s coffee shops, correcting the price of oat milk and other disgusting boutique substances. Regardless of the actual cost to the owner of the coffee shop.
And so, not comprehending fairly obvious things, despite being adults, Our Betters invoke conspiracies and call for a kind of ludicrous tyranny.
By the way, Mr Cohen – the chap upset at having to pay a few extra cents for oat milk in his coffee – is an assistant professor of sociology at Berkeley. He has pronouns in his bio.
He teaches those less knowledgeable and worldly than himself.
Oh, and being an assistant professor of sociology, a statusful intellectual, Mr Cohen has, at the time of writing, not seen fit to respond to any of the numerous comments pointing out his error.
Including polite and informative replies from owners of coffee shops.
“Oat milk tastes good”
Computer says no.
I once – entirely by accident – consumed soy milk sweetened with apple juice.
Still wake up screaming.
It’s not unlike venturing into a British supermarket and complaining, heatedly and at length, that nectarines tend to cost more in February than in August. As if the pricing couldn’t possibly be related to the practicalities of providing nectarines in February – sourcing from halfway around the planet, shipping costs, tariffs, lower yields, the logistics of supply and demand, etc.
It’s an odd thing to get all pissy about. As if this somehow validated a weirdly socialist worldview.
He could just google why oat milk is more expensive than cow’s milk.
[ Rummages under bar, sound of bin liner rustling. ]
[ Slides hairbrush of unknown origin to EmC. ]
On the house.
“banning”
Bless his sweet little socialist heart.
He’s a lefty academic. He doesn’t need facts.
Then here’s me, in the backwater Southeast US, who always takes whole milk in her coffee and just somehow . . . knew – I dunno, maybe from years of grocery shopping . . . that nut milks cost more and so it is common sense that a coffee shop would charge more for them. Y’know, like, if you asked for your pasta to be bathed in truffle oil, say, and the restaurant added a surcharge. Gotta pay more to add chicken to a salad. A drink made with top shelf liquor versus a well drink is something for which you pay extra.
Why is this so hard for people to comprehend? You want nicer things in life, you have to pay more for them.
It’s not unlike venturing into a British supermarket and complaining, heatedly and at length, that nectarines tend to cost more in February than in August.
Wedding florists have this same argument with many clients who are ignorant that flowers have growing seasons.
They’re cargo cultists. Stuff just exists. What dirty, money grubbing capitalists, like people who own coffee shops, charge for it is completely arbitrary. It’s just a function of their greed.
And yet we have a grown man – a man paid to educate others, an alleged expert in “political economy” – who doesn’t seem to grasp the most basic aspects of how an economy works. He boasts of his scholarly intersections and of writing for the New York Times. But apparently he doesn’t know why niche milk substitutes tend to cost more than the stuff squeezed out of cows.
It’s almost funny.
Not sure I’d refer to oat milk as nicer.
Ghastly, perhaps.
He now says it was a joke. As if there is any reason to believe that.
As Adam Smith said…
From the supportive replies, a belief that people who own small coffee shops needn’t cover their costs. They can all just “eat the loss.” Because they all own multiple yachts, apparently.
Who knew running a small coffee shop was so enormously, effortlessly lucrative?
Yet it doesn’t exactly read as a joke, nobody seemed to get it if it were, and he went on to double down. Nor is the sentiment at all dissonant with his X feed in general, where he rails against “fascism,” “neoliberalism” and those he deems too wealthy, while being titillated by the prospect of the state “expropriating” any number of things.
Perhaps his being a sociologist, he felt that his entire existence actually being a joke, it would be implied. But that would require self-awareness, a disqualifying quality of the domain.
Another one.
We are talking ‘oat milk’, right?
From his other posts, there’s no reason to believe that.
As a good leftist, telling lies comes naturally to him.
A lawyer. I would bet the farm on it. All this conflict shit is driven by the legal profession looking for opportunities to make a buck. They are scum and they are destroying us. People need to wake up.
It’s rare you see someone so *perfectly* fitting the cliche of ‘latte lefty’.
