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> But the most boneheaded, bizarre mistake that the Sri Lankan government made was a disastrous plan to shift the entire country to organic agriculture. In Apri

> But the most boneheaded, bizarre mistake that the Sri Lankan government made was a disastrous plan to shift the entire country to organic agriculture. In April of 2021 the government banned the import and use of pesticides and synthetic fertilizers. This devastated Sri Lankan agriculture, since, as it turns out, fertilizer is really really important. Production of tea — Sri Lanka’s main cash crop — fell by 18% in a year. Production of rice — the main food crop — fell by even more. From https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/03/05/sri-lanka-organic-farming-crisis/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/03/05/sri-lanka-organic-farmi... : > By 2020, the total cost of fertilizer imports and subsidies was close to $500 million each year. With fertilizer prices rising, the tab was likely to increase further in 2021. Banning synthetic fertilizers seemingly allowed Rajapaksa to kill two birds with one stone: improving the nation’s foreign exchange situation while also cutting a massive expenditure on subsidies from the pandemic-hit public budget. > But when it comes to agricultural practices and yields, there is no free lunch. Agricultural inputs—chemicals, nutrients, land, labor, and irrigation—bear a critical relationship to agricultural output. From the moment the plan was announced, agronomists in Sri Lanka and around the world warned that agricultural yields would fall substantially. The government claimed it would increase the production of manure and other organic fertilizers in place of imported synthetic fertilizers. But there was no conceivable way the nation could produce enough fertilizer domestically to make up for the shortfall. You don't get anything "for free", and cutting supports like this will inevitably doom a sputtering economy, when the actual solution was almost certainly more government spending, not less. The US is actually lucky to understand this at the deepest levels of policy and law making, with massive aid packages to prevent total collapse. Even Europe tried harsh austerity in the wake of 2008, and the fad lasted way too long there. The Sri Lankan leader's hostile attitude towards the Sri Lankan population is what made protesters storm the leader's home.

