Liberty with a side of sauerkraut - Part 3 - Equality vs. Freedom

Jan Narveson at LSS 2012...

In my previous post, John Tomasi raised the idea of social justice through the fostering of the "democratic citizen," both concepts not common to libertarian discussions. The Sunday session at the Liberty Summer Seminar (LSS) began with a response to John Tomasi's presentation from Prof. Jan Narveson. Jan is the Chairman (among other things) of the Institute for Liberal Studies which runs the LSS.

Jan started his response with some comments on democracy, or more accurately some swipes at democracy. Our society, indeed much of the planet, views democracy as the ultimate form of government, and very often confuses it with freedom. It is after all, rule by the majority, the "will" of the people, so it must be correct.

Jan's first comment sounded like this: it was decided in a democratic vote (51 to 49) that you should be boiled in oil (ouch), then he went on to Churchill's famous quote about democracy. He then asked "if your rights were protected, would you still want democracy, maybe not?"

The great lie of democracy is that laws are passed by the majority, its never true. And even if it were true, is it right, is it moral? In a representative democracy such as we have, laws are never passed by the majority, always a plurality, and as for the laws themselves, some, we would all want, but many are designed to benefit certain groups at the expense of others. "Democracy," Jan continues, "proves only who would win in a fair fight." It's not the most rational approach, it's rarely the best idea, and is simply based on the size of the mob and its clout. "Is this a good system of government, he asked?"

The democratic citizen that John Tomasi wants, must submerge his "self-ownership," his right to his property, to people he doesn't know, and for a purpose he does not necessarily support, mediated by a government he may not have chosen. That is essentially what we have now, but John Tomasi thinks that if we allow people to accumulate as much wealth as possible, this satisfies libertarians.

Prof. Narveson points to a principle that is popular among some left liberals called the Difference Principle, based on the faulty premise that: "Each member of society has an equal claim on their society’s goods." Jan referred to it as the "maximin" principle, or maximize the minimum, favouring the bottom but allowing the wealthy no restrictions. Note that word "allowing." The reason this inequality might be acceptable to some left liberals, that typically have problems with property rights and wealth accumulation, is that it could be to the advantage of those who are worst-off, because the really wealthy have more to "share" with them.

I doubt that satisfies many libertarians, not me anyway. Many people think that the wealthy have a duty to share. That is a moral position that I don't support, it's typically a religious dictate. I prefer the word responsibility, it's not as strong as duty which is obligatory. A responsible human being, that has the where-with-all to share, probably should, but they should be able to choose.

Prof. Narveson finished by stating that this issue highlights the difference between "equality and freedom." The former is forced, the latter is not. "Free markets," he said provide equality," because no one has coercive powers.

The next speaker Jacob Levy, a political science professor from McGill, and a more frequent writer for Bleeding Heart Libertarians, argued from a more practical position in support of John Tomasi. His point was that the state already exists, its been around since the 1600's, and has evolved along with modern financial institutions in most jurisdictions. "The state will not be legislated away," he said, an aspiration of some libertarians. The state has armies, taxation and spending authority and in many ways national defence is already redistributionist, both rich and poor are defended equally. That argument is a bit of a cop out I think. I kept thinking of the argument from the American Revolution, when the slaves are freed who will pick the cotton?

The final speaker was Pierre Desrochers, who introduced his book (The Locavore's Dilemma) co-authored by his wife Hiroko Shimizu - that I have already talked about here.

LSS 2012 was a memorable experience, you should come next year.  



   

Liberty with a side of sauerkraut - Part 2 - Social Justice

The Flag that flew over LSS #12......

I've separated this post of my experience at the Liberty Summer Seminar 2012 (LSS) from the previous post because this one may prove to be a bit more contentious.

In the previous post I implied that libertarians come in various flavours. Our final speaker on Saturday, the keynote speaker, John Tomasi is a case in point, a different flavour. John was there with his new book Free Market Fairness. John is also an occasional contributor to the blog Bleeding Heart Libertarians (BHL).

