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On Loving Delicious Animals
Thursday, May 1st, 2008The New York Times stumbles onto the tragedy of the commons. Sort of. .
33 Responses to “On Loving Delicious Animals”
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Why its almost as if markets have undesirable implications in that their supporters never seem to contemplate. Nah.
Talk about stumbling.
Not really sure what you mean. What undesirable implications might those be?
Growing up a hick and still a hick, I’ve eaten about every type of animal that resides in the state of Wisconsin. Nuttin’ new here.
Small list of animals that have passed down my gullet:
Beaver, muskrat, otter, mink (nasty), skunk (even nastier), squirrel (all), rabbit, raccoon, possum, deer, bear, rat, woodcock, grouse, pheasant, turkey, goose, musky, northern pike, walleye, bass, panfish, sucker, redhorse, carp, freshwater clams, crayfish, minnows/shiners (they turn to mush when cooked), smelt.
Some of the other stuff that I’ve eaten worldwide:
Dog, cat, horse, buffalo, elk, caribou, alligator, all manner of fish and finch.
I’m sure there’s more.
But I’m glad somebody’s doing it and spreading the word.
“Why its almost as if markets have undesirable implications in that their supporters never seem to contemplate.”
Undesirable to whom? I don’t miss buggy-whip manufacturers. Do you?
I thought it pretty obvious. The increasing monopolization, globalization, and efficiency-first mindset of the world’s food growers, manufacturers and suppliers, which are the direct and expected result of marked-based forces, in addition to making food cheaper and more available (wonderful things, don’t get me wrong), have limited the breadth of the food supply, which to some people, especially those with more localized traditions and cultures, is a considerable loss.
It’s not all that different from the “walmart (a)effect,” and for what it’s worth probably falls under the rubric of “alienation,” but its one of the myriad complications inherent in market-base solutions to which we ought to pay more attention.
Except free markets aren’t the reason why we have “limited the breadth of the food supply.” The lack of free market policies are–specifically, a lack of established property rights.
The buffalo was hunted almost to extinction because it roamed on public lands, where it was free game to anyone and everyone (in addition to federal efforts to eradicate it and wipe out the American Indian). Fish stocks are dwindling because they swim in common waters, where there are no property owners to ensure healthy populations.
Commons and public lands encourage poaching. African elephants and rhinos are thriving in private game reserves, because the owners of those reserves have an incentive to protect them (tourism, controlled ivory trading, etc.) They’re dwindling in public parks and on public lands because no such incentive exists.
So the answer is what? Make everywhere and everything private property? Over my dead body.
I am not entirely convinced by the tragedy of the commons idea. I do see that public/common property often will be abused, but I am not convinced that private owners will be any better.
I’m afraid you confuse supply with demand Radley, not to mention the topic with the kitchen sink of free-market cliches you tossed in.
When I go to the supermarket and there is one type of white rice and one type of brown, thats because all the non-nondescript rice is somehow hiding from the free-market? While people raise cattle and sell it, it is illegal to raise and sell buffalo? People don’t like less common vegetables because no one is willing to sell them for money?
In short, no. The limited breadth of the food supply (to repeat myself) is not only the direct result of the free-market, but the expected one. Some foods are cheaper to grow. Some last longer. Above all, simplification leads to greater efficiency.
The “tragedy of the commons” is a discrete phenomena, with very little explanatory power. And while it can explain the limited supply of a few types of fish, perhaps, it simply does nothing to help us understand why most of the private farmland in the country is used for corn, cattle, wheat, and soybeans. Certainly much of this has occurred in spite of the market, but without question demand has been narrowed by market forces. To put it in an anecdote, the reason we don’t have elkburgers is because McDonald’s sells hamburgers.
Radley,you left out white tailed deer,Canada geese and wild turkey.Their numbers are higher now then the 1700’s.The have a sporting market value.Plus ,land preservation for these animals have had the effect of helping many non-game species as well.I’m a proud member of Ducks Unlimited and have helped in as much as possible. La Rana,I have no idea where you shop,but, here in Marietta, Ohio I can find many choices in all kinds of foods.I prefer Giant Eagle.You whining about a problem that does not exist.
La Rana,One more thing.Go back 50 to 100 years ago.You didn’t see fresh veggies in the winter or fresh fish away from the coast.The market has brought choices my parents never had when young.Choice at the food mart is a modern market phenomenon.
