Decentralized milk

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I think some things are better than others. For example, here's how I rate the dairies that are available to me (on a scale of 1 to 10):

Dean Foods: 0
Dean Foods is one of the leading food and beverage companies in the country. We are the largest processor and distributor of milk and other dairy products. Through our WhiteWave Foods division, we are also the nation's leading manufacturer of soymilk [Silk], organic milk [Horizon] and other organic foods. We operate more than 100 plants in the United States and employ more than 26,000 people.
Marburger Dairy: 3
Over 5,000 cows are milked twice a day on approximately 90 farms. Their milk is then shipped to Marburger Dairy. [...] Even though we started by bottling only three cases of quarts, production has grown so much that a 14,000 square foot addition was needed to meet the customer's needs. The new processing came into full operation in the fall of 2003.

Brunton Dairy: 9
Brunton Dairy is a family farm located in Independence Township, Beaver County, PA. [...] The barn has stalls for 104 cows. Growing larger is not our main goal. Working successfully together to provide a high quality product and a comfortable standard of living for every family member involved is our mission.
I love Brunton's. I love everything about it. But I get so overwhelmed by the difference in scale. Using number of employees as a rough measure, Marburger is about 7 times the size of Brunton's. Dean's is 260 times the size of Marburger and 1750 times larger than Brunton's.

Brunton's is 0.05 pixels tall
So why is Brunton's better than Dean's? Easy: human scale. In my mental realm, centralization should happen as little as possible above the human scale. Centralization means loss of detail and other problems (eggs, baskets), which are not worth the benefits of centralization (homogeneity). Detail is good for humans. Taking my kids into the cow barn when I buy my milk is good. Pouring my milk from glass jars is good. The depressing thing is that centralization feeds itself. Centralized Bureaus of Agriculture like centralized dairy industries. So once you start down that road it's hard to go back. The division of labor is what makes us rich, but that doesn't necessarily require centralization. Maybe the Internet (biggest decentralized thing ever) will save us after all.

So what am I supposed to do with this? Campaign for small dairies? Ack. Start a social network for small dairies? Ugh. Or just buy milk at Brunton's except when I don't? Shrug. And blog about it, I guess.
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Feed back to Chad Whitacre.