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Imagine having no Farm Policy and we end up having food shortages, there would be a revolution. I can imagine. After all, this country has no Plate Policy, and

Imagine having no Farm Policy and we end up having food shortages, there would be a revolution. I can imagine. After all, this country has no Plate Policy, and I routinely end up eating off the floor. And I really wish we had a Consumer Electronics and Computers policy; I'm really jealous of the country that produced the iPhone and the Macbook because of those attributes. Fortunately, the country I live in does have a Real Estate Policy and a Banking System policy, and they're willing to put my money where their mouths are! It's working out about as well as one would expect.

senthil_rajasek 17y ago
"After all, this country has no Plate Policy, and I routinely end up eating off the floor." So you agree we have policies only for issues that matter. Just because policies fail does not mean that we do not need any. What alternatives do we have to make sure we don't have food shortages, surprise food price increases and that it all scales for everyone etc.,?
- randallsquared 17y ago
  So you agree we have policies only for issues that matter. As time goes on, more and more areas will "matter" in this way. What alternatives do we have to make sure we don't have food shortages, surprise food price increases and that it all scales for everyone etc.,? Well, we could try using markets and speculation, since that's what they're good at. Radical, I know.
- barrkel 17y ago
  Prices are information. The best guarantee that we don't have food shortages is to use prices to communicate our desire for food, and insurance to guarantee it. That should both encourage food production and inventive ways of securing that production (e.g. diversification in crop, geography, diversity, etc.). But policies do not communicate information very well. They don't respond as fast as markets do, to changes in demand or supply. They are liable to political interference, as different sectors of the economy capture policy-making bodies and extract rents: the people who know most about an industry come from the industry, so there tends to be a two-way door between policy-makers and the industry, warping incentives. So I would argue that to secure more certainty for food supplies, we would be better off looking at insurance-based mechanisms, rather than direct government involvement in food production, subsidization, etc.
  - 0x44 17y ago
    I think it could be argued that for certain classes of good, efficient markets can be a net detriment to all involved. In the case of agriculture, the inefficiency created by government interference and planning helps flatten fluctuations in staple production, meaning that fewer people move into non-potable cash crops and the market as a whole is better served because people don't starve.
  - crpatino 17y ago
    The problem with the food supply is that there is a long funnel that the demand feedback has to go in order to change it. If your community suddenly realizes it needs more food, there is no way that the food can come to existence in days or even weeks. To some degree, other communities will be more willing to sell more of their food surplus to you if prices go up (after of days or weeks of delay to have the whole thing sorted out), and that would pick up some of the slack. But in the short and middle term, what will happen is that the poor will simply get priced out of the market. An intelligent policy would be to provide a food buffer, a margin of safety, that gives the price signal enough time to travel through the markets. In this case, you get the benefits of a free market, but prevent the worst side effects of it.
    - barrkel 17y ago
      And this is why futures markets make sense. If a (food) insurance seller wants to hedge their risk, they could purchase futures, driving up the price of those futures; and a way to arbitrage an increase in price between today's price and a future price is to store it (i.e. your buffer). For example, the first forward contracts on the Chicago Board of Trade, the oldest futures exchange, were food contracts. But none of these mechanisms have a necessary requirement for governmental policy intervention, save perhaps collective purchasing of insurance.
      - crpatino 17y ago
        Thank you, barrkel. I have been thinking hard at your response, and I don't think I can offer a complete comment on it. I think these market mechanisms solve part of the problem, and at least do better than the current policies of USDA. However, your proposal is far from perfect and has it's own set of problems. For one, your average granny on social security is unlikely to buy any futures; and the people who does is likely to come and profiteer on her. Still, that is better than starving to death. I have read Pollan's Omnivore Dilemma, and found his description of New Deal agriculture policies very interesting. I encourage you to have a look and compare those with the ones in effect today.
MartinCron 17y ago
Pure capitalist libertarianism like that works really well if you live in a society willing to stand back and let people die as a result of different decisions or even circumstances outside their control. History has shown that's not really the society that civilized humans want to live in.
- eru 17y ago
  I would just take the grand-parent post as a satire of the grand-grand-parent post about the need for a farm policy. There are good arguments for having some services provided by the state (though we may argue whether they are good enough arguments). I did not take the grand parent as making the argument that everything the state does is evil.
- koanarc 17y ago
  It might not be the world we want to live in, but that's life. Natural selection is the name of the game. It baffles me that people think social development can be somehow exempted from evolutionary processes. Call it callous or compassionless, if you want, but there will always be less fit members of a species/society. Humans didn't get to this spot on the food chain by subsidizing failure. If we want to increase prosperity, we should stop encouraging the propagation of actions/ideas/genes that would otherwise be unsustainable without throwing short-sighted policy and/or tax money at it.
  - DannoHung 17y ago
    The late 19th century called, they want their rationalized institutional cruelty back.
    - koanarc 17y ago
      Heh, I'm not suggesting institutional anything. Precisely the opposite. I'm saying that in the bigger picture, welfare and subsidies and coercive interference in general hurt more than they help. E.g., aid to North Korea might keep impoverished North Koreans alive longer, but it will do nothing for their long term prosperity. It just gives them a chance to give birth to more impoverished North Koreans. Farm subsidies, etc, are arrogant, over-simplistic meddling with extremely complex natural systems that will have -- as the article in question was pointing out -- any number of unpredictable consequences. I just don't buy the idea that the short-sighted whims of politics can make the world a better place. [edit: adding for clarity: "stop encouraging" DOES NOT translate as "start discouraging"]
yellowbkpk 17y ago
Ok, there might be no "Plate Policy", but there are FDA rules that say your plate must be clean when you eat at a restaurant and that the plates you eat from at home (surely imported from China) can't have poisonous heavy metals in them.