Sometimes I try to read BHL and generally I find it difficult to understand. It's typically written for academics by academics, with lots of philosophical jargon and references sprinkled everywhere. But, I have a sliver of sympathy for some of the concepts espoused.

This paragraph was copied from the "About" section of BHL, and gives you an idea of the blog's purpose:

"Bleeding Heart Libertarians is a blog about free markets and social justice. All of us who blog at this site are, broadly speaking, libertarians. In particular, we are libertarians who believe that addressing the needs of the economically vulnerable by remedying injustice, engaging in benevolence, fostering mutual aid, and encouraging the flourishing of free markets is both practically and morally important."

You can see from the first line of the "BHL About" their mention of the term "social justice," not a common phrase among libertarians. In his keynote presentation at LSS, John Tomasi outlined the various forms of Liberalism that applied to his argument. There are Classical Liberals and Libertarians, both seeking Economic Liberty, the former for utilitarian reasons, and the latter because of the concept of self-ownership. Then there are High Liberals that seek social justice through what Tomasi called the Democratic Citizen. What Tomasi wants to do is to somehow meld Economic Liberty with the Democratic Citizen idea to create the Neo-Classical Liberal, a hybrid of libertarianism and high liberalism who favour social justice.

Really, this all boils down to: what is social justice? That was not entirely clear to me except that it somehow allows a strictly limited government to redistribute the wealth of its well off citizens, such that, the not so well off are better off. Tomasi never got down to the mechanics of how this was to be done, he is a political philosopher after all. I kept thinking that there needs to be an element of coercion here, this is not a voluntary situation, so how is it different from what we have now except by degree? Most governments in the Western democracies already do a considerable amount of redistribution, and then some. So is it the same? Tomasi says no, he believes in Economic Liberty. But is that true?     

Early on in his presentation Prof. Tomasi, confided to us that he was uncomfortable with the Libertarian idea of "self-ownership," a comment I thought was rather strange coming from a libertarian. Self-ownership is foundational to the right to property, your most fundamental property is your self. From self-ownership it follows that you have the right to those things produced by your self, through your labour, be it money or whatever. Its all your property, to dispose of as you wish, that is true Economic Liberty. So fudging on "self-ownership" is like fudging on property rights, and if that is free market fairness, then I'm really missing something.

I'll have more to say in Part 3. 

Liberty with a side of sauerkraut - Part 1

The Libertarian "big tent..."

It didn't rain! For the first time in its 12 year history, the rain held off, in fact the weather was spectacular during the Liberty Summer Seminar (LSS) at the Jaworski Estate in Orono Ontario last weekend.

This annual two day seminar is one of the largest gatherings of libertarians of all stripes in Canada. Stripes of libertarians? Absolutely, if you thought libertarians came in only one flavour, this seminar would have been an eyeopener. I'll say more about that later in Part 2.

I'm always impressed with the selection of speakers at LSS, this year was no different. For me each speaker was a highlight, so let me select for you what it was I learned from them.

Fred McMahon of the Fraser Institute was first up on Saturday talking about economic freedom and how it relates to other freedoms. Fred pointed out that economic freedom is the fundamental freedom on which all the others are built. Historically the first European nations that were free, were market oriented. Freedom, he said, is often confused with democracy, and has little to do with it. In fact, to be economically free means being liberated from dependence on government, something that most democracies today, do their best to thwart.

The Fraser Institute produces much of its research based on econometrics, which most Austro-libertarians dismiss because human action, they say, is impossible to model through laboratory experiments as other sciences are. That didn't stop Fred from displaying slide after slide demonstrating the positive relationship based on econometrics, of economic freedom to wealth and happiness.

Next up was Cindy Cerquitella of the Atlas Economic Research Foundation. Cindy's topic was Freedom Champions: Stories from the field. For those who are unaware of Atlas (not named after Atlas Shrugged) its mission: "is to discover, develop and support Intellectual Entrepreneurs worldwide who advance the Atlas vision of a society of free and responsible individuals. Achieving Atlas’s vision of a “peaceful and prosperous society of free and responsible individuals” requires respect for the foundations of a free society: individual liberty, property rights, limited government under the rule of law, and the market order. To move public policy debates toward these classical liberal ideas...." In other words, an organization after my own heart.