themitigating 4y ago
The US is very lucky as a significant amount of people have been taught that government aid/handouts are wrong, as in generally. I'm even impressed Trump spent a few trillion and still didn't get blasted for it by most people. The only two serious politicians who spoke up about it was Ben Sasse who in a conference call with constituents said "he spends like a drunken sailor" and Ted Cruise who at the end with the last aid package voted against it. What will happen to this country if the next president actually stops spending in order to do what his voters want?
- walrus01 4y ago
  What's funny is the deepest red counties in the reddest states are also the largest recipients of US domestic agriculture subsidies and benefit programs. Then you have other things like Walmart and similar McJobs where the government is indirectly subsidizing the companies, by various child food aid, healthcare and benefits to employees because the company doesn't pay enough for its employees to live without aid.
  - brigandish 4y ago
    That's why subsidies bad and subsidies good are a false dilemma. "Spending money well" might seem like an obvious solution but it runs up against the problem of corrupt politicians, of which there are many. Hence, we have (worldwide) politicians handing out money to places they are (probably) needed (in your example, the agriculture subsidies) and places they are not (Walmart and similar McJobs), and it's possible that the latter receive more than the former. It's also possible that it's impossible to get subsidies spent in a way that isn't rife with such corruption. I would say that the only way it may be possible is small government. Not because subsidies are bad, but the only way to watch government closely enough to keep corruption low is to make it small enough to watch in entirety. Like a computer program, if it has less lines and less features, or less overall complexity, it should be easier to spot bugs and egregious mistakes. That's not the same as not wanting features at all. Or, it can become a political version of Zawinski's law where people want more from government and the resulting size and complexity is such that a group of corrupt developers can spread their corruption across so many branches and parts of the project that no one can watch it all (after all, isn't that how the 3 letter agencies undermine security software?)
    - dmix 4y ago
      > would say that the only way it may be possible is small government. Not because subsidies are bad, but the only way to watch government closely enough to keep corruption low is to make it small enough to watch in entirety Well said, this sort of thinking needs to both be better understood on the right (all gov spending, taxation, and intervention isn’t immediately bad) and on the left (every critique of government doesn’t mean the only alternative people want is some radical anarcho-capitalist zero government fantasy world). Instead it’s smaller and more effective government but still strongly supporting it where it makes sense ie subsidized education, healthcare, and other places with uncontrolled externalities that markets can’t properly serve. More about being cheerleaders for what works, not just lazily pushing a government spending free for all nor a “stop everything” approach where only soft targets get reduced like teachers salaries instead of subsidies to billion dollar companies. It’s harder and nuanced, but still worth fighting for.
duxup 4y ago
You would hope that someone wanting to switch to organic agriculture would encourage it … rather than just flip a switch…
- BurningFrog 4y ago
  Reminds me of governments who try to switch people to public transport by making driving harder, rather than making public transport better.
  - vkou 4y ago
    In my experience, the number one thing that makes driving harder is other drivers, not the government. Drivers full roads to over-capacity and then I sit in gridlock.
    - cm2187 4y ago
      In Paris it is a deliberate attempt to create traffic jam to force people to stop driving. They only succeeded on the first part.
      - sofixa 4y ago
        But Paris already has amazing public transit that is only getting expanded more (line E to Mantes through La Défense, Grand Paris Express, line 14, a bunch of trams, etc.). And the point of the road closures was to make walking and mostly cycling more enjoyable. You can see that it worked, because places like Rivoli, quais de Seine, bd Sébastopol are full with bikes. Making driving more of a pain thus inciting more use of public transit or bikes is just a bonus.
      - orwin 4y ago
        Nah, i really dislike Paris and wouldn't come back ever, but in fairness, those measure really had an impact on the pollution and the public transportation useage.
      - nibbleshifter 4y ago
xyzzy123 4y ago
> cutting supports like this will inevitably doom a sputtering economy, when the actual solution was almost certainly more government spending, not less. In the US that might be a sensible policy decision but SL can't do that. The concrete supports that are needed (fuel, fertilizer, food) are bought with dollars and yuan. The government ran out of those, because it was already spending unsustainably to prop up the economy.
- afterburner 4y ago
  The government slashed taxes, right when the government needed the money. They were not making an honest effort to support the economy, they were setting up to loot it.
nostromo 4y ago
> The US is actually lucky to understand this at the deepest levels of policy and law making, with massive aid packages to prevent total collapse. The current inflation crisis suggests that even the US economy can reach its limit with endless money printing and stimulus. With the cost of borrowing going up, the executive and congress are going to start feeling pressure to cut spending or dramatically raise taxes.
- ceeplusplus 4y ago
  > With the cost of borrowing going up, the executive and congress are going to start feeling pressure to cut spending or dramatically raise taxes. Hmm, not sure that's the case given recent headlines in Politico.
- lkrubner 4y ago
  The current spike in inflation is a world-wide phenomena, effecting every country on Earth, and therefore it seems unlikely to have much to do with the USA's creation of new money. The USA printed trillions of dollars of new money after 2008 and yet inflation remained very low for the next decade. If, now, the USA's printing of money is having some new effect, you have to explain why Argentina, South Africa, India, Vietnam and China are suddenly vulnerable to USA monetary policy to a degree that they've never been vulnerable before.
  - anu7df 4y ago
    The current spike did not happen by chance or out of the blue. This is the result of worldwide efforts to limit the fallout of the 2008 financial crisis. To the extent that it was possible a lot of the countries followed the US in enacting liberal low cost lending. US of course with the mighty dollar was able to print a far more and pump far more into their economy than other countries. But many other countries followed with similar efforts. Also the newly minted dollars don't just sit in the US. I would say a lot of inflation in India is driven also by cheap VC money that flooded the Indian market in the last decade. Turns out if you dump a super duper amount of money into the economy inflation goes up. Who knew!!? As for the delay of a decade for this to kick in, my theory is that the supply took that time to really hot the market because only a few uber rich made the most of this liberal printing frenzy and the bottleneck delayed the eventual overheating of the market.
UkrainianJew 4y ago
>You don't get anything "for free", and cutting supports like this will inevitably doom a sputtering economy, when the actual solution was almost certainly more government spending, not less. Government spending isn't free magic money either. You increase the amount of money in circulation, hoping that people will produce more goods. Instead, you increase the size of the bullshit economy - low-effort activities that only exist under the abundance of money. So more and more stuff gets imported from China because nobody in the right mind will take a $1/hour factory job if you can be a wellness youtuber for a multiple of that. The amount of useless bureaucracy grows, the number of people willing to take responsibility dwindles, but everyone is happy because, well, Mother Government takes care of us all. Occasionally you notice that the wages don't grow and the housing is unaffordable because the workers don't really have any leverage anymore, but you brush off those thoughts because there are far too many distractions anyway. Then BOOM, that fragile supply line involving slave labor in China and natural resources from Putin's friends gets broken, and suddenly, we have a shortage of everything, can't manufacture our own stuff, and that freshly minted dollar can buy you many shitcoins, but won't get you any baby formula. I think, we are about to find out that excessive spending was nothing more than borrowing from our future prosperity, and the time for that debt to mature is coming fast.
- ip26 4y ago
  That’s when it goes bad, but borrowing against the future to kickstart today is also the principal behind innumerable success stories.
  - UkrainianJew 4y ago
    May I humbly ask for an example? In my personal experience, trying to rush a short-term solution while ignoring the long-term implications always makes situation worse. Like eating planting stock to address immediate hunger would cause a devastating famine next season.
    - barry-cotter 4y ago
      Japan, Taiwan and South Korea all taxed the crap out of their people while poor to subsidise industry by controlling foreign exchange. It still would have been impossible without massive amounts of foreign investment. They had to borrow the money abroad to invest in industrial infrastructure. Same for the US in the 1800s. Britain had the capital. The US had the exciting investment opportunities. The UK took so long to get to the Industrial Revolution because it had to save the money itself. Everyone since then has been able to rely on capital other people in order countries have saved to jumpstart their economic growth.

