Schlosser believes that potato farmers in Idaho, who hope to sell their crops to one of the large potato corporations, have fallen under the sway of what he terms “the fallacy of composition,” “a mistaken belief that what seems good for an individual will still be good when others do the same thing.”
This fallacy has encouraged growers to spend enormously on every new invention and efficiency technology they can. However, when other farmers do the same, everyone produces more potatoes and the profit margin for potatoes goes down even more—thus making it even more difficult to generate enough income to sustain a living farming the crop.
