When Matt Hawkinson started growing corn in the rich farmland of western Illinois nearly a decade ago, he sold the grain for $2 a bushel, 50 cents less than the cost him to produce it. Recently, buyers have been paying him $4.35 a bushel. It’s a welcome profit—even if it raises the cost of the hogs he feeds—and eliminates his… return to article
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Reader Comments (36)Page 1 of 1 pagesBiofuel, wind, or whatever — this topic is a governmental/political dream.
It is complex enough that most people won’t care enough to deeply investigate (put media in that list) and statistics can be batted around creating the illusion of wisdom. Legislation can be passed to make us feel better about it and any definitive effect will take so long that incumbency will reign.
This is true with the current push to use corn. The candidates (or in this case the president) can gain support from those who benefit financially in the short term — AND the rest of us who will pay for the incentives won’t notice the added tax or realize the price inflation in other foods and corn products due to the inflation lag.
We’ve had thirty years to confront what is now billed as an emergency. In 1980, John B. Anderson ran for president with a proposal to add a $0.50 tax per gallon of gas in order to fund alternative sources.
If we seriously want to be less energy dependent, improve the environment, and as a bonus — create jobs — we would merge a national high speed monorail passenger system with the Interstate Highway System. In many areas it could be above the median and require no additional land use.
If we are truly at war and wanted less dependency on the Middle East sources, we’d be rationing gasoline by now.Instead we are continuing as usual — distributing political pork and dodging any actions which would be vote losers.
--------------------Mike, (Can’t get back into “Resisting the War on Science” - this topic is somewhat related.)
I’m afraid you are right in your religious comparison. Blind faith in a master overseer seems to be a recurring human failing — be it religion or governmental.
“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you; it’s the things you know that ain’t so.” — Mark TwainBy the way, consensus is that we are all going to die — sooner or later.
Come hell… or high water :-)
Posted by whattheheck on Apr 11, 2007 at 7:50 AM Thanks, WTH. Sorry you are having problems getting back into the other thread, I recall you mentioned this earlier. So far I haven’t. I did get a couple of the eco-folks to concede that it’s at least possible that a consensus could be wrong or have to be revised later.
The quote from Twain is spot on, that’s exactly the problem, people “know” so much that ain’t so !
Posted by blondemike on Apr 11, 2007 at 10:22 AM David,
You write “Though full energy independence may be illusory, increasing domestic biofuels production could significantly reduce the trade deficit.”
You are looking only at one side of the equation. First, diverting home-grown crops to fuel means less feed and food to sell for export. Second, the U.S. imports considerable quantities of nitrogenous fertilizers (which are made from natural gas), and will have to import more to satisfy the needs of nutrient-greedy corn, especially now that fewer farmers will be planting corn in rotation with nitrogen-fixing crops like soybeans. And those tractors will need fuel as well. On balance, any improvement in the trade deficit will be small.
Trying to subsidize oneself out of a trade deficit in any case usually makes little economic sense. The USA spends a lot of money importing bananas and coffee. Technically, the country could grow all its needs in heated glasshouses, supplementing the little bit already grown in Hawaii. Why has the government not announced a banana and coffee self-sufficiency program?
The fact is, the USA’s ethanol policy is extremely costly, and set to become even costlier. If the current volumetric ethanol excise tax credit remains in place (along with its biodiesel counterpart), and President Bush has his way (35 billion gallons of alternative fuels in 2017), the treasury will lose $118 billion over the next 11 years. Meeting John Edwards’ proposed target of 65 billion gallons of domestic ethanol production by 2025 would cost taxpayers $350 billion over the next 19 years. (See our website.)
Surely there are more cost-effective ways of reducing oil consumption and greenhouse gas emissions.
Posted by Ron Steenblik, Global Subsidies on Apr 12, 2007 at 1:23 AM David,
I agree totally with what you posted, “You are looking only at one side of the equation.”Government programs usually ignore the side effects. To favor one special interest group usually distresses others. Pork for a representative’s constituents detracts from someone else’s.
I believe the author’s subtitle is illustrative of misplaced faith.
Moberg asserts: “The answer depends on how governments regulate the industry.”(I think he sees government as part of the solution, while I usually see them a big part of the problem.)