themitigating 4y ago

The US is very lucky as a significant amount of people have been taught that government aid/handouts are wrong, as in generally. I'm even impressed Trump spent a few trillion and still didn't get blasted for it by most people. The only two serious politicians who spoke up about it was Ben Sasse who in a conference call with constituents said "he spends like a drunken sailor" and Ted Cruise who at the end with the last aid package voted against it. What will happen to this country if the next president actually stops spending in order to do what his voters want?

walrus01 4y ago
What's funny is the deepest red counties in the reddest states are also the largest recipients of US domestic agriculture subsidies and benefit programs. Then you have other things like Walmart and similar McJobs where the government is indirectly subsidizing the companies, by various child food aid, healthcare and benefits to employees because the company doesn't pay enough for its employees to live without aid.
- brigandish 4y ago
  That's why subsidies bad and subsidies good are a false dilemma. "Spending money well" might seem like an obvious solution but it runs up against the problem of corrupt politicians, of which there are many. Hence, we have (worldwide) politicians handing out money to places they are (probably) needed (in your example, the agriculture subsidies) and places they are not (Walmart and similar McJobs), and it's possible that the latter receive more than the former. It's also possible that it's impossible to get subsidies spent in a way that isn't rife with such corruption. I would say that the only way it may be possible is small government. Not because subsidies are bad, but the only way to watch government closely enough to keep corruption low is to make it small enough to watch in entirety. Like a computer program, if it has less lines and less features, or less overall complexity, it should be easier to spot bugs and egregious mistakes. That's not the same as not wanting features at all. Or, it can become a political version of Zawinski's law where people want more from government and the resulting size and complexity is such that a group of corrupt developers can spread their corruption across so many branches and parts of the project that no one can watch it all (after all, isn't that how the 3 letter agencies undermine security software?)
  - dmix 4y ago
    > would say that the only way it may be possible is small government. Not because subsidies are bad, but the only way to watch government closely enough to keep corruption low is to make it small enough to watch in entirety Well said, this sort of thinking needs to both be better understood on the right (all gov spending, taxation, and intervention isn’t immediately bad) and on the left (every critique of government doesn’t mean the only alternative people want is some radical anarcho-capitalist zero government fantasy world). Instead it’s smaller and more effective government but still strongly supporting it where it makes sense ie subsidized education, healthcare, and other places with uncontrolled externalities that markets can’t properly serve. More about being cheerleaders for what works, not just lazily pushing a government spending free for all nor a “stop everything” approach where only soft targets get reduced like teachers salaries instead of subsidies to billion dollar companies. It’s harder and nuanced, but still worth fighting for.

duxup 4y ago

You would hope that someone wanting to switch to organic agriculture would encourage it … rather than just flip a switch…

BurningFrog 4y ago
Reminds me of governments who try to switch people to public transport by making driving harder, rather than making public transport better.
- vkou 4y ago
  In my experience, the number one thing that makes driving harder is other drivers, not the government. Drivers full roads to over-capacity and then I sit in gridlock.
  - cm2187 4y ago
    In Paris it is a deliberate attempt to create traffic jam to force people to stop driving. They only succeeded on the first part.
    - sofixa 4y ago
      But Paris already has amazing public transit that is only getting expanded more (line E to Mantes through La Défense, Grand Paris Express, line 14, a bunch of trams, etc.). And the point of the road closures was to make walking and mostly cycling more enjoyable. You can see that it worked, because places like Rivoli, quais de Seine, bd Sébastopol are full with bikes. Making driving more of a pain thus inciting more use of public transit or bikes is just a bonus.
    - orwin 4y ago
      Nah, i really dislike Paris and wouldn't come back ever, but in fairness, those measure really had an impact on the pollution and the public transportation useage.
    - nibbleshifter 4y ago

xyzzy123 4y ago

> cutting supports like this will inevitably doom a sputtering economy, when the actual solution was almost certainly more government spending, not less. In the US that might be a sensible policy decision but SL can't do that. The concrete supports that are needed (fuel, fertilizer, food) are bought with dollars and yuan. The government ran out of those, because it was already spending unsustainably to prop up the economy.

