Waleed Aly: When we are talking about a market operating in this way to the detriment to producers, there are alternatives that exist before involving politicians to help deal with this.

We can have a big argument about exactly what measures they might be, but one of the ones mentioned by farmers is the idea of introducing a milk levy, at least until the milk market changes in a way that makes it more organically profitable.

Why would that not be a politically palatable option? Why would that not be something people would be willing to sign up to? It's a question of solidarity.

If capitalism is training us to think of ourselves as competitive entrepreneurs then we become less and less inclined towards feeling that kind of solidarity—on which democracy depends—and giving up even the smallest element of our financial wellbeing for the sake of other people.

Yet democracy cannot survive without solidarity, because it requires us to give rights to one another, to people that we may not like. We have to have solidarity to each other and to some grander social and political system in order for it to work.

We seem to have manoeuvred ourselves into a corner where the citizen as consumer is not prepared to give up a red cent for somebody else.

Is the price of milk the canary in the coalmine that tells us the strains that capitalism places on solidarity might in the long run make democracy much more difficult to sustain?

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