Governmental regulation of industry often perpetuates/exacerbates the problem. The subsidizing of ANY commodity, product or process removes the incentive for individuals or companies to search for or invent a better way.
• The corn (or other plant) subsidy not only costs us through tax dollars spent, will raise costs of a wide range of consumer needs.
• Allowing “guest workers” to be hired at less than minimum wage subsidizes growers and dissuades invention of mechanical pickers. The cotton picking machines eliminate the “need” for slaves — paying the foreign worker slave wages is only slightly less disgusting. (A Discovery Channel program last year told how through the cloning of plants production of tequila is becoming mechanized.)
• The EPA and OSHA regulations and others (which took decades to enact) have made it profitable to shift manufacturing from the U.S. to countries with no concern for workers’ health or exposure to danger.
• Oil depletion allowances have contributed to the failure to develop alternative sources
While Moberg seems to suggest a positive in “how governments regulate” — history shows us what that “how” will look like.
------------------------
Ask yourself:Is it likely government will prevent imports from countries which have no EPA/OSHA-like regulation? Will politicians simply go through the usual tariff/no tariff stage play?
Will our food (pet and human) come from sanitary foreign producers only? (Only one percent is now being inspected.)
Will our prescriptions be genuine or counterfeit?
Will the government increase the number of FDA inspectors? (The current plan is to cut.)
------------------------Biofuels: Promise or Peril?
Moberg asserts: “The answer depends on how governments regulate the industry.”
Based on past experience I see the downside of this statement as the more probable.
More government regulation means more of the inept policies so many of us — conservative and liberal alike — see as destroying our nation.
Ignoring the lack of regulation outside the U.S. has been the major cause of our trade deficit. Biofuel is insignificant by comparison to the cost of “D.C. Pork”.
----------------------If gasoline prices are allowed to rise as the market dictates — mass transport will become economically feasible, alternative, more economical fuels will be demanded and developed, and a huge new pork barrel not be added.
Posted by whattheheck on Apr 12, 2007 at 7:51 AM Correction: I see I addressed this to “David” — I meant to send to Ron.
(Wish I coud use the EDIT feature, but not Mac OS 9.2 friendly.)
Posted by whattheheck on Apr 12, 2007 at 7:55 AM Mostly I strongly agree with you, WTH. The caveat is that the current rip-off in gas prices is not a market act but born of deep collusion between Big Gov and Big Oil. Real surprise, eh ? Here in the Bay Area we are paying 60 cents more a gallon than anyplace else. Public transit is generally a horrible experience because you stuck in a small area with whack jobs who hate whites, successful people, etc. Since it is run everywhere since 1960 as a govt monopoly they are not customer friendly. We’d be better off without the FDA, even Nader once conceded that ! If transportation was private, efficient and not a legal monopoly I’d support it.
Posted by blondemike on Apr 12, 2007 at 12:24 PM Biofuel production is already on the increase. See the article on Paraguay whose agricultural economy is set to become based on biofuels like soybeans to the detrament of most of the rural population whose farms will be taken over by foreign TNCs. The distribution of land in Paraguay is already highly unequal, about 2% of the population controls 70% of the land. The TNC invasion by the likes of Cargill, ADM, and Monsanto will only worsen the situation. Even more compesinos will lose land. Expect even more northbound immigration from such trends.
Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Apr 12, 2007 at 12:36 PM Mike,
I can’t see how anything similar to the Interstate system could be done without central (in this case federal) overall planning, but there is no reason why it couldn’t be privately run.
The Eurpean rail system is far superior to ours. (At least it was ten years ago in Germany, Austria and Great Britain.) We had a good rail system at one time which operated with little government meddling.
Does California still have higher environmental standards which increase the per gallon price? I once bought a used car from California (about 1967) which had some kind of EPA device not required here.
----------------
Posted by whattheheck on Apr 12, 2007 at 3:08 PM Well, you might read Murray Rothbard’s For A New Liberty for starters. I don’t think the interstate system was such a great idea as it involved the destruction of untold numbers of houses and private property and businesses. I’ve used it twice to come across the country, 80 in 73 and 40 in 96. It still doesn’t justify it. To answer your last question, YES. The California legislature is the most anti-business in the nation. We once did have a good rail system before the gov destroyed it. We agree.
