caundle

> If there was a cheaper way to fix nitrogen, then someone would be using it to undercut Haber-Bosch produced nitrogen and capture the market.

Unless parts of a capitalist economic system undermines competition in the interest of maximising profits for individual corporations or sectors. Thus there is a fork in this chain of reasoning -- it is not necessarily the case that no alternative method can be found (whether fixing nitrogen specifically or producing food generally), it could also be that such methods aren't developed because they threaten the short-term return on capital. One way to think of capitalism is as an engine optimised to generate and preserve short-term returns on capital.

'Cheapest' is defined in part by the required short-term return on capital. Nothing could be cheaper, from an operational perspective, than letting fields lie fallow. It only becomes expensive when fixed capital absolutely must have its short-term return before any other considerations are taken into account.