@MostlyHarmless honestly it's really pretty simple. Humans are irrational creatures and so the story of the food affects our perception of how it tastes. It's why home-grown produce tastes better even when it's basically identical to the storebought kind.

This does not apply to tomatoes. Homegrown tomatoes are actually better for actual material reasons (you can let them fully ripen, unlike commercial farmers who need to pick them early so they stay firm enough to ship)

@PsyChuan in both cases the solution is to coordinate. who knew

@PsyChuan there's also two different ways to apply the idea! There's the way it's commonly employed as a "gotcha" for lefties where you say "see it's impossible to hold things in common" and then there's the more abstract application of "small harms which are insignificant at an individual scale can become a big problem when an entire society is doing it"