Posted by blondemike on Apr 12, 2007 at 3:28 PM Mike,
re: Destruction of former passenger rail — I guess we can blame the government for allowing the railroads to “prove” it was no longer being used.The mother of a good friend had a lifetime rail pass due to her late husband having worked for the Burlington RR. She used to visit here by rail until the only connection required her to go to the middle of a huge freight yard (on foot, no building, just a small open sided shelter) at 4 AM to catch a train. Proof enough for approval to cancel passenger service.
We used to take our kids to Chicago on the train — no more cost, but no parking problems and more relaxing than driving. My one son sold his car several years ago commutes by rail today in Chicago. (To buy a parking space — in the open at his condo — $18,000.)
The interstate highway system has its uses and was a large part of the loss of passenger rail traffic. However, as I mentioned by using the median far less land would be sacrificed this time.
AmTrack’s lousy service has created a negative image for younger people, but the old interurban connections between smaller cities and the big ones in an updated fashion would have many advantages - saving lives, time, fuel, environment and most immediate — creating jobs.
Air travel has become such a pain it is probably less competition than it was for the past several decades.
But it is a moot point since nobody thinks big or long term anymore and big oil will not be a likely lobby.
Posted by whattheheck on Apr 13, 2007 at 9:01 AM I love rail myself, my late maternal Grandfather was an engineer for the Pennsylvania Railroad in DC until he retired in 1955 and he had a lifetime pass. Used to take me to his Mom’s home in West Virginia and also to the Notre Dame-USC football games in South Bend, Indiana. Air travel is horrible, flew to Chicago two years ago to see my Aunt Elieen, surviving daughter of my Grandad above and my late Mom’s younger sister, to go to South Bend for her 50th anniversary celebration as a Nun. Had a great time but the flight was pure misery, a cattle car and all they fed you was peanuts. You are correct about the rail history. I wish it could be brought back. Actually would be one of the better uses of my tax money. that and government funded abortion.
Posted by blondemike on Apr 13, 2007 at 9:59 AM WTH----this is marginally related to transportation but did you ever about the statist-collectivist windbag Gov of Jersey, he was going to a meeting of this greatly overpublicized Imus-Rutgers nonstory and was critically injured in a hit & run while being driven by the state police. Turns out he wasn’t wearing his seatbelt ! But then as a top gov official, he’s above the law.
Posted by blondemike on Apr 13, 2007 at 12:11 PM Mike,
I’ve always hated laws like the seat belt mandate and now the car seats for kids — not that I don’t think belts and seats are a good idea — I installed seat belts in our 1955 Chevy front and back. I just think people should have the right to do stupid things.I got to the point of switching channels or hitting the mute button really soon with the Imus stuff. (I have it on mute a lot and turn it on if something looks interesting.)
I also think people should have the right to sayand do stupid things. (But then, accept the consequences.) The defenders of the rap crap have a right to their opinion too, but they should consider how demeaning those lyrics are too so many people. Great way to influence kids! :-(
Instead of CBS firing him I would rather have heard that his sponsors were inundated with complaints. No listeners — no crap on the airwaves.
Posted by whattheheck on Apr 13, 2007 at 2:52 PM I totally agree with all of your points above. Thanks for making them. I never listened to Imus but to hear Sharpton and Jesse J try to milk this for all it’s worth is too much.
Posted by blondemike on Apr 13, 2007 at 3:32 PM Feed corn has tripled in price. I grow my own but the economics of the situation are leading me to cut back on cattle and grow more corn. Our local ethanol refinery has paid for itself in 15 years instead of 20. Our coop is investing in doubling production with a eye toward long term profits. We don’t need to “steal” the peasants land in Peru. We have millions of acres of dormant farmland that was left from the destruction of the small scale farmer.
“ You are looking only at one side of the equation. First, diverting home-grown crops to fuel means less feed and food to sell for export. Second, the U.S. imports considerable quantities of nitrogenous fertilizers (which are made from natural gas), and will have to import more to satisfy the needs of nutrient-greedy corn, especially now that fewer farmers will be planting corn in rotation with nitrogen-fixing crops like soybeans. And those tractors will need fuel as well. On balance, any improvement in the trade deficit will be small. “
First “corn” and the canned corn or cob corn are two different animals. Field or feed corn is grown for meal, oil, animal feed, or grain alcohol.
