Letters to the Editor
Sean SIberio
Published Letters: 154 Editor's Choice: 32
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"Equal footing" is a misnomer...
[Read the article: Much ado about tortillas and ethanol]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Even with fully "liberalized" trade rules, as suggested by some here, certain capital realities hit the small farmer versus the agri-business. Issues of distribution, manufacturing and refinement into final product, and sheer land size stack the deck against the small farmer. Even if the trade rules were to have been fully liberalized in 1994, when NAFTA was signed into being, the lack of capital available would have failed the small farmer, and inevitably (like what happened anyways) agribusiness would have consolidated its position through buckets of money.
The problem with most people who support "globalization" (or atleast their preferred version of it) is that they like to talk about "equal footing" without checking to see if it actually IS. The way things are done now its like taking a kid from a high school baseball team, taking a player from the majors, throwing them into a game with rules that apply "equally" to them, and calling it fair. No one in their right mind would think that, and its a credit to peoples delusional belief in "market forces" (which evidently ranks up there with gravity for sheer inviolability) that its still accepted as such.
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"Cheap" is relative...
[Read the article: Much ado about tortillas and ethanol]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Not unlike the robber barons who sold various goods "cheap" through a system of vertical corporations, agribusiness floods the market with "cheap" goods that mostly it reaps the benefit of by owning the final end producer, or striking sweetheart deals with the final selling vendor, assuring that while things may be "cheap" enough for the final vendor, they hardly ever are for the consumer.
Pointing out that goods are "cheap" is also unfair, especially in the context of inflation, stagnant real wages, and unemployment. Many goods and services can be found for what's once was considered "cheap", nominally, but in the context of peoples wages, are not so. You see this especially in the housing market, where increasing prices have shut out large portions of the population, or in segments of the market that are not very well assessed in regards to inflation (such as health-care) or are completely off the radar (such as retirement benefits).
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Still not "equal"...
[Read the article: Much ado about tortillas and ethanol]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]kdwmson,
You ignore the fact, that even if trade rules were "liberalized" the issue of capital would have been stacked, as I mentioned below.
People who paint government intervention as "wasting" productivity I am sure own a house backed by the financial instruments of the GSE, have a social security and Medicare benefits (eventually), and if they had a family whose been here since the Great Depression, had a variety of other "productivity" wasting intervention programs help them out. Not to mention the Federal Reserve that oversees cash flow, the FDIC which oversees loan liabilities, and a bazillion other "interventionist" programs that generally keep the economy from collapsing in on itself.
Land reform in agriculture is something that hasn't been discussed in America, though its generally on the agenda of most developing nations, and its one that should be at the forefront of American policy. The end of subsidies for agribusiness, the adjustment of rural and land-aid for smaller farmers, coupled with new and aggressive agricultural labor reforms should be the crux of the deal.
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Actually...
[Read the article: Much ado about tortillas and ethanol]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]--kdwmson
Actually, yes it is, and your own examples show how.
Sure, GM can't make you buy a car. But you'd be hard pressed not to eventually buy a car without interacting with one the major car companies. Do you know of any major car companies founded in the past 30 years, that wasn't spun off of another company, or merely an import of an already existing company (ala the Japanese majors?). Unless you're one of the couple thousand people that bought a DeLorean, I think we can see how lack of capital can affect your buying choices in the car market.
The software market defies many of the rules of capitalization because its medium is no incredibly cheap and easy to move. But even then, realistically, what are the chances of you founding an OS to challenge Microsoft's dominance? Outside of Linux (which I type on as we speak), whom got around the issue by essentially being a for-free volunteer, damn near communistic experiment, no one else has made a dent. And in the IT contracting market (which is what essentially IBM is in now) it requires huge investments in labor and hardware to be able to offer support and service to clients.
Prada does care about Wal-Mart, because knock offs of its product are abound in Wal-Mart and many other discount big box stores, diluting its brand image, and essentially making mass-market something thats supposed to have a limited, upper class cache to it.
And as to whether or not small-scale agriculture is an effective model, well yes, it actually is. Mono crop agriculture, reliant almost entirely on petroleum derived fertilizers and gas-powered machinery, was, and is, at best a temporary solution to issues of food security. Production, in fact, has never been the main reason for starvation of a population, except in the cases of natural disaster or war. Distribution, rather has always been the issue.
The problem with big L Libertarians (I hesitate to even use the word, because its an insult to real libertarians like Bakunin, Kropotkin and others) is the worship of property rights and private capital, as if its any less tyrannical or more benevolent than government fiat. It's not, and it explains why, despite their vociferous output outpacing their own relevence, "L"ibertarians are, to quote Bob Black, "Republicans who do drugs".