economics of second-hand produce

I think it's like this. The farmer's market on Hannover Street in the North End of Boston is not the 'farmer's market' concept I'm familiar, ie, farmers drive into the city to sell their wares.

No, it's not. What it is is farmers selling what they couldn't sell at the local grocery store and grocery stores dumping their shelves' produce for the starting week. It sounds disgusting until you realize that the produce is still within its freshness range, though on the lower end. It's not different from you buying some produce on Saturday (that's your grocery day) and not cooking it till Thursday. Some of the produce is farm fresh, but it's hard to tell.

Because food isn't always a black and white issue. There's some grey area there where what is acceptable for poor people is not so acceptable for rich ones. I'd rather buy 2 heads of 2-day old spinach then one 1-day old spinach (more likely, I'd buy a pound of carrots with the extra dough). The richer you are the less that kind of compromise you're likely to make.

Hungary is acting as Austria's second-week produce market. Some of that produce was probably produced in Hungary, shipped to Austria, sat on shelves/wharehouses, shipped back to Hungary when it wasn't sold in time, and is being sold in Hungary.

(Also the sellers at the Hannover St market are like village farmers - both extra nice 'here, have an apple pretty lady' and extra assholish, 'no you can't pick out which apples you're buying, I decide'.)

externalities determin moral

A society with no externalities in its markets is one which has traded in all its moral values for economic ones.

We, the collective we, get to choose our externalities. They determine our morals/market boundary. (If kidneys are sellable why not hearts or brains? It must be because life is worth some incalculablely high moral value. An externality-free economy would not care one bit.)

normative versus market values

They present a view that if you remove the lens of morality and how things "should be", many phenomena can be explained through basic economic principles.

I think that's the point of morality. To prevent markets from entering certain spheres of life that a society values of infinity worth, ie, too sacred to price.

which markets is the question

See, I think a flat tax probably is more efficient money-wise (the article didn't show any evidence it). Just like a kidney market is efficient.

However in both cases something is lost. The efficiency comes at a price.

For kidney markets it would entail devaluating the body ("if kidneys cost $X, how much for the rest, sir?"). Quite a few people think it's worth it. They don't think bodies themselves are all that valuable enough.

For a flat tax, it would trade compassion/equitability for higher growth (more so than today, at least). It may be a trade society wants to do. Hard to tell. Either way, I think an economist stops being just an economist when they advocate for markets - it's like a bus driver arguing for more mass transort, or a nephrologist arguing for more kidney transplants. That's why so many economic theories are mere proxies for ethical, political ones.