Cindy spoke about think tanks around the world, and demonstrated a positively encyclopedic knowledge about them. After speaking of a few interesting groups that Atlas supports in some countries, the audience was invited to shout out a country, to which she named the think tank and some of its members, for country after country, no notes, very impressive. And I was buoyed by how many countries there were that had liberty oriented think tanks.

Our next speaker was Victoria Henderson speaking about Advancing Liberty in the Americas (Latin America). Victoria was part of a panel on drug policy that I attended last January, though drugs are not her field of study. Her field is Latin American Studies and Geography, and she is the Managing Director at the Institute for Social and Economic Analysis (ISEA).

Victoria used two terms with which I was not familiar: Epistemic Communities - voluntary groups held together by ideas, and Epistemic Landscapes for which she gave an interesting example: in her class of 174 at Queen's University, students were shown pictures of Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, Karl Marx and then, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and Milton Friedman. Ninety percent of the class knew the first trio, only one person knew all of the second. That is the "landscape" we are up against, an educational apparatus in Canada that is geared to teaching about collectivist thinkers and thinking.

One fact that Victoria mentioned, a surprise to me, was that the Austrian School had a precursor in 16th Century Spain. Further investigation suggests there was no direct influence, but the School of Salamanca was in many ways so similar to the Austrian School that Murray Rothbard referred to them as proto-Austrians.

Another surprise to me, was Victoria's mention of the Universidad Francisco Marroquín (UFM) - The Free Market University in Guatemala! Who knew? A university that teaches about Mises, Hayek, Friedman etc. In fact there is a library named after Mises: La Biblioteca Ludwig von Mises. UFM is 41 years old, and on its a 40th anniversary last year it wrote "if Guatemala were to enjoy prosperity, it would be necessary for a group of influential people to understand, very clearly, the ethical, legal and economic aspects of a society of free and responsible persons," that is a worthy and wonderful mission.

Stay tuned for Part 2, BTW, I love sauerkraut.

    

After Ron Paul what?

So what happens after the GOP convention in Tampa Bay? Who will carry Ron Paul's message into the future. Here are some thoughts from ReasonTV.

A libertarian diet: How the government makes you fat.

About 2 years ago, I discovered that I required hernia surgery, it's not uncommon at my age. I chose to go to one of the few private hospitals remaining in Canada (near my home). This hospital was a hold over from the time before socialized medicine, a centre of excellence for hernia surgery worldwide. Unfortunately (for me) they refused to do the surgery unless I lost some weight. According to the doctors in the private hospital, weight loss would make the surgery easier and the recovery quicker.

So, I had a dilemma, lose weight, endure the discomfort of the hernia, or go to a government run hospital and get the surgery done. Maybe the queue in the government hospital would be shorter than the time it would take to lose the weight, I needed to lose over 20 pounds.

I chose to lose the weight and go to the private hospital, and they were good enough to give me a diet they recommended to lose weight quickly and safely. I've posted a part of this diet here, and you can see from the "forbidden list" that this is a low carb diet. What you can't see on the other side, is that meats, fats, cheese, eggs, nuts and mostly vegetables, make up the greater portion of what I was allowed to eat.

This was definitely not a "fat free" diet, but it was virtually a "no carb diet".

The diet worked marvellously well, I was able to eat more often in some cases, but of smaller amounts of food. I learned to eat less and as I reached the goal set by the doctors, and had my surgery scheduled I was put on a "maintenance diet" that was very similar to the original, I was just allowed to eat a bit more. My weight levelled off as if by magic, I had the surgery and was out in two days. Recovery was pretty quick as predicted.

The best part of the story is most of the weight is still off, and I have good evidence that this diet really works. Emulating it, on a daily basis works to keep my weight down, and it's so simple.