Exporting our products is a last resort for leftovers. Now we have developed uses for all of it. No more exports.Fertilizer in the form of Nitrogen, phosphate, and potash are created from natural gas. However engineered corn which won’t be exported anyway can be modified to produce nitrogen fixing bacteria on its nodes reducing or eliminating the need for fertilizer. Its a simple process already in production.
Crop rotation is still in effect usually soybeans-corn-fallow rotation. New research into clover plantings is giving farmers freedom from this practice. Clover has nitrogen fixing bacteria and when planted over the winter and tilled under gives spectactular results without any fertilizer added.
Modern farm equipment is exclusively diesel. Creating bio-diesel is a simple function from the pressed oil thus the farmer can grow his own fuel creating a huge gain. Farming is becoming profitable and we don’t have to throw away our current cars. Changing the fuel lines, filters, chips and a new oxygen sensor are the only requirements. Around a hundred dollars in parts.
Posted by texasindependent on Apr 16, 2007 at 9:00 PM Tex,
Bio-fuel cropping and refining in the US may be beneficial to many US farming communities. All I’m saying is that the third world situation may be quite different. Large TNCs like Cargill tend to dominate the entire process there as they come in and skew an already unequal social profile with very little overall benefit to the local economy or ecosystem in terms of income growth, energy savings, or foreign exchange gains, or a clean environment. Most of the benefit accrues to the TNC.
Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Apr 17, 2007 at 8:51 AM TexASS, you should cut back on the barbaric slaughter of cattle which is a terrible waste of the land and we now know is not so good for humans either. How many people have gotten colon cancer so assholes like you can make it in cattle ? Chicago, stop kissing this racist anti-Arab’s dirty ass. If he’d been as racist towards the Jews as he is towards the Arabs, you’d be the first screaming “Lyaah, auntey-semite, raysshhist, naarrzzii.” And Tex, don’t burden us with your problems. You just do as the foreman tells you and get those crops picked. Capice ?
Posted by blondemike on Apr 17, 2007 at 10:17 AM Cabdriver
Agri-business gets a bad rap. Cargill has a presence in 63 countries around the world. They produce foodstuffs alone to feed a billion people a year. A billion with a B. . As the population of this planet explodes we will have to feed a larger percentage of people and transport them. Bio-Fuels are the only viable alternative for petroleum. All of the other hippie ideas are costly, technologically impossible, or not practical.By expanding our enormous production of corn and with the addition of new sources of bio-fuels (bio-mass,crop wastes, animal manure) we can end our dependence on foreign oil in the next 15 years in a sustainable profitable way.
As an added bonus to Lefties everywhere we get to stick it to the oil companies.
As a bonus to me I get to watch Arabs fall into financial ruin as the bottom drops out of the oil market while I get richer.
Its a win-win situation.
BM
I don’t want to hear about your greasy colon you old bastard.
Posted by texasindependent on Apr 17, 2007 at 12:27 PM TexASS, where’s my order of two tacos and a chicken burrito ? Oh, uh, the bottom ain’t dropping out of the oil market though out here we all wish it would, the A-Rabs are going to be around after yo’ is dead and rotted and long after Chicago’s people have disappeared through intermarriage which is now approaching 90% in the US.
Posted by blondemike on Apr 17, 2007 at 3:33 PM Does anyone else here see the irony of being called “greasy” by a greaser ?
Posted by blondemike on Apr 17, 2007 at 3:44 PM Tex,
I’m not aware of any “hippy ideas” regarding agribusiness. I do know that increased food production in a world where the rate of population increase is slowing down is silly. This is about corporate profit not feeding people. The thrid world wasn’t starving before colonialism and western corporate direct investment in their economically and ecologically sound agricultural systems which globalized them to the detrement of the people for profit. The question today is not production levels but distribution of land and resources.
Traditional systems actually feed people much better. That is not a hippy idea. It is true. Farm economies don’t thrive on high levels of land concentration where a small number of large farms control most of the agricultural product sales in a vertically integrated system controlled by big agribusess which makes most farmers tenent peons locked into expensive contracts for seed, fertilizer and pesticide. These systems are corporate controlled and skew most of the profit to the big TNCs.
