Let's Protect Canadian Cheese !!

I've been going through some old stuff that I've saved for a few months and came across this gem of an essay that run in Industry Week a while back. 
The United States sugar industry has been protected (for various, ever-changing reasons) since the James Madison administration in 1816. 
Remember that when you get to the part about artisan Canadian cheese-makers ! 

This is good stuff.  From an economist named Brian Beaulieau. 

Canada and the European Union are on track to ratify a free-trade deal in 2015. Leaders in both countries expect the deal to be approved without a lot of resistance. The deal, called CETA, would eliminate tariffs on goods and provide for greater access of services both ways across the Atlantic. Some regulatory dismantling would also occur. Free trade with less regulation in Canada and the EU – that's great news if you are a cheerleader for the free market.

The estimate is that this deal would increase the current EU-Canada trade volume of €80 billion (aprox $109 billion) a year by 23%. Consummation of CETA would also mean that Canada is the only Group of Eight nation to have preferential access to the US and Europe, the two biggest consumer markets in theworld.

The European Commission estimates that up to a quarter of the economic benefits will come from eliminating regulatory barriers to trade. Reducing barriers sounds like a terrible idea to protectionists or to uncompetitive industries, but it fosters competition, efficiencies, and in the end, results in economic gains for consumers.

There's an old joke that I love that goes "If you don't go to other peoples' funerals, they won't go to yours." 
But seriously.....  If your citizens aren't allowed to buy other countries' goods and services, those countries aren't going to buy yours.  Protectionists just don't get it. 

There are those who would prefer that the protective barriers would continue. Canada's cheese industry is one such group. They state that Canada will lose its small, artisan local cheese makers as Europe's name-brand makers have easy access to their market. This is exactly the protectionist versus free market point. These small Canada cheese makers are not seeing the potential of access to a huge market; they fear that superior goods will take away market share.

The free market answer is to improve your quality and marketing and compete on a larger stage. If the local cheese makers truly produce an inferior product, why should they be protected from those who are better at their trade? The reality is most will probably improve their process, product and positioning, and in doing so be better entities because of this. That's the beauty of the free-market system; it pushes participants to new heights.

Go here to read about the Florida's Fanjul family and their (protected) sugar empire.  God has more competition than they do. 

Keep Food Legal, The Department Of Agriculture, and Sherpas For Subsidies

There is a new political organization and website in town, and it is dedicated to something that I love dearly....Groceries. 
The Keep Food Legal group is dedicated to getting the government out of our farms, our pantries and our kitchens. 
We have one employee in the Department Of Agriculture for every eleven farmers.  The ratio of other leeches, parasites and regulators is even higher if you count the guards at our borders who make sure the prescribed quotas and amounts per nation (but no more) of food can cross the border into our cage. 

Here are some details from the Keep Food Legal site.  

We Love Food
Do you love food? If you’re like us, you do. Maybe you love particular foods. Do your tastes skew toward artisan cheeses, wines, and meats? Do you live for flavorful organic vegetables sold by small farmers and producers? Or do you prefer street foods—tacos, barbecue, and the like? How about fast food? Or maybe fine dining? Or, like us, do you love some or all of the whole range of food options available across America today?

We Hate Food Bans
If you’re like us, you’ve probably also noticed that there are too many restrictions on our right to procure the foods we love, and that these restrictions are growing. At the local, state, and federal levels, elected officials have banned or are working to ban or severely restrict everything from traditional farm products (like raw milk and cheeses) and locavore-friendly farm practices (like on-farm animal slaughter and meat packaging), are seeking to prevent chefs from using common food ingredients (like salt and trans fats), and are looking to ban others from selling a variety of foods (including soda, energy drinks, bacon-wrapped hot dogs, and giant pizza slices).

Our Mission
Does all this regulation make your stomach growl, leave your palate dull, and make your blood boil? Us too. That’s why we founded Keep Food Legal (KFL).
KFL is the first nationwide membership organization devoted to culinary freedom—the right of every American to grow, raise, produce, buy, sell, cook, and eat the foods of their own choosing. KFL’s mission is to promote goodwill, fellowship, and a sense of common purpose among those who grow, raise, cook, and sell food—and those who buy and eat it. We want to unite people in the middle of the food chain (like grocers and restaurateurs) with people at both ends of the food chain (like producers, farmers, and consumers), and to use the power of this union to create a meaningful and lasting partnership between all links in the chain. KFL will thrive and be a non-partisan force for culinary choice and freedom by coalescing the food community—food producers, farmers, food sellers, chefs, home cooks, diners, foodies, grocers, bar owners, and restaurateurs. The diversity and number of our members—people like you—will be our strength.

