Category: U.S. Economy

The Life of Julia

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The Obama campaign has launched a ‘web-story’ called The Life of Julia. It portrays the life of a girl/woman through the lense of government – making comparisons between Obama policy and Romney platform.

The Life of Julia

Bill Bennett has written an editorical about it.

Obama’s ‘Life of Julia’ is the Wrong Vision for America

I share his concern. The Obama campaign was undoubtedly interested in the policy comparisons, but the implications of the story are profoundly cultural. It is not the story of family, community, societal health…but the story of a crass individual becoming dependent on the State.

Agribusiness

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In doing some Internet research I came across an agribusiness company that was new to me.

Bunge

It caught my eye because I’ve not spent much time looking at agribusinesses…and their website was like visiting a foreign land.

Yes, I work with farmers. Yes, I care about ‘the environment’.

But I do not understand? What are they, Bunge, doing? They have all of this information about corporate responsibility, sustainability, etc.  While reading, you realize they have enormous negative impacts…and they are ‘feeling good’ about starting to change those impacts.

The Purpose of Government

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Yesterday I attended a small meeting of folks interested in Rhode Island’s food system. They have established a Rhode Island Food Policy Council. They are sincere and want to improve local food production, access to affordable food, etc.

As I listened, I realized that many of them see their task as changing policies in the State to better serve the Council’s goals  – improve zoning ordinances and comprehensive plans, instruction on how to register your business, keeping records, etc. 

On its face, that is a reasonable task. As I listened, however, an anxiety grew. I squirmed in my seat. My hands started to shake a bit. I grew generally uncomfortable.

Then I heard someone express their belief that the problem with expanding farming in the State is that community comprehensive plans do not speak to agriculture…and his conclusion is…therefore you can’t farm.

At that point I became an anarchist! 

The purpose of government is NOT to control the people.

The purpose of government, driven by the will and insight of the people, is to provide guidance and education. Yes there is a need to control certain harmful and irrational behaviors, but even that should be done in a caring manner! 

Deciding to farm in a city is not harmful or irrational. 

Deciding it is important to grow healthy food should be guided by the government… not controlled by the government.

The business of selling your healthy food should be guided by the government… not regulated.

A young urban farmer in Providence recently delivered a speech at the National Farmers Union where she professed that she found her sense of patriotism and love of country through urban farming.

Government of the people, by the people, for the people does not mean that government controls every act….it means love thy neighbor.

I would suggest that the Rhode Island Food Policy Council not aid or collaborate with any person or entity in the State whose purpose is not careful and loving.

The Book of Jobs

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An interesting Vanity Fair article by economist Joseph Stiglitz.

I agree with much of his thought. However, there is a deeply profound question that he leaves unanswered. I think as an economist he does not address the implications of his article.

The question: What social ethic does the American society implement to transition to a new economy? In essence, Stiglitz, as an economist, examines the political economy. Our salvation, in my humble opinion, lies in developing a new economic ethic that integrates the human condition and the natural condition. Investments in environmental economics, preventative healthcare, agro-ecology, and information technology (‘meaningful’ social networks) will lead the way. We need a genome project of our social intellect.

Organic Tomatoes in the Winter

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The explosive growth in the commercial cultivation of organic tomatoes here (Mexico), for example, is putting stress on the water table. In some areas, wells have run dry this year, meaning that small subsistence farmers cannot grow crops. And the organic tomatoes end up in an energy-intensive global distribution chain that takes them as far as New York and Dubai, United Arab Emirates, producing significant emissions that contribute to global warming.

From now until spring, farms from Mexico to Chile to Argentina that grow organic food for the United States market are enjoying their busiest season.

The Article

Vaclav Havel’s Critique of the West

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An interesting essay by Philip Howard.

Western governments, Havel said, are organized on a flawed premise not far removed from the Soviet system that had just collapsed. “The modern era has been dominated by the culminating belief,” he said, “that the world … is a wholly knowable system governed by finite number of universal laws that man can grasp and rationally direct … objectively describing, explaining, and controlling everything.”

These bureaucratic structures are profoundly dehumanizing, Havel believed, striving to control choices that should be left to human judgment and values. This “era of systems, institutions, mechanisms and statistical averages” is doomed to failure because “there is too much to know” and it cannot “be fully grasped.” The drive towards standardization is fatally flawed, Havel believed: “life is nonstandard.”

The heavy hand of centralized bureaucracy, Havel observed, makes everyone first powerless, then listless. “We have lost sense that there is a way out, lost the will to do anything,” he said. “The more we know about dangers like global warming, the less we seem able to deal with them.” These systems also marginalize community and leave people with a “fundamental sense of nonbelonging.”

Think of Havel’s statement:

“Politicians seem to have turned into puppets that only look human and move in a giant, rather inhuman theatre; they appear to have become merely cogs in a huge machine, objects of a major automatism of civilization which has gotten out of control and for which no one is responsible.”

Our Congressional politicians, and sadly our very well-meaning President, often look like puppets in an inhuman theatre.

Is Modern Capitalism Sustainable

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Perhaps the real point is that, in the broad sweep of history, all current forms of capitalism are ultimately transitional. Modern-day capitalism has had an extraordinary run since the start of the Industrial Revolution two centuries ago, lifting billions of ordinary people out of abject poverty. Marxism and heavy-handed socialism have disastrous records by comparison. But, as industrialization and technological progress spread to Asia (and now to Africa), someday the struggle for subsistence will no longer be a primary imperative, and contemporary capitalism’s numerous flaws may loom larger.

First, even the leading capitalist economies have failed to price public goods such as clean air and water effectively. The failure of efforts to conclude a new global climate-change agreement is symptomatic of the paralysis.

An Interesting Article compliments of John Phipps’ Incoming Blog