Chance is willing to die for public property! What dedication to a ignoble cause.
the comedy of the commons …
in our effort(s) to save things, how are we not just manipulating things as they are? see, traditional conservation efforts wish to maintain things as they are by preventing humans from interfering (as if we’re aliens or something!), or by…
Michael, yes and no. I am not describing the “problem,” the linked article is. You are correct that markets help to provide us with things we never used to see, like raspberries in December, and McDonalds. But it also eliminates things, per the article, a little study of the history of food, and common sense. I’m not arguing the trade-off isn’t worth it (I tend to think not), but that its foolish to pretend there is no trade-off.
#9 –
I have no idea what you’re talking about. 100 years ago, you may have had a choice between white or brown rice. But I can head to the Whole Foods five minutes from my house and have a choice of about 20 types of rice, including some pretty exotic stuff like black rice, “forbidden rice,” and Bhutanese red rice.
For my birthday, my girlfriend took me to a restaurant in suburban Virginia that serves quail, elk, venison, buffalo, emu, and lion. You can buy just about all of those meats online, now. I can go to the Italian Store in Arlington and find imported cured meats from Italy–thanks to the free market.
Go to a Wegman’s sometime. The options are unlimited.
In fact, the major critique of free markets these days is that we have too many choices, which I guess makes some people overwhelmed and unhappy. I find that critique absurd, but no more absurd than yours.
Dude, you (1) linked to an article describing disappearing foods, (2) recited some inapplicable gobbledygook fed to you by Jonathan Adler, then (3) denied the entire premise of the article.
When you cite Whole Foods you locate your bias. Most Americans do not shop at whole foods or any other luxury food chain (which exist as a result of wealth, primarily). They shop at Golden Lion, Shop n’ Save, Price Chopper, and Cub. More and more, they get pre-made food. And while those things often increase both the number and types of foods, they eliminate the less profitable foods, “which to some people, especially those with more localized traditions and cultures, is a considerable loss.”
What they supply is what we buy. That’s what the whole freakin’ article was about.
Examples: I’d like to buy some coca cola with sugar instead of corn syrup and beef not force-fed corn and antibiotics until its chopped up at 18 months. For the former I can leave the country (though I vaguely remember a passover exception?) and for the latter I can go to whole foods or buy the one type in my local market, in either event spending twice as much.
What the hell does Jonathan Adler have to do with this post?
I don’t think Radley was arguing that free markets are going to provide all of the products you want at the prices you want.
That was a cheap shot, I have to admit. Jonathan Adler is always prattling on about how we can cut up the seas into private property, and bad ideas tend to have a rotten root.
As for the latter statement, that’s neither here nor there. He didn’t say it and I didn’t accuse him of doing so.
La Rana,
If you’re searching for real sugar in soda, this link should help:
http://www.chow.com/digest/1891
Soft drinks made with cane sugar instead of corn syrup definitely taste better. The trick is to find them!
Wild Oats store brand, Natural Soda, has no corn syrup, caffeine, or artificial flavors.
Coke imported from Mexico is made with real sugar; check in Mexican grocers. Read the label; more Mexican Coke is using corn syrup now.
Try Boylan’s Cane Cola; their black cherry flavor is also sweetened with sugar.
IBC sodas are made with sugar. Look for rootbeer, cream, black cherry, and cherry cola.
During Passover, you’ll find Coke made with sugar in the Kosher section of supermarkets. It sells out fast!
Dublin Dr. Pepper is still made with the original recipe containing sugar.
Blenheim Ginger Ale, in three heat levels, is made with cane sugar. Even the mildest has quite a kick.
La Rana:
You should check out Joel Salatin’s “Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal: War Stories From the Local Food Front.” There’s also a brief article with the same name that runs through some of the themes of the book here: http://tinyurl.com/3coc3o
Joel is the type of small farmer and livestock producer the local foods movement would like to see a lot more of - he wants to raise his own cattle, butcher and dress them on site, and sell them from his property. Unfortunately, he can’t. And the reason he can’t do it is not because “the free market” is prohibiting him from doing so, but because a legion of government busybodies armed with FDA Regulations and Zoning Codes threaten to forcibly shut him down if he tries. Tyson and ConAgra aren’t “the only game in town” through market dominance - but through political dominance. They write the regulations that govern the industry, and force out small farmers through rules designed to benefit companies with an enormous economy of scale. That’s not the free market - that’s political capitalism at its worst.
A fair point, but that’s an argument for why the situation persists, not why it came to be.
