4/29/2008
So, what think you now?
Ezra Klein has a post today being sad about the effect of the rising cost of food on people's diets (from a story in the New York Times). That's all well and good and all, but perhaps Ezra might reconsider his post about how great it would be if food was more expensive, from a month ago (and which I made fun of back then)? Or did he just mean it would be nice if food was more expensive and humane, and yet through some kind of magic, people would be unaffected?
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4 comments:
In fairness to Klein, he wanted more expensive food in order to achieve a set of goals (avoiding 'environmental harm, the land-use opportunity costs, and the cruelty that often goes into "cheap" food'), none of which included ethanol. At the moment, we have more expensive food, but not because it's more humane or environmentally-friendly. This isn't what Klein called for.
You can say that it's nonetheless an empirical lesson in the consequences of more expensive food, but that's not quite fair either, because the causation matters. Having more expensive food because people care about the treatment of animals and the environment requires a shift in thinking that influences one's dietary habits; having more expensive food because of rising fuel costs doesn't.
To the extent Klein thinks a benevolent dictator could just impose more humane, green and expensive food on the populace and expect them to eat better, you're right, but my impression was that he was arguing for the shift in thinking, not the fiat.
I don't agree, PG. You can very easily legislate what Klein wants, and the Europeans, to some extent, do. In that context, I can't imagine that all the supposedly "wonky" Klein meant was that he hoped in the future, people would get the externalities of bad food and undertake a shift in dietary habits. Certainly in the environmental sphere, for example, people like him aren't content to just let people make change themselves. The point from there, I think, is clear - the initiatives Klein would want lead to more expensive food. The causation would be some sort of regulatory force. Without a complete revolution in how most people here think about food, which isn't forthcoming, people will just eat cheaper stuff, as is demonstrated empirically, as you say, by what's happening.
I think the high cost of food right now is probably due to high fuel and energy costs, the fact that there is more demand for vegetables, fruit and meat than there is supply or at least "good-healthy-humane"supply. But you know, I think we all have a big responsibility here.
I hate to generalize and say "people do this...". You know, I was driving to Whole Foods today in my SUV (yes, I have a Toureg) and because I was stuck in traffic, I started eating some organic rice cakes. Was I hungry? No. Was I eating because I was bored? Yes. Were those rice cakes expensive? very. What I am trying to say is that we indulge in food, waste it, always want more when we don't actually need it. And I need to start looking at myself first. Do I need to bake everyday with 70% chocolate or organic eggs and organic heavy cream just to satisfy my creative needs? How about when my grandparents ate beans and potatoes everyday, hardly any meat because the cattle they had they had to sell for grains... How about that? I just don't know where the balance is.
I know you and PG might be speaking in a more macroeconomic sense but it all starts with individual choices.
I don't even know if I make any sense and if what I just typed makes a difference.
Notwithstanding the infamous "democracy deficit" of the EU, my understanding is that European food-related legislation is not regarded by the people living under it as a heinous tyranny. It works reasonably well with their existing eating habits, and I doubt it could have gotten through otherwise, food being a pretty vital topic to people in general and to some of the EU nationalities in particular. There's a hue and cry over any suggestion of free trade with Africa that would threaten the European farmers, but there's no similar widespread protest against humane and environmentally-conscious food production. (Indeed, the controls required for it favor European farmers.)
In a democracy, legislation that is going to affect nearly everyone has to have some amount of popular support. Despite what you may think about the environmental legislation of the 1970s (Clean Air, Clean Water), the concept was quite popular even if the details were the usual sausage-making process. The fact that grain subsidies and ethanol are seen as politically untouchable indicates that the factory farming states' interests are well-represented in Congress. If there is a shift in thinking about farming practices' effect on the environment, as there was about industrial practices' effect a generation ago, that would be part of the revolution you find implausible. People can shift their behavior in response to a long term trend: note the inverse correlation between gas prices and average sizes of cars sold. (E.g., as the cost of fuel relative to income rose in the 1970s, cars became smaller; as it decreased in the 1990s, cars became bigger; judging by the auto lots full of unsold SUVs, cars on average are getting smaller again.)
Food is more difficult than transportation because it is a daily, little-considered decision rather than a single huge purchase made after a great deal of thought and research. But I don't think it's impossible for people to change there either; as with many trends, it may begin with the better-off and more-educated, and still spread far into society. Government's near monopoly on education could go a long way into altering the next generation's eating habits.
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