On Wednesday, January 29, 2003, at 06:33 PM, Harmon Seaver wrote:
The subsidies for corn ethanol are indicative of the problem with interfering in markets:On Wed, Jan 29, 2003 at 07:53:21PM -0500, Jamie Lawrence wrote:More than that, it's the farm subsidies that make corn so cheap that it's theOne of the problems I think is rampant with, for instance, getting alternate fuel sources off the ground is that government subsidies are ensuring they don't happen by distorting the market for fossil fuels.
cheapest home heating fuel on the market. Corn is a really poor choice,
as feedstocks go, for making ethanol, but despite the absurdity of the whole
thing, that's what's being pushed by both gov't and agri-corps. Same with
biodiesel from soybeans -- an even worse choice in feedstock, but exactly the
same scenario.
-- someone decided "corn good, oil bad!"
-- those with a lot of corn, like Archer Daniels, sent in their lobbyists to push for this point of view
A small biodiesel producer in Vermont got shut down by the EPA not too longAgain, typical of the "shake down state." Once handouts and subsidies start, both sides try to limit who gets them...hence the situation where it's illegal to grow peanuts without a license. (As the chestnut goes, the Founders must be spinning in their graves.)
ago because they wouldn't pay $100,000 to the National Biodiesel Board to join
(http://www.biodiesel.org/ -- they are one part of the agri-corp welfare
conspirators pushing soybeans for biodiesel) and couldn't pay the million or so
the EPA wanted to test the "safety" of their product. Biodiesel is pretty safe,
people even drink it at promos.
What about "subsidies for gasoline," e.g., going to war over oil?
I'm against it. And there are simple solutions: the price of oil and gas goes up and down in response to supply, threats, etc. If gas hits $7 a gallon, maybe electric golf carts begin to look more attactive.
As for Iraq, letting them keep Kuwait in 1990-91 almost certainly would have driven the price of oil _DOWN_. A nation like Iraq is more interested in pumping than in hoarding, which the Kuwaiti and Saudi royal families are perfectly prepared to do (hence OPEC).
In any case, the solution is simple: it ain't the job of the U.S. military to run around the world picking regimes we like and regimes we don't like. Let markets clear.
And don't decide that "cornohol" (sounds like "cornhole,"doesn't it?) or "biodiesel" or "miracle weed" is something that markets ought to be distorted in favor of....else we'll get the kind of market distortions cited above, and a non-optimum solution.
You folks here pay lip service to aspect of free markets and anarcho-capitalism,but many of you consistently fail to see the follow-through, the applicability to the world around you. You need to have faith that greed is good, that free markets optimize a lot better than planners in Washington or Tokyo or Moscow do. And while no planning job is ever perfect, no optimization makes everybody happy, at least with free markets there is not the coercion and graft which feeds the state.
--Tim May
"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." -- Nietzsche
