Category Archives: Trade

‘Math for Morons’

Economy, Environmentalism & Animal Rights, Free Markets, Healthcare, Trade

Having just feasted on an excellent, fresh, Chilean orange, here is a reminder, via the one and only John Stossel, that eating organic, local produce must not turn into an irrational fetish. Read “Math Lessons for Locavores”:

the local food movement now threatens to devolve into another one of those self-indulgent — and self-defeating — do-gooder dogmas. Arbitrary rules, without any real scientific basis, are repeated as gospel by “locavores,” celebrity chefs and mainstream environmental organizations. Words like “sustainability” and “food-miles” are thrown around without any clear understanding of the larger picture of energy and land use.

The result has been all kinds of absurdities. For instance, it is sinful in New York City to buy a tomato grown in a California field because of the energy spent to truck it across the country; it is virtuous to buy one grown in a lavishly heated greenhouse in, say, the Hudson Valley.

The statistics brandished by local-food advocates to support such doctrinaire assertions are always selective, usually misleading and often bogus. This is particularly the case with respect to the energy costs of transporting food. One popular and oft-repeated statistic is that it takes 36 (sometimes it’s 97) calories of fossil fuel energy to bring one calorie of iceberg lettuce from California to the East Coast. That’s an apples and oranges (or maybe apples and rocks) comparison to begin with, because you can’t eat petroleum or burn iceberg lettuce.

It is also an almost complete misrepresentation of reality, as those numbers reflect the entire energy cost of producing lettuce from seed to dinner table, not just transportation. Studies have shown that whether it’s grown in California or Maine, or whether it’s organic or conventional, about 5,000 calories of energy go into one pound of lettuce. Given how efficient trains and tractor-trailers are, shipping a head of lettuce across the country actually adds next to nothing to the total energy bill.

MORE.

UPDATED: Thank You, Pat Buchanan (The Old Right)

Celebrity, Classical Liberalism, Conservatism, Etiquette, Founding Fathers, Ilana Mercer, Old Right, Trade

I’ll be retiring tonight with “Suicide of a Superpower: Will American Survive to 2025?” by the iconic Patrick J.Buchanan, whom every paleo-libertarian admires. I’ve just received a copy courtesy of the author. The new book is inscribed as follows:

“To Ilana Mercer: Fellow Columnist and Fellow Conservative, with The Respect and good wishes of The Author.”

Mr. Buchanan’s graciousness made my day, make that my month.

In a gracious note to this writer, the one and only Mr. Buchanan wrote: “I believe your book is being sold [or bundled on Amazon] along with my new book, ‘Suicide of a Superpower: Will America survive to 2025.’ … my 18,000-word chapter on ethnonationalism and tribalism and the surge of both throughout the Third World—as well as our own declining world—tracks pretty much with what you wrote …”

UPDATE (Oct. 12): You wish, Myron! Being called a “fellow conservative” by Pat Buchanan is most definitely a high honor. Like myself, Mr. Buchanan regards giants such as Democrat Grover Cleveland, Russell Kirk, Barry Goldwater and “Senator Robert Taft of Ohio, also known as Mr. Republican,” as authentic conservatives. Snarky comments to the contrary, Buchanan is a member of the Old Right. (As am I.):

In the wonderfully conciliatory 1992 essay “A Strategy for The Right,” Murray N. Rothbard traced the original American Right to a reaction against the New Deal and the manner in which it obliterated the old republic’s classical-liberal foundations. Members of the original Right wanted to abolish the Welfare State ushered in by the New Deal and return to the foreign policy of George Washington or Thomas Jefferson, enunciated in his First Inaugural Address, in March 1801: “Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.” Avoiding the metropole status our imposter conservatives or neoconservatives are currently cultivating was crucial to an America First foreign affairs position.
By no means a monolith, the Old Right sported nuanced opinions in matters of philosophy and policy. Sadly, it petered out politically, only to be usurped by the W. F. Buckley, big-government “conservatives.”

Sure, Mr. Buchanan goes wrong on trade, but one would expect posters here to be familiar with my record on free trade.

UPDATE II: Protesters: Walking Ads For Bounty Business Creates (Kanye Joins Smelly Rally)

Business, Capitalism, Economy, Free Markets, Government, Technology, Trade

This detailed image titled “Down With Evil Corporations,” via LRC.COM, depicts the walking contradiction that the potentially violent Wall-Street protesters embody. The clothes they wear, the devices they use to communicate and transmit their (mostly) sub-intelligent message, the food they buy cheaply at the corner stand to sustain their efforts—these are all produced, facilitated or brought to market by the invisible hand these unproductive people wish to lop-off.

CLICK TO ENLARGE:

UPDATE I (Oct. Eighth): Myron you’re confused; your reasoning is backward. Corporations don’t have the powers you attribute them; to the extent that they have this list of powers you wrongly imbue them with—they got them from government. If government stuck to its constitutional (originalist) mandate, all else would fall into place. The feats you ascribe to companies are only ever made possible by state edict. I’m surprised you don’t see that Perry didn’t have to accept a bribe, the government doesn’t have to grant Microsoft all the H-1B visas it wants (while the IEEE reports that 4 percent of American engineers are unemployed), it doesn’t have to recapitalize the big banks, etc, etc.

UPDATE II (Oct. 11): Rapper Kanye West drops in on the Smelly Rally (“Occupy Wall Street”) “wearing $355 GIVENCHY shirt” and lots of gold, all fashioned by business for his pleasure.

Errant, Adulating Adults Enable Stupid Youth

America, Business, Critique, Education, Etiquette, Family, Intelligence, Outsourcing, Trade

On Facebook, Bob Murphy has presented a scenario that annoyed him:

… was at a restaurant in the Boston airport. It was very relaxed, just a few customers. My bill was for $14.85, and I paid with a $20 bill. The waiter gave me a $5 bill as change, then sauntered back to talk to the bartender. Discuss.

My take on Facebook: The young waiter probably can’t do simple math unless he closes the till, or something. The Korean young woman who mans the dry cleaners I frequent does all calculations in her head, as quick as a whip. Just as we were taught at school back in the day (I’m old, I know). Okay, be a pedant, Rob. You wanted a bill (as in an invoice). You wanted the agency to control the change you gave. But this is US youth you are dealing with. The other day, checking out at a big-box store, the same sort of simpleton insisted that the product I was purchasing (I told him the per-unit price) looked too expensive. There was no arguing with this hubristic creature. He would not check himself. He ended up shortchanging his employer to the tune of 90% of the item’s total price. I wanted to pay full price, but the young man kept shouting me down. “No, this looks too expensive to be true.” I knew this was an expensive item. He would have none of it.

Look, the adults who employ the youth adulate them, and do not wish to correct them. That’s been my experience. So let them live with the losses these pests incur.

Postscript: Meantime the Korean-owned dry cleaners I visit is making a mint, as other such establishments close down in my vicinity. The owner values every penny; he employs a sharp cookie to front his business. She’s sweet and genteel too.