The diet that I was on, is similar to diets advocated by Gary Taubes. The TIME cover (top) and the story that went with it, was one of the major impetuses that led to the "fat-free" craze that still grips our society. Listen to Gary Taubes as he was interviewed by ReasonTV and look at the notes I have appended below for more information, he thinks fat free diets are crazy:

From the YouTube video:

Reason.tv's Zach Weissmueller talked with Taubes about his controversial work in the world of nutrition and epidemiology, including Taubes' hypothesis that carbohydrates, not dietary fat, overeating, or lack of physcial activity, are the primary factor causing obesity. Other topics include the inability of governments and large informational institutions such as the American Heart Association to adapt to new information, the mess of bad legislation and bad science that Taubes believes led to America's obesity problem, and why many libertarians seem to love the Paleo Diet . 
Taubes' work has unsurprisingly invited criticism from scientists, government officials and journalists, even in the pages of Reason Magazine, where he went back and forth with Reason contributor Michael Fumento. Read below and decide for yourself who, if anyone, is right:
Fumento on Taubes - http://reason.com/archives/2003/03/01/big-fat-fake
Taubes' response - http://reason.com/archives/2003/03/01/an-exercise-in-vitriol-rather
Fumento's rebuttal - http://reason.com/archives/2003/03/01/gary-taubes-tries-to-overwhelm

The 100-mile-diet? - The Locavore's Dilemma

cabbage storage

Anyone that has grown up in the Toronto area knows that the city's nick name is Cabbagetown. Why? The name Cabbagetown comes from stories of Irish immigrants arriving during the Irish Potato Famine in the middle of the nineteenth century. They grew cabbages in front of their homes in an area that became part of Toronto. Why cabbage? Probably because potatoes, historically a food staple of the Irish, had become unreliable through successive crop failures due to the potato blight back home. Cabbage was reliable and could be stored through the harsh Canadian winter, and avoiding starvation is an excellent incentive.

"This standard winter vegetable (cabbage) may be stored either indoors or out. In the former case a good way is to put the trimmed heads in slotted or open vegetable barrels. Or the plants may be taken up roots and all, the loose outer leaves trimmed off, and three or four heads tied together by the roots and suspended from nails in the cellar rafters. In this way they will keep well without occupying any floor space, which is needed for other things, such as root crops and fruits. .......... It is well to store at least part of the crop out of doors, as this will keep in perfect condition until late spring, when it will be much more fresh and crisp than that which has been stored indoors."
"......Well matured cabbage can easily be kept through the winter in an outside trench or pit. The heads are packed as shown (see above right), covered with straw or marsh hay, and as freezing weather approaches, gradually cover with soil."

One of the most effective ways to avoid starvation is through trade. Even the Irish got tired of eating cabbage, not to mention the fact that growing anything in Canada, even relatively balmy Toronto in winter, is tricky. Trade, of course, reduces the risk that local food issues will impact local families with famines. The chances of widespread famine are remote especially if the trade areas are farther away. The greater the distance between traders, the more likely there will be food to trade.

But the anthropogenic global warming crowd has again bullied its way into an economic area blissfully unaware of the facts. They claim that to reduce one's carbon footprint its best to follow the dictates popularized in a book the100-Mile-Diet, eat locally to reduce transportation and thus CO2 emissions.

There is nothing wrong with eating local foods, its makes perfect sense when they are available. But is it wrong to source food from distant shores? Does it really help the environment to eat locally? Is the food more nutritious and safer if its local?

In a new book Pierre Desrochers and Hiroko Shimizu dispel some of the myths around eating locally versus globally. Watch this lecture that Desrochers presented to CATO recently in Washington D.C.

Land of the free, home of the brave.....Canada

Recently I attended a meetup in Toronto. The host made some passing remarks about the upcoming Canada Day holiday and all the "benefits" that accrue from government. The last bit was more in jest. He spoke of how there were no roads, no laws, no rights, no freedoms BEFORE there was a Canada. Of course none of that is true, all of them existed before there was a Federal State or any state or colony.