La Rana:
… how far back do you need to go? Kolko’s “The Triumph of Conservatism” demonstrates how most of the Progressive-Era “Trust-buster” regulation actually came about at the behest of big business itself, and it had as its purpose raising costs for small companies to price them out of the market. That was the early 1900s. Well before the full-scale cartelization of the economy during the New Deal, and well before there was anything like the enormous dominance of centralized AgroBusiness firms. And let’s not forget just how many billions of dollars in direct subsidies those firms get every year from the government. Hardly the free market at work!
That’s a very good counter-argument. Still, I think it awfully naive to think that in a freer market larger concerns won’t do everything in their power to effectuate precisely the same results. I understand the government has a terrible history of economic regulation (I’ve written on it in real life), but there are only so many ways to increase your profit margin.
This is a fairly insignificant argument about a fairly insignificant cost of markets. I only entered this fray to point out the flaming irony.
This is a fairly insignificant argument about a
fairly insignificantnon-existent cost of markets. I only entered this fray to point out the flaming irony.Fixed that for you. The idea that free markets reduce choice is laughable and debating the point is like arguing with the schizo college campus preacher guy who thinks the end is nigh because women are wearing pants.
How long did you think about the college preacher bit? An hour? two? Its bloody genius.
Now if everyone would stop pretending that the article giving rise to this thread didn’t exist we might get somewhere. If you tried to reconcile the article with the the running dogma, rather than come up with devastating put-downs, I might have something to say in response.
#24 La Rana
When the larger firms in an industry essentially write the regulations that governs the industry as a whole, to their benefit, they do so because they CAN’T achieve the same results without government cartelization (that is, in the free market). The early railroads, for example, appealed to government for regulation because competition was driving down the price of fares (See Kolko’s “Railroads and Regulation”).
There’s simply no legitimate way for AgroBusiness to march onto Joel Salatin’s cattle ranch and coercively demand that he not raise, slaughter, dress, and sell his wares to any willing customer absent the government’s regulatory powers and monopoly on the use of force.
Joel Salatin and local farmers and ranchers across the country would be in an even _better_ position to compete with giant AgroBusiness if government didn’t artificially reduce the costs of shipping goods long distance through massive, billion-dollar transportation infrastructure projects. If people had to pay the full costs of transporting food halfway around the country, there would be some additional financial incentive to buy local.
Well, yeah, that’s the argument (thank you). I’m just not buying. I think it is a historical, theoretical, and logical mistake to think that the larger concerns “CAN’T achieve the same results without government cartelization.” (I have not read Kolko, so we’re gonna have to get more specific).
“There’s simply no legitimate way for AgroBusiness to march onto Joel Salatin’s cattle ranch and coercively demand that he not raise, slaughter, dress, and sell his wares to any willing customer absent the government’s regulatory powers and monopoly on the use of force.”
Yes and No. Government regulation is, without question, one of the most efficient ways for the way to do this, but its not the only way. There are really two arguments here.
As the market produces fewer companies (which, I would argue, will ALWAYS happen in a market where entry costs are high or barriers to entry can be manipulated) those companies begin to work together. They develop horizontal and vertical price constraints, they promulgate industry standards and create industry groups of all kinds (lobbying, advertising, etc.) which are naturally dominated by the larger outfits. As they draw more water from the well the larger concerns also influence suppliers and the actual supplies themselves - the types, the preferred manufacturers, the price, etc. And all of these things can be done without violating the Sherman Act (if there is no restraint on monopolization - I’m not sure if your “free market” is so constrained - these things happen like wildfire). Most importantly, as they come to dominate the market, the larger concerns come to dominate taste and unconscious preferences. As I’ve said, we buy what they sell.
In the end, what Joel Salatin wants to do may be entirely impracticable because the supplies he needs are too expensive; he doesn’t want to or can’t meet industry standards; he’s simply priced out of the market; and/or not enough people want to buy what he’s selling because McDonalds and BK have been selling uniform looking burgers for half a century and no one even remembers what its like for a steak not to be bright red with stark white, omnipresent marbling. What he wants to sell may be better in every possible way (I used to live in Argentina - most American beef sucks), but even if he could possibly produce for a comparable price, no one wants to buy it. And all of this, I’ll note, without any governmental influence whatsoever.
The second point is that making a market totally “free” is like making all laws consented to. I’ll rail for the latter all day long (and I do), but no matter what happens, that will never be completely true. Same for regulation. You want health standards of any type? Child labor laws? Zoning? Taxes? Most people would never want to live without those things and I can’t imagine us ever dispensing with them. The point here is that although those things are not economic regulation that we would normally associate with market interference, larger concerns can manipulate them to make it extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible, for the Joel Salatins of the world.
