Apples for sale

I think the implication of the last panel is supposed to be that the apple seller can't stop everyone, but if this was really an accurate satire, he'd chop down every tree, sue everyone that picked the apples, and then go back to selling his giant flavorless GMO apples for $5 a piece

The hell of it is, some people would still be happy to buy his apples. Look, I ain't got time or health insurance to be fucking around climbing an apple tree, here's some cash, apples pls. But that's not good enough for the investors, who want guaranteed 5% growth every quarter, so now we've got to pour kerosene on the extra apples and force people to go hungry.
- You've read The Vines of Wrath.
- Fun fact: A stable company may appear to be growing by ~3% a year if you don't account for inflation.
  I guess that's a silver lining because then investors don't see a stable company as stagnating.
He would fence off the trees, and lobby his local government to require permits for picking apples, permits that have an issuing limit that somehow coincides with the number of apple stands he has. Picking apples without a permit would result in a fine of $10,000, or a year in jail.
- Why does it matter if an apple is modified or not?
  In general, I am not opposed to GMOs. All those benefits would be great. But in practice, companies aren't modifying the product to be better for the consumer, they're modifying it to sell better, and cost less to produce. That basically means bigger, and less diverse, which actually ends up making them less resistant to pests and disease
the apple seller can’t stop everyone
I bet the Once-ler wouldn't have that attitude.
- MFer needs a super-axe-hacker. Then he could whack down four apple trees in one smacker.
- If you haven't done so already I'd recommend listening to the scrapped movie song "biggering" which was cancelled because it scared illumination
Originally I thought the joke was that after chopping down the one tree, eventually he had a shitload of trees grow (from the fallen apples), but guess not.
but if this was really an accurate satire, he'd chop down every tree, sue everyone that picked the apples, and then go back to selling his giant flavorless GMO apples for $5 a piece
Only if he couldn't figure out a way to rent apples to customers.
Yeah, I see this comic and find myself wishing we lived in such a world.

I'm not 14 years old enough to get this

Selling digital goods in a nutshell, when things are infinitely reproducible, you'll never run out of trees.

they cant stop all of us

And how many bottles of water did you buy this week?
- Why would a rivvvver need to buy water?
- None. I just buy a big (>500ml) durable non-plastic water bottle once and use it until it stops being breaks or something. Why don't more people do this (genuine question, wondering if there are actual reasons)?
- im lucky enough to have potable tap water, so none
- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tap_(valve)

I feel like this is a metaphor, I'm just not sure for what yet.

Bottled water?
- What's the bottled-water equivalent of chopping down a single apple tree in a forest of apple trees though?
The apples represent feet pics. It's a tough market so the businessman only wants his feet pics to be sold in a sea of feet pics on the internet.

Hell yeah, this is the free gifts of nature in a nutshell.

[...] the “free gift of Nature to capital.” Capitalist exploitation and accumulation, as Marx explains, ultimately depend on capital’s usurping of nature’s gifts for itself, thereby monopolizing the means of production and wealth in its entirety

Probably better sources, but this is the first best one I found.

So... farming is a free gift from nature?
- Close. Farming is labour, which is what gives economic value to the free gifts. The capitalists skim excess value from this process in the form of wage theft and other fuckery.
  I'm simplifying, but yeah.

The main question around this comic that makes it hard for me to derive a message is, who planted/cared for/owns the apple trees?

I’m reminded of a speech from Gus in Better Call Saul, where technically a tree from his homeland was wild, but he was the one that made the effort to water and care for it before a critter started stealing from it.

I wouldn't follow ethics in business advice from a meth dealer explaining why he killed a wild animal.
Right? It's obviously an orchard, not a forest, and obviously the apples are one of the popular commercial cultivars rather than some wild natural variant.