We have just celebrated the birth of two nations the United States and Canada, in the 200th anniversary year of the last battles fought between the people of our two territories in the War of 1812.

So think about this: where does your freedom come from? Is it granted to you by government, by constitutions, by laws? Or does it exist from the moment of your birth, which is what I believe.

If you believe what I believe, then you must ask yourself what is the purpose of government? Make no mistake, I believe government is important and should have a defined and limited purpose and that is to make sure our freedoms are protected so that we may live our lives as best as we can. I know some who will say there is no need for government even to do those things, and I have great sympathy for that idea. But we're not there yet, and reigning in the excesses of governments today, will keep those of us in the freedom business busy for some time to come.

Our American cousins have for over 200 years celebrated their freedoms with such zeal and vigour, that peoples around the world think America invented liberty. Living here in Canada, often in the shadow of America, many Canadians dismiss our connections to freedom and the fights for liberty as being trivial and unimportant. Many will point to our allegiance to the British Crown as that which distinguishes us from our cousins to the South. They forget our two countries are both children of Great Britain, one older, one younger, but with the same heritage and it is NOT the British Crown, it is British liberty.

British liberty goes back to the days of Magna Carta, and the beginning of the end of the power of the British Crown. We cherish our British heritage, not because of the Crown, but because the Crown is irrelevant, powerless, and just fodder for the tabloids in the modern era.

Canada does not need to play second fiddle to America on liberty, on the contrary Canadians are more aware of it than ever. Need proof? The video below is from a radio program broadcast from Saskatchewan, the cradle of socialized medicine in Canada, listen to the zeal and vigour of Canadian liberty.

Obama-care and unlimited government

Most Canadians walk around under the delusion that the American healthcare system is a free market system, and that's why it's so expensive. Of course Americans probably believe that too, which doesn't help matters.
Many Canadians pride themselves in thinking: "we take care of our own - no matter what," that makes us better then our Yankee cousins. Well, our Yankee cousins have finally come around to our way of thinking, too bad for them.

Of course Obama-care will fix everything, score another point for unlimited government. Maybe once, a long time long ago, the American health care system was a free market, but the picture to the left and the second video below should dispel that misconception for today. There has been no free market in American health care for generations. The truth is, in a genuinely free market system, health care prices would be controlled strictly by supply and demand, like anything else.

Amazingly, those same people that believe health care is overpriced because of greed from insurance companies, doctors, you can name your own scapegoat here; well those people, put healthcare in a special category different from other services or products. The reason is easy to understand, if your income is low and you need healthcare you may have a problem, health care is pricey. People view this problem in the same way as they do if you have low income and you need a vacation. Your income is low and you need a vacation? Well, you may be out of luck, low income individuals typically cannot afford vacations. But it's not entirely out of the question. There are so many choices in the vacation industry, at so many price levels its possible even for low income people to find something that is affordable. How is that possible? Its possible because the vacation industry has far less regulation, no monopolies and as a result tremendous competition. Competition invariably lowers prices and improves service and those people that put health care in a different category know this is true for everything else.

What works for the vacation industry, the computer and electronics industry, the food industry, any industry, would also work for medical insurance and the health care industry. Why wouldn't it?

So, as Canadians become more and more disenchanted with socialized medicine, our American cousins are embracing it more and more. Here is what Nick Gillespie on ReasonTV thinks about Obama-care:    

Here is a historical perspective on the American health care system with some alternative solutions to a needlessly complex issue. 

Restoring Fiscal Sanity to Ontario

A general election in Ontario was narrowly averted over the last few weeks, at least that was the perception. It would have been the second in less than a year, though realistically the disagreement was likely just political theatre.    

The current Liberal government has what amounts to a one seat minority. That means that the government can be defeated if the opposition parties gang up and declare they have "no confidence" in the government. That generally happens over substantial matters that deal with money, in this case it was the province's 2012-2013 budget that was presented back in late March 2012. The Ontario legislature gets to discuss and vote on the budget provisions as if it were a bill.