This issue is age old. Even conservative farmers in the US are taking exception to big agribusiness and are pursuing lawsuits to break the monopsonist power over the integrated system which has distorted the market. Restraint of trade laws are the basis of the suits. Mike Calicrate, a rancher who is leading a class action law suit under the 1921 meatpacking Act which separates meatpacking from ranching to prevent monopoly pricing is one such example.
The third world has only seen the land concentrating and unemployment effects of the “green revolution” technologies. They experience more poverty and hunger from it than they glean overall benefit. The TNCs make big money. Many farmers become landless.
Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Apr 18, 2007 at 6:16 AM Chicago, you are a habitual liar on every conceivable topic. Thanks to the Green Revolution India has gone from a huge importer of wheat to a major exporter. China, getting rid of communism, is following. The antitrust laws are paradigms of utter irrationality, see Capitalism by George Reisman, see the George C. Marshall Institute on the global warming crapola, see The Ultimate Resource by Dr. Julian Simon. Ignore the pseudo-debate here between the racist Jooish Cabbie and the racist wannable white boy beanerass from TexASS. You two birds together MIGHT equal one brain.
Posted by blondemike on Apr 18, 2007 at 9:57 AM Texas Independent, thank you for the interesting thoughts on the agronomic possibilities of breeding corn that is nitrogen-fixing, and planting winter clover, but one has to wonder why these technologies and techniques are not in widespread use already. Meanwhile, large numbers of farmers in states north of Texas are saying that they are switching from corn-soybean rotation to corn-corn-soybean rotation, or to planting corn with no rotation. As a consequence, fertilizer consumption is booming.
Regarding the balance-of-payments argument, you say
First “corn” and the canned corn or cob corn are two different animals. Field or feed corn is grown for meal, oil, animal feed, or grain alcohol. Exporting our products is a last resort for leftovers. Now we have developed uses for all of it. No more exports.
Most people who know anything about ethanol know that the corn being used to produce ethanol is not the same as what we eat from the can or the cob. So what? Feed corn still plays an important role in providing nutrition for animals that people eat. But acres planted to corn for ethanol are not being planted to other crops. Kansas used to produce predominantly wheat; now it preduces predominantly corn.
My point—which your comment validates—was that to the extent biofuel feedstocks (be they corn or switchgrass) are being planted on land that once grew crops for export, one has to consider that loss in export earnings when touting the contribution that producing biofuels domestically might make to reducing the trade deficit.
Blonde Mike, I was just in India in March, and the situation there is more complex than you describe it. The Green Revolution did produce some very large gains in productivity in the 1970s and 1980s. But for a multitude of reasons, yield growth has stagnated in recent years, and nowadays India swings between being a net exporter and a net importer. See:
http://www.ias.ac.in/currsci/nov102005/1467.pdf
http://in.news.yahoo.com/070213/137/6c2ln.html
Finally, I find the plea written at the right of this comment box, “Please be respectful in your comments and try to remain on-topic”, to be rather ironic. In some of the recent comments on this string it seems to have been honored only in the breach.
Posted by Ron Steenblik, Global Subsidies on Apr 18, 2007 at 10:55 AM If you are right, Ron, what’s the reason for the dramatic change in India ?
Posted by blondemike on Apr 18, 2007 at 5:00 PM Just because India became a net exporter of grains doesn’t mean that the local people have better diets and increased caloric intake. If farmers are pushed from the land who once produced cheap, plentiful, organic crops that had abundant nutrition and are replaced by fewer farmers with large concentrated plots producing GM grains and animal feed for export to the west than the locals get little benefit. They will also have to import expensive staple crops that were once produced locally. There is also the unemployment effect from the agricultural changes that cause displacement and rural to urban migration. Many experts feel that India was much better off before the big transnational corporate agribusiness promoted Green Revolution.
Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Apr 18, 2007 at 11:15 PM Blonde Mike, some answers to your question of why the Green Revolution is stagnating in India can be found in this commentary on a workshop that we (the Global Subsidies Initiative) recently organized in India. Quoting the key paragraphs:
Eminent agricultural scientist, Professor M S Swaminathan, who heads the National Commission on Farmers, opened the workshop by detailing several dimensions of the crisis. He quoted the Approach Paper to the Eleventh Five-Year Plan in December last year: “Economic growth has failed to be sufficiently inclusive, particularly after the mid-1990s. Agriculture lost its growth momentum from that point on and subsequently entered a near-crisis situation, reflected in farmer suicides in some areas.”