The only counter-argument I see is that in a market without governmental regulation, market domination or monopolization will not occur. As government regulation has been omnipresent, there are not really good examples one way or another. But I think the better argument is that governmental regulation is simply one tool among many though which companies can gain an advantage. It is in their bet interest to limit competitors, and they will do everything from what I described above to simply buying them. In the end, I see little reason to expect a result different than what we’ve got.
La Rana:
It’s difficult for me to even conceptualize your argument. I understand “the market” to simply be the sum total of all voluntary human transactions. To say that the “market” “produces fewer companies” - I’m not sure what you mean. Fewer companies than what? Fewer companies than the government coercively supporting companies that would otherwise not exist? What’s the alternative that we’re talking about? By making the market “free,” all I’m talking about is the removal of government coercion and violations of individual property rights.
You argue that large companies would develop “industry standards” - but so what? Unless the government is there to coercively enforce them on non-consenting businesses, so what? If I want to buy my meat from Joel and not from TysonCo., absent government coercion, what’s preventing me? As it stands now, I don’t have the option because the government is preventing Joe l from raising, slaughtering, dressing, and selling his meat the way he wants. You make the unsupported claim that what Joel wants to do is impractical or too expensive but there’s absolutely NO evidence to suggest this. It would actually be CHEAPER for him because it eliminates the cost of shipping his product to a multi-million dollar slaughterhouse facility, the costs of using the facility, and the costs of trying to sell his product through some third party retail outlet b/c he could do it himself. That’s his whole claim - he’s being priced out of the market b/c he can’t create his product the way he wants.
Astoundingly, you argue that he’d be priced out of a free market — but there’s no evidence for this. He’s priced out of the cartelized market as it is, because the steps he’s required to take create so much overhead he can’t otherwise survive by exploiting the existing market for local, high quality, meat.
You seem to just ignore the actual fact and impact of existing government regulations while engaging in bizarre and unsupported counterfactual speculation.
But I don’t want to hear your response, La Rana. I don’t care what you think.
Well, I guess this is where it ends. I figured people so adamantly in favor of an economic position would have some idea how capitalism plays out in reality. Your theoretical arguments were good JJH2, but the idea that legal proscription and constraint (or other forms of government coercion) is the only means of coercion is so laughably inconsistent with life on this planet that I’d have to write a book just to get back to our argument.
Read something about what the corn, sugar, and beef industries (to name a select few) do to insulate themselves from competition. You clearly have no idea what they do, why, or how it effects competition. They work constantly to create horizontal and vertical price restraints (pricing agreements between competitors and between suppliers) that are, in turn, very effective at limiting competition. None of which has to do with the government or regulation. There is an entire body of anti-trust law over when and where the government will put a stop to those competition-limiting practices. I understand its hard for you to conceptualize the argument. Reality bites.
La Rana:
You are very mistaken. I’m a vocal opponent of political capitalism, and have taken pains in these comment threads to point out the difference between “capitalism” as it’s been historically understood as a system of state privilege by one class of investors against the rest of society, and the “free market.”
It’s astounding to me that you would use the US Sugar Industry as an example of allegedly free-market anything. The US Sugar Lobby has successfully lobbied Congress to keep the US Sugar industry free from anything remotely resembling free market competition. Big Sugar made sure that sugar imports were exempted from NAFTA’s trade liberalization, GATT provisions, and is subsidized by US taxpayers to the tune of millions of dollars a year through price supports and trade restrictions. Again - this is political capitalism at its worst. Hardly free market anything.
You claim that I said that “government coercion is the only means of coercion” - but I never said anything of the sort. Government regulations are ALWAYS coercive (because they are always backed up by the threat of violence), but that doesn’t mean that government is the only actor that uses violence or the threat of violence to get its way. Absent the Regulatory Leviathan State, however, I’d like to see AgroBusiness try to stop small producers from utilizing their land in the way that makes most sense to them.
They already do that JJH2!!!! I’ve listed and described the ways multiple times in this thread alone. You have not said anything in response, other than to deny it afresh, which means either you don’t know what you are talking about or you are hoping to skip over my entire argument.
I gave the sugar industry as an example of what you can do to limit competition without government coercion. I never said any of those industries were “free,” and obviously they are not. Sugar is among the most governmentally protected industries in the entire economy. It’s silly and telling that you focus on something that is simply a misreading, while ignoring everything else I wrote.
Again, I encourage you to read something about how these industries operate to limit competition apart from regulation. You can start by looking at all of the “industry groups” , examining who sits on whose board, and reading the relevant caselaw and legal theories behind vertical and horizontal price constraints. From there you can move on to more complicated things like the topic of this thread.