senthil_rajasek 17y ago

"After all, this country has no Plate Policy, and I routinely end up eating off the floor." So you agree we have policies only for issues that matter. Just because policies fail does not mean that we do not need any. What alternatives do we have to make sure we don't have food shortages, surprise food price increases and that it all scales for everyone etc.,?

randallsquared 17y ago
So you agree we have policies only for issues that matter. As time goes on, more and more areas will "matter" in this way. What alternatives do we have to make sure we don't have food shortages, surprise food price increases and that it all scales for everyone etc.,? Well, we could try using markets and speculation, since that's what they're good at. Radical, I know.
barrkel 17y ago
Prices are information. The best guarantee that we don't have food shortages is to use prices to communicate our desire for food, and insurance to guarantee it. That should both encourage food production and inventive ways of securing that production (e.g. diversification in crop, geography, diversity, etc.). But policies do not communicate information very well. They don't respond as fast as markets do, to changes in demand or supply. They are liable to political interference, as different sectors of the economy capture policy-making bodies and extract rents: the people who know most about an industry come from the industry, so there tends to be a two-way door between policy-makers and the industry, warping incentives. So I would argue that to secure more certainty for food supplies, we would be better off looking at insurance-based mechanisms, rather than direct government involvement in food production, subsidization, etc.
- 0x44 17y ago
  I think it could be argued that for certain classes of good, efficient markets can be a net detriment to all involved. In the case of agriculture, the inefficiency created by government interference and planning helps flatten fluctuations in staple production, meaning that fewer people move into non-potable cash crops and the market as a whole is better served because people don't starve.
- crpatino 17y ago
  The problem with the food supply is that there is a long funnel that the demand feedback has to go in order to change it. If your community suddenly realizes it needs more food, there is no way that the food can come to existence in days or even weeks. To some degree, other communities will be more willing to sell more of their food surplus to you if prices go up (after of days or weeks of delay to have the whole thing sorted out), and that would pick up some of the slack. But in the short and middle term, what will happen is that the poor will simply get priced out of the market. An intelligent policy would be to provide a food buffer, a margin of safety, that gives the price signal enough time to travel through the markets. In this case, you get the benefits of a free market, but prevent the worst side effects of it.
  - barrkel 17y ago
    And this is why futures markets make sense. If a (food) insurance seller wants to hedge their risk, they could purchase futures, driving up the price of those futures; and a way to arbitrage an increase in price between today's price and a future price is to store it (i.e. your buffer). For example, the first forward contracts on the Chicago Board of Trade, the oldest futures exchange, were food contracts. But none of these mechanisms have a necessary requirement for governmental policy intervention, save perhaps collective purchasing of insurance.
    - crpatino 17y ago
      Thank you, barrkel. I have been thinking hard at your response, and I don't think I can offer a complete comment on it. I think these market mechanisms solve part of the problem, and at least do better than the current policies of USDA. However, your proposal is far from perfect and has it's own set of problems. For one, your average granny on social security is unlikely to buy any futures; and the people who does is likely to come and profiteer on her. Still, that is better than starving to death. I have read Pollan's Omnivore Dilemma, and found his description of New Deal agriculture policies very interesting. I encourage you to have a look and compare those with the ones in effect today.

MartinCron 17y ago

Pure capitalist libertarianism like that works really well if you live in a society willing to stand back and let people die as a result of different decisions or even circumstances outside their control. History has shown that's not really the society that civilized humans want to live in.

eru 17y ago
I would just take the grand-parent post as a satire of the grand-grand-parent post about the need for a farm policy. There are good arguments for having some services provided by the state (though we may argue whether they are good enough arguments). I did not take the grand parent as making the argument that everything the state does is evil.
koanarc 17y ago
It might not be the world we want to live in, but that's life. Natural selection is the name of the game. It baffles me that people think social development can be somehow exempted from evolutionary processes. Call it callous or compassionless, if you want, but there will always be less fit members of a species/society. Humans didn't get to this spot on the food chain by subsidizing failure. If we want to increase prosperity, we should stop encouraging the propagation of actions/ideas/genes that would otherwise be unsustainable without throwing short-sighted policy and/or tax money at it.
- DannoHung 17y ago
  The late 19th century called, they want their rationalized institutional cruelty back.
  - koanarc 17y ago
    Heh, I'm not suggesting institutional anything. Precisely the opposite. I'm saying that in the bigger picture, welfare and subsidies and coercive interference in general hurt more than they help. E.g., aid to North Korea might keep impoverished North Koreans alive longer, but it will do nothing for their long term prosperity. It just gives them a chance to give birth to more impoverished North Koreans. Farm subsidies, etc, are arrogant, over-simplistic meddling with extremely complex natural systems that will have -- as the article in question was pointing out -- any number of unpredictable consequences. I just don't buy the idea that the short-sighted whims of politics can make the world a better place. [edit: adding for clarity: "stop encouraging" DOES NOT translate as "start discouraging"]

yellowbkpk 17y ago

Ok, there might be no "Plate Policy", but there are FDA rules that say your plate must be clean when you eat at a restaurant and that the plates you eat from at home (surely imported from China) can't have poisonous heavy metals in them.