He pointed out how growth in agriculture is dropping below population growth. Between 1971-72 and 2003, the percentage of marginal landholders, with less than 1 hectare, has risen from 63% of rural households to 80%. India’s Green Revolution, in which Swaminathan played a pioneering role, is stagnating, which is why he has been calling, in recent years, for an “Ever-Green Revolution”, implying more ecologically sustainable farming.
The Green Revolution has been characterised by capital- and resource-intensive inputs, which have robbed the soil of its natural regenerative powers. While yields of most crops have been declining, Swaminathan cited how milk production, which was based on galvanising small dairy farmers through cooperatives, had catapulted the country into becoming the largest producer of milk in the world.
He called for comprehensive credit and insurance for farmers—debt is one of the major reasons why cotton farmers in Vidarbha and elsewhere have been committing suicide. NABARD has to review its mandate, role and business model with its focus on farmers. Professor Swaminathan specified that the rate of interest for farmers should be 4%, and there ought to be a four- to five-year credit cycle in drought-prone areas. Farmers had to be made credit- and insurance-literate; barely 4% of farmers participate in insurance schemes. Farmers could be insured as a group, rather than individually, with a low transaction cost and the village treated as a unit.
In short, the subsidies that are provided in the name of agriculture are poorly targeted, and many farmers lack access to good, independent advice. Meanwhile the average land-holding continues to shrink in size, as each generation of farmers divides up the remaining land among their heirs. But what is happening in the rest of the economy matters also. People leaving the land gravitate towards the larger cities, joining the legions of poor already swelling India’s megalopolises in the hope of finding good jobs (and housing). Cab Driver in Chicago is right to draw attention to the plight of the urban as well as the rural poor, numbers of which India has in staggering abundance.
Even though the government is doing better now, the legacy of past economic mismanagement is taking a long time to overcome. The problem facing policymakers in India today—since, because of the country’s large population, they have little wiggle room for manoeuvre—is as much one of sequencing as of pursuing the most cost-effective policies. But India, being a democracy (and a vibrant one at that), is prone to the same political pressures as any other democracy, and therefore cannot effect change overnight. There will be a lot of muddling through before the country is well established on a sustainable path. Fortunately, in addition to large numbers of people living in poverty, India has no shortage of extremely bright minds.
Posted by Ron Steenblik, Global Subsidies on Apr 19, 2007 at 1:00 AM As an alternative source of bio-fuel, particularly vegetable-derived diesel, industrial cannabis would be a good contribution. If anyone is worried about THC content, industrial hemp has almost none, so you could smoke a brick of it and the only “high” you’d get would be from the carbon monoxide…
(...although why anyone would get worked up about a free, peaceable person like myself lighting up a doob in my private space is quite beyond me, any more than they should freak out if I indulge in a nice single-malt scotch!)
There’s no such thing as a cure-all, as industrial cannabis has sometimes been called by hemp partisans, but on the other hand the plant has a long history of widely varied uses, among which is a rather fine oil that can be used as motor fuel. Also, since it’s not a food plant, growing it would have little effect on the supply or price of grains that have uses as food or as the base for fuel.
Plus, it grows like a weed.
Posted by Kuya on Apr 19, 2007 at 1:29 AM Kuya, you say:
Also, since [industrial cannabis] is not a food plant, growing it would have little effect on the supply or price of grains that have uses as food or as the base for fuel.
There is an opportunity cost to land. If the USA planted every arable acre with cannabis, or switchgrass, or corn for industrial uses, such as biofuels, would you still assert that doing so “would have little effect on the supply or price of grains”? Of course not. So it comes back to economics. If it is really that economical to grow cannabis for oil to process into biodiesel, and perhaps cellulose for fermenting into ethanol, fine. But we should not delude ourselves into thinking that if it were done on a large enough scale to really make a major contribution to the nation’s liquid fuel requirements that doing so would not affect the prices of feed and food—not to mention the price of any land (or development easements) that the government or non-governmental groups might hope to purchase for the purpose of creating nature preserves.
