Wednesday, December 08, 2004
My beef:
Today the Supreme Court hears a case on compelled speech by cow killers, to fund the "beef its what's for dinner" ads. The case will stand or fall on first amendment law grounds. I hope, of course, that the program is found unconstitutional. The government should not be taxing people to subsidize speech they oppose. The case could go either way.
This post is not about why the beef speech program is unconstitutional, just about why it is bad public policy. Some people think of government as like a rational and benevolent entity, fine-tuning the economy, helping the poor, keeping the peace and running justice systems that deter evildoers.
Others view government like a cancer, a remorseless remora, a parasite that sucks the lifeblood out of the economy, keeping people poor, always looking for a smaller weaker country to pick on, using its courts to oppress the citizens, especially ethnic and religious minorities.
Still others hold a more moderate view, seeing a possibility of keeping government craziness in check by a system of checks and balances, so that rational policies can be selected for at several levels, and irrational ones exposed and criticized by a free press and democratic process. My own view is some mix of the second and third aprroaches. Thinking out loud here, I hope to support this theory with the example of the 1985 Beef Act and the review of its constitutionality.
Beef. In most of the world, it's not what's for dinner. As Dan Drazner remarked recently, goat is more common than beef. Beef does well on lush plains with plenty of food and water. In more marginal areas, goats are more efficient, eating a wider variety of food. This is not a pro-goat post. Both animals, if raised in numbers in excess of the carrying capacity of the land, have the ability to turn prairie into desert. The sahara used to be a forest, before 5000 years of overgrazing.
Cows are doing to the american southwest what sheep did to britain. Sherwood forest is now sherwood lawn. (If you happen to go to sherwood forest, stop by Riber Castle - there's a nice zoo.) As usual, i'm drifting off into tangents, so I'll try bullet points.
A diet of beef lowers life expectancy from 100 to 50. A beef-heavy american diet
tends to cause heart disease, cancer, liver failure, gout, and acne. Throw in a tobacco habit and you can reasonably expect to die before your time. Beef kills people.
We live in a violent world. Last century, 100 million people were killed by governments, and at least a milion more by the private sector. The routine killing and mutilation of cattle desensitizes people towards violence.
Overgrazing in the southwest is literally the tragedy of the commons, turning prairie into desert. It's much worse than that, though. Much, perhaps most, beef eaten by North Americans is raised in Latin or South America in a process of slash and burn agriculture, in which jungle is cleared for pasture, which becomes desert,
so more jungle is cleared. Deforestation is causing global warming, disruption of the water cycle, disappearance of songbirds, and a wave of extinctions, both of species and of cultures, as indigenous peoples lose their homeland. Beef threatens homeland security. Beef is killing the planet.
Beef ads don't seek to inform consumers. It's all about brainwashing, not that there's anything wrong with a clean brain. Instead of respecting consumers as rational decisionmakers, the "what's for dinner" ads use emotional appeals of family togetherness. If consumers can be conditioned through propaganda to buy more beef, can they be conditioned to vote for a cowboy?
Beef act funds do little or nothing to help the small rancher. If demand increases,
production at the margin increases, as worse land is put into production or more cattle are crowded into feedlots. The ranchers are taxed and pass the bill on to consumers. The big agribusiness firms that do most of the processing and retail don't pay a dime, while the major media corporations like clear channel and abc/disney pocket the loot.
Do the companies that benefit return the favor by contributing or otherwise supporting those who vote for the act? I'll leave that issue to others. Maybe Ralph Nader would have some data.
A system in which the government manages economic decisions, while leaving ownership and profit in private hands, is neither fish nor foul, not capitalism, not socialism. There's a word for it, but it's not a nice word and this is a family blog. A family values blog.
Most of those who voted for the beef act are either Republicans, who tend to claim to support free enterprize, or Democrats, who claim to stand up for the little guy.
The beef act, which undermines the market economy and taxes the workingman's hamburger to subsidize a handful of powerful special interests, shows that our elected officials are hypocrits, but we knew that.
What else? Let's see, famine isn't what it used to be, but there are a still a billion hungry people out there. Grain fed to beef could be bread and tofu for the hungry. The beef act contributes to starvation among little children. If there are
a billion hungry people, and only 26% of them were children, that's still one for every american citizen. Repeal of the beef act would help starving children. Do it for the children.
Let me see if I can recap.
Beef kills. Beef kills people, especially white rich middleclass american men, by heart attacks, cancer, and liver failure. Beef kills children, by diverting cereal protein away from people and into animals. Beef kills the planet, through deforestation.
The beef act distorts the economy. It mostly benefits a small handful of powerful special interests, and doesn't benefit the rancher. It undermines the economic system, and by taxing "food" is regressive. It subsidizes violence against animals, a training ground for violence against humans.
Oh one more thing. Is it just me, or aren't those commercials really annoying?
That's what economists call a negative externality.
None of this really matters much to how the court will resolve the first amendment issue. Post-Lochner,the court tends to defer to congress when it comes to economic regulation that is arbitrary and capricious, wrongheaded, corrupt, stupid and evil.
The court will ponder whether the beef act involves the freedom of speech, and whether that freedom is abridged or infringed, and whether some government interest such as "we really really felt like it" lets them get away with it this time. Again.
There are good arguments on both sides. While I was writing this, oral argument took place.
