yardgrazer
Active member
Well, it's finally happening. Recreational sales begin in Northampton and Leicester on Tuesday.
WBUR said an ounce of flower could cost over $400. Fucking highway robbery.
WBUR said an ounce of flower could cost over $400. Fucking highway robbery.
... your glass is 1/2 full!WBUR said an ounce of flower could cost over $400. Fucking highway robbery.
The rec market has taken away all of the money from people who worked and risked their lives for little and been labeled as criminals. While any person with an ID can walk in and buy pot, the business and real estate deals with years of planning are specifically designed to exclude the home producer or hobbyist. The middle person has now become the regulators and all associated parties to maintain the criminal street price at the point of sale. I'll try to stay on topic but this is knocking on my front door, somewhat figuratively and literally. Absence of evidence or whatever it's called. There is no way people are willfully unaware of exactly what they are doing.
I have an uneasy feeling about real estate or financial deals with business minded and investor people speaking inflated values. For example "grower 1" hands "regulator 1" or "distributor 1" a proposal for a greenhouse and says it'll cost millions of dollars. Any financial party involved, or even worse a pooled group of investors, is working as a group to displace everyone in that area at least in the most direct sense of their deemed competition. Why does the best and cheapest product have to be a competition? That is a good question. Without any personal assessment or attack or mudslinging, that is without getting into how good of a grower someone is. That is actually besides the point. Because the business deal relies on the massive scale and all the petroleum inputs. If you handed that same proposal to a sustainable farmer it would look like a joke. Maybe not all here would consider themselves environmentalists but intensive indoor growing is about the fastest way to burn up the planet (global warming, toxic runoff for fish/birds/humans). And also carries an exorbitant price tag, as if they go hand in hand or need one another. And it also means like I feel the bigger the cannabis industry entity the more they want me (as in personally, myself, I) gone or out of the way. This is not a good feeling to have that the job market is lacking or unappealing and pot shops are only opening at five to ten times "black market" cost.
That act of signing the large financial deal alone is enough to disrupt an entire market/community. Because there is no fair real world comparison of what that product actually costs compared to zero regulation whatsoever. Yes it employs people if you hire ten workers to walk under hps lights all day and grow hydro. But consider this. How about asking each one of those employees to grow 4 Dankwolf style plants each and bring them in? Ok are you ready for this, hire a team of people now to do the math and analyze the carbon footprint for each of those two scenarios. The negative environmental impact. And the quality of life for the people involved or the "employees." Then compare the costs pound for pound and the quality. When you add up all of the lab testing companies, you now have another significant fraction of money that is going to employing entry level technicians - this would be the job or political argument. In reality however the money is still going to the same investors while people sit under lights picking away at milligrams of herb day after day month after month. I am not paying for 10-15 additional people making as much per hour in the supply chain. That seems to be the model in place. Now there is a whole market generated on finance and it is supposed to be held up by the idea that 1g of freeze dried costs $25 delivered. If people could cooperate and work together (grower/trimmer/processor/distributor) sharing duties or rotate that would work better than the mega grows in my opinion.
I have a personal vested interest in the place I live and the laws have moved too far away from what is or should be considered legal or moral or just in my view. As in, were I to try and speak like a lawyer, this bill is the footnote that is thrown in with a bunch of other laws designed to oppress divide and keep the majority poor in life as usual. There is a fundamental difference between the value associated with someone on a piece of paper and their value as a person whether it is work or production or contribution effort labor and so on. To reconcile this next wave of finance is difficult/unacceptable/murky legally morally ethically and practically speaking day to day.
What I mean in simple terms is no you cannot get a job as a budtender because there are only so many of those. And no you can't share or sell your product because the only legal option is this imported overpriced processed packaged freeze dried stuff. You may be able to get a job as a delivery driver for this product, but there are only so many of those too. They may start selling licenses, at some time, but those were already sold to one or two people years ago before anyone heard anything about it. Meaning that it is legal to order delivery at $100 an eighth or whatever. But any farmer market individual producing flower is looking at a conspiracy of regulators, out of state distributors and a network that seems to involve politicians rather than consumers or everyday people. This is like the 100% opposite of a farmer's market which IMO is shaping up for a disaster.
If an unknown number of middle parties values land next to your home at a million or a billion dollars and those same parties all deny you any employment in the greater surrounding area, except for $12/hr delivery jobs, what effect does that have on the economy and better yet society or people or quality of life? With the large corporate ops and distributors or shell companies setting up, is that the new warehouse and big box store? So $10k/year for a license and those mostly all go to huge investors in other words not one per person. Which means that everyone as in everyone else, growers, people, $10k/yr at minimum for the little sticker or else you aren't allowed to possess or grow or share more than a certain amt or distribute at all without fines penalties prison time etc. Right there is a big difference, socially and economically, from imprisoning someone, locking them up and not. Now there is a big difference again from advertising a corporation, commercials marketing storefronts developments, and censoring or deleting accounts or only having paid ads. Net effect is a bait and switch, no change, with a minor consolation prize of not being fined and jailed for smoking pot. This has big ag and food and pharma and banking with politicians which means military written all over it (like the 3+ largest multi-national corporations). I have an ag degree and recently discovered medicine is bogus largely speaking so it is personal (if weed was and is bad, line of thinking -> house of cards effect pretty much). You can't invest millions (valued at billions) in someone's backyard and expect the domino effect to displace everyone around. It isn't so much about money at that point.
2c cheers for no more getting arrested View Image