Feed the World - online article by Sean Corrigan
Since most of the Christian clergy has been educated in Socialist or Marxist institutions, they (as a group) have no true understanding of economics or business. This had led them to issue a plethora of ignorant and fallacious comments about the current food crisis. For this reason I've linked to this article by the free market economist Sean Corrigan.
"At the beginning of the eighteenth century, fifty years before the time of Quesnay, Bandini of Sienna had shown, both from reason and experience, that there never had been a scarcity of food, except in those countries where the government had itself interfered to supply the people.
– Jean-Baptiste Say, Treatise on Political Economy
Quotes and comments;
1. 'As is by now well known, the current crisis has arisen, in part, because of the strain imposed by a global population which is not only increasing numerically but which is one, more importantly, beginning to enjoy an even more rapid rise in wealth, an advance which has brought with it an associated enrichment of dietary expectations and tastes.
2. 'This has been accelerated by the signal shift to the subsidized overconsumption which the whole mummery of the biofuel movement represents — a folly akin to Joseph telling Pharaoh to set light to the surplus spilling out of his granaries, in order to economize on firewood.
- in this sad episode we've seen the stupidity of politicians on magnificent display. Would that these clowns would stay out of the real business of life, and stick to making idiot comments about world peace, throwing out the 'first pitch' and other important things in societal life.
- What do politicians know about business? How about nothing; how about less than nothing. (All politicians know how to do is collect votes by lying to people.)
3. 'Like many commodity businesses, the simple truth is that global agriculture has suffered for years from chronic underinvestment; a shortfall for which the politicians' feather-bedding of relatively well-off Western farmers is greatly to blame (not that such programs have been too effective in assisting its intended smallholder beneficiaries, rather than the giant agribusiness concerns, mind you).
4. 'Furthermore, Western "aid" — usually a naked ploy to buy the support of both foreign elites and domestic farm lobbies in the same cynical transaction — has stultified entrepreneurial efforts across the Third World, disincentivizing local development and demoralizing good husbandry in the recipient nations. This has perpetuated a sorry dependence on the self-serving ranks of professional, Dior-clad Donorate and has made misery chronic among the poor, especially where those poor are unfortunate enough to come from the "wrong" party or tribe.
5. 'Water, we are frequently told by the viridian Ultras, is in "short supply" — and this on a planet that contains the greatest known concentration of the stuff in the universe! The truth is that, for lack of capital investment, irrigation practices on the bulk of the world's acreage remain woefully primitive and wasteful and thus susceptible of a vast improvement in their efficacy.'
6. 'While it is impossible not to sympathize with people complaining that their children's bellies are empty, it would nonetheless be a failure of rationality not to point out that that none of the political "fixes" so far promulgated in this crisis will do anything other than exacerbate the problem.
- what is need is less political interference, not more. Politicians have caused this problem; a problem that does not need to exist. They have worked hard to destroy 'third world' agriculture; they have thrown billions at rich landlord farmers not to farm, etc. What farmers need is property rights, not influence peddling politicians.
7. 'It is also fine for well-nourished, tax-sheltered Über-eaucrats like World Bank President Zoellick and IMF Chief Strauss-Kahn to call for hundreds of millions of dollars to cobble together a "New Deal" on food, but it should not be overlooked that this call is effectively one that Western taxpayers should face even more pain in order to mitigate past mistakes committed by the very same governing class which is now sanctimoniously affecting to save the world.'
- as usual we have the absurdist spectacle of the people who caused the problem now telling us how they're going to solve it. If these fools were so clever why did they cause the problem in the first place? (Can anyone be so clueless as to think communism is the answer to food problems. The mind boggles. Have these charlatans not read any history at all? Have they been too busy skiing and buying shoes?)
8. 'Make fuel from corn, by all means, if the free market signals that this the most pressing need and, hence, the most lucrative use for the crop.
Otherwise, let farmers plant for food and feed and let the fruits of their labors circulate unhindered around the world, absent tariffs, quotas or subsidy payments, so ensuring both their most equitable distribution and the least possibility of giving off false signals and creating perverse incentives to mislead either consumers or producers.
- gov. subsidies had created very cheap food. (With the result many small farmers, and the unsubsidized farmer, went broke.) This had led people to abandon their own gardens; to leave the country and head for the city. (When I was a lad almost everyone had a small vegetable garden and some fruit trees; even in the suburbs.) Now we increasingly see that single family plots are turned into condos, and people have no ability to even have gardens.
Feed the world? — Then free the market!
Notes;
1. Daily Article at Mises.org| Posted on 4/21/2008 by Sean Corrigan
2. We could reduce the problem a little if we forced all politicians to grow their own food. Yes; it wouldn't make much of a dent in the food supplies, but one could hope the experience would teach them a little about life in the real world.
- you don't think that's a good idea? Well, maybe not, but it's still better than anything our vote buying politicians have come up with.