Today the Supreme Court hears a case on compelled speech by cow killers, to fund the "beef its what's for dinner" ads. The case will stand or fall on first amendment law grounds. I hope, of course, that the program is found unconstitutional. The government should not be taxing people to subsidize speech they oppose. The case could go either way.
This post is not about why the beef speech program is unconstitutional, just about why it is bad public policy. Some people think of government as like a rational and benevolent entity, fine-tuning the economy, helping the poor, keeping the peace and running justice systems that deter evildoers.
Others view government like a cancer, a remorseless remora, a parasite that sucks the lifeblood out of the economy, keeping people poor, always looking for a smaller weaker country to pick on, using its courts to oppress the citizens, especially ethnic and religious minorities.
Still others hold a more moderate view, seeing a possibility of keeping government craziness in check by a system of checks and balances, so that rational policies can be selected for at several levels, and irrational ones exposed and criticized by a free press and democratic process. My own view is some mix of the second and third aprroaches. Thinking out loud here, I hope to support this theory with the example of the 1985 Beef Act and the review of its constitutionality.
Beef. In most of the world, it's not what's for dinner. As Dan Drazner remarked recently, goat is more common than beef. Beef does well on lush plains with plenty of food and water. In more marginal areas, goats are more efficient, eating a wider variety of food. This is not a pro-goat post. Both animals, if raised in numbers in excess of the carrying capacity of the land, have the ability to turn prairie into desert. The sahara used to be a forest, before 5000 years of overgrazing.
Cows are doing to the american southwest what sheep did to britain. Sherwood forest is now sherwood lawn. (If you happen to go to sherwood forest, stop by Riber Castle - there's a nice zoo.) As usual, i'm drifting off into tangents, so I'll try bullet points.
A diet of beef lowers life expectancy from 100 to 50. A beef-heavy american diet
tends to cause heart disease, cancer, liver failure, gout, and acne. Throw in a tobacco habit and you can reasonably expect to die before your time. Beef kills people.
We live in a violent world. Last century, 100 million people were killed by governments, and at least a milion more by the private sector. The routine killing and mutilation of cattle desensitizes people towards violence.
Overgrazing in the southwest is literally the tragedy of the commons, turning prairie into desert. It's much worse than that, though. Much, perhaps most, beef eaten by North Americans is raised in Latin or South America in a process of slash and burn agriculture, in which jungle is cleared for pasture, which becomes desert,
so more jungle is cleared. Deforestation is causing global warming, disruption of the water cycle, disappearance of songbirds, and a wave of extinctions, both of species and of cultures, as indigenous peoples lose their homeland. Beef threatens homeland security. Beef is killing the planet.
Beef ads don't seek to inform consumers. It's all about brainwashing, not that there's anything wrong with a clean brain. Instead of respecting consumers as rational decisionmakers, the "what's for dinner" ads use emotional appeals of family togetherness. If consumers can be conditioned through propaganda to buy more beef, can they be conditioned to vote for a cowboy?
Beef act funds do little or nothing to help the small rancher. If demand increases,
production at the margin increases, as worse land is put into production or more cattle are crowded into feedlots. The ranchers are taxed and pass the bill on to consumers. The big agribusiness firms that do most of the processing and retail don't pay a dime, while the major media corporations like clear channel and abc/disney pocket the loot.
Do the companies that benefit return the favor by contributing or otherwise supporting those who vote for the act? I'll leave that issue to others. Maybe Ralph Nader would have some data.
A system in which the government manages economic decisions, while leaving ownership and profit in private hands, is neither fish nor foul, not capitalism, not socialism. There's a word for it, but it's not a nice word and this is a family blog. A family values blog.
Most of those who voted for the beef act are either Republicans, who tend to claim to support free enterprize, or Democrats, who claim to stand up for the little guy.
The beef act, which undermines the market economy and taxes the workingman's hamburger to subsidize a handful of powerful special interests, shows that our elected officials are hypocrits, but we knew that.
What else? Let's see, famine isn't what it used to be, but there are a still a billion hungry people out there. Grain fed to beef could be bread and tofu for the hungry. The beef act contributes to starvation among little children. If there are
a billion hungry people, and only 26% of them were children, that's still one for every american citizen. Repeal of the beef act would help starving children. Do it for the children.
Let me see if I can recap.
Beef kills. Beef kills people, especially white rich middleclass american men, by heart attacks, cancer, and liver failure. Beef kills children, by diverting cereal protein away from people and into animals. Beef kills the planet, through deforestation.
The beef act distorts the economy. It mostly benefits a small handful of powerful special interests, and doesn't benefit the rancher. It undermines the economic system, and by taxing "food" is regressive. It subsidizes violence against animals, a training ground for violence against humans.
Oh one more thing. Is it just me, or aren't those commercials really annoying?
That's what economists call a negative externality.
None of this really matters much to how the court will resolve the first amendment issue. Post-Lochner,the court tends to defer to congress when it comes to economic regulation that is arbitrary and capricious, wrongheaded, corrupt, stupid and evil.
The court will ponder whether the beef act involves the freedom of speech, and whether that freedom is abridged or infringed, and whether some government interest such as "we really really felt like it" lets them get away with it this time. Again.
There are good arguments on both sides. While I was writing this, oral argument took place.
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