[ Schedules tomorrow’s Ephemera. ]
[ Notes number of hours until a gin and tonic will be socially acceptable. ]
If charging more for non-dairy “milk” does indeed constitute a violation of the Americans With Disabilities Act, that is powerful grounds for repealing the act…and for deporting all the grifters who take advantage of it.
[ Has flashback to recent, involuntary encounter with wheat-and-gluten-free baps. ]
[ Muffled sobbing. ]
Mr. Cohen and his ilk are how we get Soviet-style supermarkets selling only one type of bread, tea, etc, and then in such limited supply that only the earliest customers are able to purchase anything. Were milk and meat even available to the proletariat for purchase?
Which makes me wonder – were there tea or coffee shops in Soviet Russia? Under complete state control, seems as though a coffee shop, especially with oat milk of all things, would be considered a laughable capitalist luxury evil. I mean – to the state’s mind, oats would be grown for porridge and milk comes from the state dairy industry, surely?
This guy’s a moron. Under the kind of government control he’s pining for, you don’t get oat milk at all, let alone coffee shops.
MY PEARS AREN’T RIPE.
But but but …that’s not fair!!! :::whine:::snivel:::stompyfeet::::
Our esteemed host has oft used the phrase “the unspanked” and that’s just a part of it. I find that some of these coveting children have been raised in households where they were just handed spending money just for breathing oxygen.
A phrase like “the un-allowanced” as awkward as it is goes toward understanding how necessary it is to give an allowance to a child predicated on set chores and giving them expectations of what to use it for.
Your chores aren’t done? I guess that means no allowance.
You want that *X*? Save up your allowance. And if you just blow it all on candy each week you may never get *X*.
Nothing brought home to idea of what taxes are to my teen-aged daughter than her first paycheck from her first job and seeing the chunk taken out for withholding and FICA. 16 years old and she almost had a stroke.
As New Yorkers are discovering in the Age of Mamdani. Things like snow plows. And money. He’s burnt though a year’s budget in two months, and now he’s begging for scraps from the state and the Feds.
All my life, New Yorkers have been loudly proclaiming themselves to be smarter and wiser than everyone else. [ Laughs derisively. ]
Oats… don’t… lactate.
And if socialists understood economics, they wouldn’t be socialists.
I remember Bernie Sanders a few years ago railing against too many choices in stores as “wasteful”. Why do we need 50 kinds of deodorant, he complained. That is indeed the end point for socialism. The gov decides what will be produced.
Allowances: My allowance was a pittance so I was inspired at 13 or so to start being entrepreneurial. I earned enough with my ventures to pay for all my things, even bought a 10-speed bike. A good habit to develop. I also begged my dad to let me cut the grass, which he did when I could manage it.
I recall reading Lenin had a very firm grasp of economics & that understanding helped him tank the Russian economy.
I was reminded of this, on leftist narcissism and the supposed outrage of having options when buying peanut butter:
Later in the thread, after a visit to the supermarket, I decided – not unreasonably, I think – that 43 options wasn’t enough.
Speaking of a lack of economic understanding.
This also applies in the case of the self-flattering leftist quoted above, the one claiming to be oppressed by peanut butter. Their X posts can longer be seen by the likes of thee and me, but they – she? – didn’t seem to understand how shopping works.
Socialists have made that very complaint to me. “Why not just decide what brands you like and ignore everything else?”, I replied, but that didn’t seem to satisfy them.
[ Pokes at pears again, in case they’ve ripened in the last three hours. ]
[ Fumes. ]
Based on the Hebrew slogan (invoking activist Rabbi Meir Kahane) this is a right-wing account trolling the lefties.
[Scans comments.]
Has anyone checked Castle Anthrax to see if the beacon is lit?
I doubt you expected it to. Their objection is to others having differing tastes and preferences.
I’ve found putting them in a paper bag assists ripening.
[ Consults Grok, raises eyebrows. ]
[ Realises we don’t have any paper bags to hand. ]
[ Shakes fist at heavens. ]
[ Eats mango yoghurt instead. ]
Academia….always the last to learn.
For future reference.
Oh dear Lord. Instalanch.
Hide the breakables. Wipe down the bar top. And for God’s sake tell the henchlesbians to ditch the fatigues and put on their undress uniforms.