Posted by Ron Steenblik, Global Subsidies on Apr 19, 2007 at 1:51 AM Ron, thanks for the info but you are coming from a leftist, anti-capitalist view, right ? And I’d have to get other views here to make a balanced judgment. India had suffered from decades of state socialism too which you don’t mention and they only made any progess at all when the leftist Congress Party goons were tossed out. I don’t like the Hindu fanatics but they were not as hostile to capitalism. So I’ll read your stuff in tandem with Reisman, Simon, the Marshall Institiute and whatever other sources I can find. I live in Berkeley and we hear this leftist the sky is falling line 24/7. It gets old and increasingly unbelievable.
Posted by blondemike on Apr 19, 2007 at 10:20 AM A word of advice, Blonde Mike: never, ever try to engage in a debate with somebody you do not even know and immediately resort to making presumptions about their political or economic points of view. You are apt to be as wrong as right. And it is likely to make the other party wonder why they should even bother continuing the discussion. Please, let us just stick to the merits of the arguments and the evidence. Nonetheless, if you are the curious type, do a web search on my name, or check out the Global Subsidies Initiative website.
That said, I agree that India has followed a highly protectionistic trade policy for way too long. Corruption has long been a problem, and remains so. I’m not sure I would label either of these problems as fundamentally attached to either socialism or any other political view. But there is a strong ethos of social solidarity among Indians that, yes, I find attractive.
Labour Parties in Australia, New Zealand and Sweden have presided over some of the most radical trade and subsidy reform policies in their nations’ histories. In the United States I incline to the view of the late Brian J. Finegan, author of The Federal Subsidy Beast: both parties are nowadays fans of big government, and the corporate welfare that goes with it. Case in point, their love of ethanol subsidies.
Posted by Ron Steenblik, Global Subsidies on Apr 19, 2007 at 11:29 AM Ron, by your logic, there should be no internet debate because we are all engaging in debate with people we do not know 99.99% of the time and that is why I put my query to what I thought might be your political orienation in the form of a question mark. I have to tell you also that most people are not well versed on the technical aspects of these sorts of problems but it IS very possible to figure the political ramifications of most the debaters here. I have noticed for at least half a century how touchy liberals and so-called progressives get when you point their underlying socialist/statist/collectivist/communist premises and that range varies according to the particular advocate. If your an anti-subsidy libertarian and I’ve misconstrued you as a socialist, happy to stand corrected.
Posted by blondemike on Apr 19, 2007 at 11:43 AM Blonde Mike, I guess you fail to see the distinction between engaging in debate on substance and pigeon-holing people by their presumed political orientation. Since you cannot refrain from the latter, I am ending my involvement in this one. Bye.
Posted by Ron Steenblik, Global Subsidies on Apr 19, 2007 at 12:08 PM By all accounts the Green Revolution was an abject failure in India.
Posted by cabdriverinchicago on Apr 19, 2007 at 12:10 PM By “ALL” accounts ? Not so. Ron, we will have to agree to disagree, my response to you was more than reasonable. Adios.
Posted by blondemike on Apr 19, 2007 at 12:26 PM If I may, I would like to correct what seems to be a partial misperception concerning the demise of the Interurban Rail system in the United States. Many cities across the country had operating interurban systems which today might better be referred to as “light rail”.
During the mid-20s in this country, Alfred P. Sloan (General Motors) and Firestone and Standard Oil embarked on a very long-sighted campaign to destroy these systems because automobile sales were at the time either flat or declining. In the fullness of time, this group (including a few others) succeeding in buying up and bankrupting about 100 of these interurban rail systems, replacing them through a proxy company first with poorly designed and smelly buses which ran on city streets, and eventually folding many, if not most of those as well.
We can now see the full flood of the consequences of this in our automobile culture which has a crack-cocaine addiction to oil. The “old” interurbans (most of which ceased operation in the mid-fifties - there are one or two still operating) were cast as “old technology” and “old news” and no longer fashionable.
Light rail is slowly making a comeback in this country but it will need government subsidies to get it going in a big way. No way. you say? The present mono-culture that is so dependent on the automobile has probably received several trillions of dollars in highway subsidies since highways started to be built, so it’s really a matter of national will to bring back a much more efficient means of getting from point A to point B.
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