I came back from NEFFA to a backlog of 173 articles in my RSS reader. Being a predictable person, my blogs pretty much cover two topics: Food and Economics.
Mostly it’s only a few depressing articles a day. I can generally handle them without much effect to my mood. But a five day backlog can be a bit sobering. I returned to discussions of unemployment and general recession chatter, and an utter outbreak of Swine Flu speculation. I hadn’t even heard of H1N1 when I left, and now it’s everywhere.
I try to remain optimistic. If nothing else, for my own sanity. I try to maintain some amount of faith in humanity to prevent me from settling in a depressive stupor, since that’s not at all functional. So I take joy in my immediate life and harbor strong hopes for the wider world.
But some days it’s harder than other.
The optimistic people talk about 9% unemployment is nowhere near as bad at the 25% during the great depression. But the 25% was from 1934. In the year after the 1929 crash, unemployment was 8.7% at the highest.
Granted, we know better this time. We recognize what’s going on, and we have an intelligent Keynesian president. We have safety nets. But we also have a much larger, more complicated system. A more tangled mess. Environmental worries are snowballing at an alarming rate. Problems seem to be happening faster and faster and solutions are caught up in bureaucracy, how can they catch up?
“Too big to fail” is a justification for propping up the banking sector. But “too big to win” seems more appropriate for humanity at the moment. Everything is so out of balance. In the medium run we’ll shift back to equilibrium, but what equilibrium will that be? Currently it looks bleak. Are there enough tools that we can make use of in the short run to alter our Destiny?
Nature operates in the long run, so is not really a factor here. Even if we blow ourselves up with nuclear war, she’ll survive us, and flourish long after we’re gone, whether in the form we know her now or something entirely different. Sustainability, Environmental Justice….all those movement have nothing to do with the survival of nature. It’s all about the survival of humanity. If the “save the earth” campaign was rebranded as “save the humans” would it have more support?
It’s a beautiful day outside, pink and yellow blossom amidst small green leaves everywhere under the bright blue sky. But also blazing hot. I have a lot to do, but I can’t focus well. Instead, I worry.
I used to research eschatology of different mythologies as a hobby. I stopped when I realized they disturbingly paralleled real life.
I cannot be optimistic today. I am afraid.
Love,
Herbert.
Economics’ third pillar is the assumption that good policies increase the range of choices an individual can make. Economists’ enthusiasm for income is driven by the view that more wealth gives people more choices. Our enthusiasm for political freedom has the same source. Economists talk about good policies increasing “utility levels” which is often understood as suggesting that these policies will make people happier. Happiness is an important emotion, but there is no sense in which it is particularly related to economist’s definition of utility. Formally, higher level of utility is equivelent of having more options, not wearing a smile.
Glaeser, Edward L., “The Economic Approach to Cities”, pg 3.
So, yeah. Economics is not the path to happiness. Anyone who says otherwise is trying to sell you something. And they’re probably not an economist.
If you want to read about whether more choice leads to more happiness, I recommend Barry Schwartz’s The Paradox of Choice
The Great Vegetarianism Debate is something I try to stay out of. It’s not that I don’t have opinions on it. It’s more that I feel that my opinions tend to be misunderstood.
In general, I feel that vegetarianism is a a more lifestyle choice than an omnivorous one. But I also do not feel that vegetarians have an inherent moral superiority than non-vegetarians.
Mostly, my issue with vegetarianism is that it obscures the bigger issue. It’s not about whether you eat meat or don’t eat meat. It’s about whether or not you eat conscientiously. It’s about paying all costs.
What does food cost? The trite answer would be “what it says on the sticker at the supermarket”. But is what you pay really what food costs?
Rarely. Food production and supply is a very competitive industry. Therefore, most non-monetary costs, such as pollution, cruel treatment to animals and workers, soil degradation, are going to be externalized. The only costs you see in an apple are the dollar costs of production, labor, transit, and storage. And even then, not even. The grain industry, for example, is heavily subsidized, so the price the distributor pays the farmer does not even cover production costs.
read more…
yeah, yeah, I know this is belated. Sue me.
I have finally made it through Michael Pollan’s engaging book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. I am probably the last foodie on the internet to have read it.
Our dependence on the industrial food system is sobering. Frightening is our refusal as a society to think about it. Pollan’s approach is open-minded and curious, following the simple question “What should I eat” backwards to “what am I eating”?”, “Where did it come from?” Questions that more of us would rather not have answered.
My overall impressions is that it was well presented and accessible, and while I had more background knowledge than the average reader, it still told me new things and made me think. I often found myself drawing conclusions from the text that Pollan made explicit a few pages later.
Below are my thoughts on the individual sections.
Love,
Herbert.
If the only ones who benefit from this celebration are those currently alive, it would be unfair to ask future generations to pay for any of those costs….Costs imposed on future generations should be commensurate with benefits received by them.
–Bluestone et al., The Urban Experience: Economics, Society, and Public Policy
Yet isn’t this exactly what we’re doing in terms of our environment? There is little economic justification for using up our natural resources now, putting our future into an ecological debt.
In some cases, debt is justified. Sometimes you need an influx of captial to get out of a period of recession and stagnation. But we’ve been borrowing and borrowing more in times of prosperity, instead of paying off the loans we already took. How does that make economic sense?
If, a hundred years from now, our great-grandchildren are still working to clean up the skies, still struggling to find enough food on a warmer climate with unpredictable and violent weather, how are we going to be remembered? Certainly not with fondness.
If we want to leave a planet that our children won’t hate us for, we need to start saving now.
Love,
Herbert.
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