Since most of the Christian clergy has been educated in Socialist or Marxist institutions, they (as a group) have no true understanding of economics or business. This had led them to issue a plethora of ignorant and fallacious comments about the current food crisis. For this reason I've linked to this article by the free market economist Sean Corrigan.
"At the beginning of the eighteenth century, fifty years before the time of Quesnay, Bandini of Sienna had shown, both from reason and experience, that there never had been a scarcity of food, except in those countries where the government had itself interfered to supply the people.
– Jean-Baptiste Say, Treatise on Political Economy
Quotes and comments;
1. 'As is by now well known, the current crisis has arisen, in part, because of the strain imposed by a global population which is not only increasing numerically but which is one, more importantly, beginning to enjoy an even more rapid rise in wealth, an advance which has brought with it an associated enrichment of dietary expectations and tastes.
2. 'This has been accelerated by the signal shift to the subsidized overconsumption which the whole mummery of the biofuel movement represents — a folly akin to Joseph telling Pharaoh to set light to the surplus spilling out of his granaries, in order to economize on firewood.
- in this sad episode we've seen the stupidity of politicians on magnificent display. Would that these clowns would stay out of the real business of life, and stick to making idiot comments about world peace, throwing out the 'first pitch' and other important things in societal life.
- What do politicians know about business? How about nothing; how about less than nothing. (All politicians know how to do is collect votes by lying to people.)
3. 'Like many commodity businesses, the simple truth is that global agriculture has suffered for years from chronic underinvestment; a shortfall for which the politicians' feather-bedding of relatively well-off Western farmers is greatly to blame (not that such programs have been too effective in assisting its intended smallholder beneficiaries, rather than the giant agribusiness concerns, mind you).
4. 'Furthermore, Western "aid" — usually a naked ploy to buy the support of both foreign elites and domestic farm lobbies in the same cynical transaction — has stultified entrepreneurial efforts across the Third World, disincentivizing local development and demoralizing good husbandry in the recipient nations. This has perpetuated a sorry dependence on the self-serving ranks of professional, Dior-clad Donorate and has made misery chronic among the poor, especially where those poor are unfortunate enough to come from the "wrong" party or tribe.
5. 'Water, we are frequently told by the viridian Ultras, is in "short supply" — and this on a planet that contains the greatest known concentration of the stuff in the universe! The truth is that, for lack of capital investment, irrigation practices on the bulk of the world's acreage remain woefully primitive and wasteful and thus susceptible of a vast improvement in their efficacy.'
6. 'While it is impossible not to sympathize with people complaining that their children's bellies are empty, it would nonetheless be a failure of rationality not to point out that that none of the political "fixes" so far promulgated in this crisis will do anything other than exacerbate the problem.
- what is need is less political interference, not more. Politicians have caused this problem; a problem that does not need to exist. They have worked hard to destroy 'third world' agriculture; they have thrown billions at rich landlord farmers not to farm, etc. What farmers need is property rights, not influence peddling politicians.
7. 'It is also fine for well-nourished, tax-sheltered Über-eaucrats like World Bank President Zoellick and IMF Chief Strauss-Kahn to call for hundreds of millions of dollars to cobble together a "New Deal" on food, but it should not be overlooked that this call is effectively one that Western taxpayers should face even more pain in order to mitigate past mistakes committed by the very same governing class which is now sanctimoniously affecting to save the world.'
- as usual we have the absurdist spectacle of the people who caused the problem now telling us how they're going to solve it. If these fools were so clever why did they cause the problem in the first place? (Can anyone be so clueless as to think communism is the answer to food problems. The mind boggles. Have these charlatans not read any history at all? Have they been too busy skiing and buying shoes?)
8. 'Make fuel from corn, by all means, if the free market signals that this the most pressing need and, hence, the most lucrative use for the crop.
Otherwise, let farmers plant for food and feed and let the fruits of their labors circulate unhindered around the world, absent tariffs, quotas or subsidy payments, so ensuring both their most equitable distribution and the least possibility of giving off false signals and creating perverse incentives to mislead either consumers or producers.
- gov. subsidies had created very cheap food. (With the result many small farmers, and the unsubsidized farmer, went broke.) This had led people to abandon their own gardens; to leave the country and head for the city. (When I was a lad almost everyone had a small vegetable garden and some fruit trees; even in the suburbs.) Now we increasingly see that single family plots are turned into condos, and people have no ability to even have gardens.
Feed the world? — Then free the market!
Notes;
1. Daily Article at Mises.org| Posted on 4/21/2008 by Sean Corrigan
2. We could reduce the problem a little if we forced all politicians to grow their own food. Yes; it wouldn't make much of a dent in the food supplies, but one could hope the experience would teach them a little about life in the real world.
- you don't think that's a good idea? Well, maybe not, but it's still better than anything our vote buying politicians have come up with.
posted by M. Johnson at 7:32 AM
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