"Medical marijuana free market to open in Canada" said the CBC. Adding near breathlessly that, "The profit potential is enormous,"...But, like near all huckster pitches, this one glosses over the facts with bloated projections of future profits designed to attract investors. Right now there's 37,000-ish medical marijuana users recognized by the gubberment, but officials project that number will swell more than 10-fold, to as many as 450,000 people, by 2024 and every one of these huckster dollars is predicated on those very bloated projections.
It'd be interesting to watch a modern neo-liberal type bank financed, business school trained managers, marketers, promoters, lawyers and IT folks take on the many thousand year old tradition of small mom and pop pot growers. The shiny new corporate licence holders would be carrying huge overhead to pay all the interest on facilities, all the wages of the managers etc. as well as the wages of the people who actually grow and process the pot, all that other stuff will be part of the cost of corporate pot. The mom & pops already own their empty basement room, mom & pop are all those managers, all those workers.
From a community wide perspective, all the loonies mom & pop earn they spend in the 'local marketplace' whereas the bank's interest, the investor's imaginary profits and management costs leave town on the next 'free market' keystroke. Think about it, the most strong, efficient and resilient systems are made of interconnected small independent but communicating nodes. That's what nature decided is the best. So, IMO, the large debt and managerial cost over burdened corporate pot side will be beaten up by the independents who can adjust their prices immediately, can try new antidotes to hold off Mother Nature's never ending parade of critters and diseases, can adjust production and costs of operation almost instantly, and best of all, can experiment with developing different strains and better pot.
The patients know it was cheap to grow now CanniMed is advertising prices of $9 to $12 a gram – out of the reach of many of the terminally ill users who cannot work. So patients will, like water, flow to the least resistance, in this case it'll be mom & pop next door. Back in the boardroom things will look gloomy - no profits, sales and quality continue to drop while costs continue to soar.
But the bankers will make money and the 'smart money' will get out before the roller coaster crests. In today's capitalism money is made on hype not goods. Corporate pot, corporate anything, can't compete with the small scale, established, independent and interdependent networks that's why right-wing economists never really advocate for a truly 'free market'. In the past 45 years since i started being into pot the price has dropped while the quality and the availability have skyrocketed. That's what happens in a truly 'Free Market'.
