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How This King Tricked People Into Eating Potatoes
How This King Tricked People Into Eating Potatoes
Frederick the Great wanted people to eat the potato, in Prussia. However, this is a foreign food, it looks a bit like a turd, it grows underground. Not a very attractive thing, they hadn't yet invented the chip, or the crisp. And it came across massive resistance, and he tried the usual way which governments adopt. And he tried to institute laws requiring people to grow potatoes.
And the rebellion and resistance to this was spectacular. Rational argument had failed, compulsion had failed. So he actually tried using System 1. We tend to disproportionately value things that are scarce or exclusive. He said the potato was now a royal vegetable, that only members of the royal family could eat it.
He planted a royal potato patch outside his palace, which was guarded night and day, but left instructions to the guards not to guard it very well. Now if you tell any Prussian peasant, you're not good enough for this potato, it's a royal food, pretty quickly something they earlier on despised becomes suddenly massively attractive. And it wasn't long before people were going around the place going, I wanna buy any of these tubers.
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