afterburner 4y ago
The government slashed taxes, right when the government needed the money. They were not making an honest effort to support the economy, they were setting up to loot it.

nostromo 4y ago

> The US is actually lucky to understand this at the deepest levels of policy and law making, with massive aid packages to prevent total collapse. The current inflation crisis suggests that even the US economy can reach its limit with endless money printing and stimulus. With the cost of borrowing going up, the executive and congress are going to start feeling pressure to cut spending or dramatically raise taxes.

ceeplusplus 4y ago
> With the cost of borrowing going up, the executive and congress are going to start feeling pressure to cut spending or dramatically raise taxes. Hmm, not sure that's the case given recent headlines in Politico.
lkrubner 4y ago
The current spike in inflation is a world-wide phenomena, effecting every country on Earth, and therefore it seems unlikely to have much to do with the USA's creation of new money. The USA printed trillions of dollars of new money after 2008 and yet inflation remained very low for the next decade. If, now, the USA's printing of money is having some new effect, you have to explain why Argentina, South Africa, India, Vietnam and China are suddenly vulnerable to USA monetary policy to a degree that they've never been vulnerable before.
- anu7df 4y ago
  The current spike did not happen by chance or out of the blue. This is the result of worldwide efforts to limit the fallout of the 2008 financial crisis. To the extent that it was possible a lot of the countries followed the US in enacting liberal low cost lending. US of course with the mighty dollar was able to print a far more and pump far more into their economy than other countries. But many other countries followed with similar efforts. Also the newly minted dollars don't just sit in the US. I would say a lot of inflation in India is driven also by cheap VC money that flooded the Indian market in the last decade. Turns out if you dump a super duper amount of money into the economy inflation goes up. Who knew!!? As for the delay of a decade for this to kick in, my theory is that the supply took that time to really hot the market because only a few uber rich made the most of this liberal printing frenzy and the bottleneck delayed the eventual overheating of the market.

UkrainianJew 4y ago

>You don't get anything "for free", and cutting supports like this will inevitably doom a sputtering economy, when the actual solution was almost certainly more government spending, not less. Government spending isn't free magic money either. You increase the amount of money in circulation, hoping that people will produce more goods. Instead, you increase the size of the bullshit economy - low-effort activities that only exist under the abundance of money. So more and more stuff gets imported from China because nobody in the right mind will take a $1/hour factory job if you can be a wellness youtuber for a multiple of that. The amount of useless bureaucracy grows, the number of people willing to take responsibility dwindles, but everyone is happy because, well, Mother Government takes care of us all. Occasionally you notice that the wages don't grow and the housing is unaffordable because the workers don't really have any leverage anymore, but you brush off those thoughts because there are far too many distractions anyway. Then BOOM, that fragile supply line involving slave labor in China and natural resources from Putin's friends gets broken, and suddenly, we have a shortage of everything, can't manufacture our own stuff, and that freshly minted dollar can buy you many shitcoins, but won't get you any baby formula. I think, we are about to find out that excessive spending was nothing more than borrowing from our future prosperity, and the time for that debt to mature is coming fast.

ip26 4y ago
That’s when it goes bad, but borrowing against the future to kickstart today is also the principal behind innumerable success stories.
- UkrainianJew 4y ago
  May I humbly ask for an example? In my personal experience, trying to rush a short-term solution while ignoring the long-term implications always makes situation worse. Like eating planting stock to address immediate hunger would cause a devastating famine next season.
  - barry-cotter 4y ago
    Japan, Taiwan and South Korea all taxed the crap out of their people while poor to subsidise industry by controlling foreign exchange. It still would have been impossible without massive amounts of foreign investment. They had to borrow the money abroad to invest in industrial infrastructure. Same for the US in the 1800s. Britain had the capital. The US had the exciting investment opportunities. The UK took so long to get to the Industrial Revolution because it had to save the money itself. Everyone since then has been able to rely on capital other people in order countries have saved to jumpstart their economic growth.