KFL on the Issues
What are some of the issue KFL take on? The list is too long to print here, but these are some of our most important targets:

• KFL will advocate in favor of abolishing all food-related subsidies. Government subsidies distort prices and demand, cause environmental problems, and have played a large role in creating America’s obesity problem.
• KFL will work to defeat food regulations and bans which limit our freedom to produce, cook, buy, and sell the foods we want. The government has no right to tell people what we can and can’t eat.
• KFL will advocate at the federal, state, and local levels in favor of more food choices. It is not enough to oppose bad new laws. We will work—in legislatures and in the courts—to roll back bad ones already on the books.

One thing KFL will never do is advocate in favor of (or against) any particular foods or dietary choices. We believe strongly that adults should eat what they want (or what they and their doctor think is best for them). And we also believe that children should eat what they and their parents think is best for them. Government shouldn’t tell you what to eat, and neither should KFL.

Go here for some reasonably entertaining rants about what happens to your waistline if you adhere to the Department Of Agriculture's food pyramid. 

My God, ELEVEN servings of bread, cereal, rice and pasta.  No wonder the USDA is, you know, ummm, bloated. 
Those jokers don't know any more about health, growing methods, crop rotation, or erosion than anyone who actually farms.  They are Sherpas for subsidies and quotas.  That is all.  Hit the "sugar" label below. 
Let's see if the Republicans shut 'em down.  Anybody think it's going to happen? 
I didn't think so. 

Bootleggers And Baptists, part 2

Look back here for an earlier post about Bootleggers and Baptists. 
Go here for another great example.  We must save the Everglades !  Or bail out U.S. Sugar.   

"The most important part of the (Bootleggers and Baptists) theory for me is not that politics makes strange bedfellows–it’s that special interests use the high-minded moral high ground folks to hide their theft."
                                             - Russ Roberts of Cafe Hayek

(Note to Nick in California....Is this why the government needs to hire expensive publicists?  Or do the politicians come up with this reasoning on their own?)

Sugar. Oh Honey, Honey.

I need to run a correction.
On this website and in other bloggers' comment fields I've often written that sugar has been protected as an infant industry since the Thomas Jefferson administration.

I was wrong. According to The Freedom Daily, it's only been protected as a developing "infant" industry since James Madison's administration in 1816.

I regret the error.

My point was that it takes these millionaires a few centuries to get their businesses off the ground.

In case you're interested, shortly after The War Of 1812 sugar growers lobbied for tariffs against cheaper foreign sugar imports by claiming that if sugar was less expensive, it would decrease the value of their slaves. (An argument still being made by Florida's Fanjul family to this very day.)

We're paying so much more than we should pay for so many things. The cost per household for tariffs, quotas, and outright bans on foreign goods costs the average household around $6,000.00 according to these guys. I've read estimates as low as $4,000.00 and as high as $10,000.00 (BTW, the liberal estimates are by conservatives, and the conservative estimates are generally made by liberals.)

Here's my favorite example of how quotas and tariffs distort the market. From the first link above:

" On June 28, 1983, Reagan declared an embargo on imports of certain blends and mixtures of sugar and other ingredients in bulk containers. Naturally, businesses began importing some of the same products in smaller containers. The Economic Report of the President noted, "Entrepreneurs were importing high-sugar content products, such as iced-tea mix, and then sifting their sugar content from them and selling the sugar at the high domestic price." On November 7, 1984, the Customs Service announced new restrictions on sugar- and sweetener-blend imports.

You gotta love it. Bring in iced tea mix, boil the sugar out of it, and then sell the sugar at inflated "Made In The USA" prices to us sharecroppers who have no choice but buy everything from The Landowner's Commissary.

But wait, there's more....

Federal restrictions made sugar smuggling immensely profitable. The Justice Department caught 30 companies in a major sting operation named Operation Bittersweet. Federal prosecutors were proud that the crackdown netted $16 million in fines for the government — less than one-tenth of 1 percent of what the sugar program cost American consumers during the 1980s. The Justice Department was more worried about businessmen's bringing in cheap foreign sugar than about the sugar lobby's bribing of congressmen to extort billions of dollars from consumers. (Public Voice for Food and Health Policy, a Washington, D.C., consumer lobby, reported that the sugar lobby donated more than $3 million to congressmen between 1984 and 1989.)

Since reading about this has put me in a bad mood anyway, here's something to make it worse. Believe it or not, this was the #1 song when I was eight years old.