Just because a the government and a bunch of growers from 1949’s voted something in does not mean it's right. And the "high profits" were likely eaten away by the raisin theft, raising taxes, inflation, etc. In the 1950's, sure, folks were probably riding high as a hog on artificially inflated prices. Since the 90's, I doubt it.
A man should be able to raise whatever crop he wants with reasonable taxation, fair representation and without theft.
Keep in mind that I never used "high profits" -- I just said that he profited from artificially high prices. Not knowing what the raisin industry is like he could have very well just been scraping along. Given that another raisin farmer near him, obeying the law, had to sell significant portions of his land I doubt the illicit farmer was riding high on the hog. I never meant to imply that he was getting rich by ignoring the law, but he was making more money by doing that.
And I do agree with your last paragraph: "A man should be able to raise whatever crop he wants with reasonable taxation, fair representation and without theft. "
You can make good money growing marijuana, but that's illegal. The feds will seize all of your crop if they find it. Is it morally wrong? Well, no, not to me. But it's illegal, so if you go into marijuana farming knowing that it's illegal you shouldn't be surprised when you get fined.
But, because the Feds seize every single crop they can find you get fabulous prices for it.
Same thing with raisins. Yes, you can grow them, but the Feds limit how much can be sold on the market so they demand that you surrender some of them. That keeps the prices where somebody, not sure who exactly, wants them. Ignoring the rules fetches you more money, just like with marijuana. The only real difference is with one crop they demand partial surrender and in another they demand total surrender.
And if somebody goes to jail after knowingly violating the agreed upon rules, even if they do harken from decades before, I won't really feel sorry for them.
My distaste for how this particular man handled it goes a little further. You don't grow raisins, you grow grapes. You have to process them a bit further to get to that raisin stage. That tells me that he, and every other raisin farmer, has seen some benefit in this government protection program since it has existed. If they didn't they'd have just sold the grapes. But they're all going through with one extra step to get into that protected market. And they may bitch and moan about how it works, but they jumped through an extra hurdle to get into that market.
