Rent seeking farmers
There’s been a little lunacy emanating from the Welsh Liberal Democrats recently, but this really takes the biscuit.
This is basically a call for tariffs and protectionism. Its a call for putting the interests of farmers over those of everyone else.
Farmers already gains from obscene tariffs and the inhuman Common Agriculture Policy which sees $1200 a year taken from the pockets of a 2 child family to spend on farming and around $20 billion in losses a year from the developing world - far more than we spend on aid.
This goes to give each cow in the EU $2.50 a day - when billions of people struggle to live on under $2 a day.
This is obscene.
Now we’re told that the farmers cannot cope and need more help, now dressed up as ‘fair trade’ (remember, free trade is the only fair trade).
If they cannot survive with the obscene level of support they already have then frankly what are they doing in the business?
I’m sure people will complain about the job losses - but its not liberalisation which causes them, its the protectionism which encourages stasis and protects from the competition which breeds progress and success.
The Liberal Democrats are meant to be a party of free trade, a party of the individual and the masses against the classes. Not a lobby group for today’s high profile campaign.
As for British farmers being labeled ‘Fair Trade’. If the Fair Trade group lets them then fine, they can apply and be approved or not.
If they can’t, then develop their own branding. See if you can get people to pay a premium for that. That’s all fine, but it is not the politician’s place to support that.
Update:
The hypocrisy of this still rankles.
Why is Fair Trade seen as neeed? Because the developed world is deliberately pursuing protectionist policies designed to remove the developing world’s comparative advantage and means to develop and get out of poverty.
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November 16th, 2007 at 9:12 am
Two new studies show why some people are more attractive for members of the opposite sex than others.
The University of Florida, Florida State University found that physically attractive people almost instantly attract the attention of the interlocutor, sobesednitsy with them, literally, it is difficult to make eye. This conclusion was reached by a series of psychological experiments, which were determined by the people who believe in sending the first seconds after the acquaintance. Here, a curious feature: single, unmarried experimental preferred to look at the guys, beauty opposite sex, and family, people most often by representatives of their sex.
The authors believe that this feature developed a behavior as a result of the evolution: a man trying to find a decent pair to acquire offspring. If this is resolved, he wondered potential rivals. Detailed information about this magazine will be published Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
In turn, a joint study of the Rockefeller University, Rockefeller University and Duke University, Duke University in North Carolina revealed that women are perceived differently by men smell. During experiments studied the perception of women one of the ingredients of male pheromone-androstenona smell, which is contained in urine or sweat.
The results were startling: women are part of this repugnant odor, and the other part is very attractive, resembling the smell of vanilla, and the third group have not felt any smell. The authors argue that the reason is that the differences in the receptor responsible for the olfactory system, from different people are different.
It has long been proven that mammals (including human) odor is one way of attracting the attention of representatives of the opposite sex. A detailed article about the journal Nature will publish.