Of the two opposition parties, the Progressive Conservatives (oxymoron?), were against the budget from the outset, and so-called socialist New Democratic Party (NDP) carried the deciding votes. The NDP decided to do some arm twisting, and managed to add an additional tax on the wealthy along with some other minor tweaks.

The budget was supposed to address the growing provincial deficit and debt, something that the Liberals have exacerbated over the past 8 years. Now they wanted to fix it, and this budget was designed to balance the books in five years. Not the debt, mind you, it would continue to grow over those five years, just stop spending more than you bring in, that was the goal. Of course eliminating the deficit in Ontario depends on continued growth of the economy and no surprise shocks that may negatively impact the province. The latter is about as likely as the sun NOT rising tomorrow morning. But I am no expert. Why not watch and listen to an expert who thinks the Liberal plan is flawed and unrealistic. Not only that, but Niels Veldhuis has a better idea:      

Bjorn Lomborg: "The Skeptical Environmentalist"

Are all the billions of dollars spent on "saving the planet" from overheating wasted. YES, according to Bjorn Lomborg. 

Is recycling paper and glass smart? NO.

Here is Lomborg in conversation on ReasonTV advocating for sensible ways to help people and the planet.

 

Gaia Man says cool it on global warming

Now that Rio 20+ is over, you wonder if there is any point in continuing the long string of seemingly pointless annual environmental conferences.
This one did not go well according to two stories here and here. The first Rio Conference 20 years ago, was more generalized toward sustainability and environmental action on a broad front. As time went on, each succeeding conference became more and more focussed on the perceived immediate threat of anthropogenic global warming (AGW). That hysteria peaked at Copenhagen in 2009, and began to fade at Cancun in 2010. Since then, the idea that humans are responsible for bringing Earth out of the last ice age toward thermal doom from excess carbon dioxide has been getting 'colder-than-a-well-diggers-ass-in-the-Klondike' or similar such sayings.
Last week a noted purveyor of the AGW hypothesis recanted, and then, shock of shocks, the Father of Mother Earth Gaia shared his second thoughts on the AGW issue with The Guardian.
Ninety-two-year-old James Lovelock was one of the worlds leading alarmists on the AGW hypothesis. In 2006, in an article in the U.K.’s Independent newspaper, he wrote:“before this century is over billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable.”  That is alarmist, wouldn't you say, right up there with Al Gore? But Lovelock is a respected scientist, and you have to wonder why he would bother doing this so late in his life with his contributions to environmental research assured? Why bother if he didn't feel strongly that this is an error? Lovelock first showed his change of heart in April 2012, in an interview with MSNBC, where he was quoted: “All right, I made a mistake.”

Lorrie Goldstein, writing in the Toronto Sun, this past week summarized some of Lovelock's views originally posted in The Guardian. Here are some of the observations:

(1) A long-time supporter of nuclear power as a way to lower greenhouse gas emissions, which has made him unpopular with environmentalists, Lovelock has now come out in favour of natural gas fracking (which environmentalists also oppose), as a low-polluting alternative to coal.

As Lovelock observes, "Gas is almost a give-away in the U.S. at the moment. They've gone for fracking in a big way. This is what makes me very cross with the greens for trying to knock it ... Let's be pragmatic and sensible and get Britain to switch everything to methane. We should be going mad on it." (Kandeh Yumkella, co-head of a major United Nations program on sustainable energy, made similar arguments last week at a UN environmental conference in Rio de Janeiro, advocating the development of conventional and unconventional natural gas resources as a way to reduce deforestation and save millions of lives in the Third World.)

(2) Lovelock blasted greens for treating global warming like a religion.

"It just so happens that the green religion is now taking over from the Christian religion," Lovelock observed. "I don't think people have noticed that, but it's got all the sort of terms that religions use ... The greens use guilt. That just shows how religious greens are. You can't win people round by saying they are guilty for putting (carbon dioxide) in the air."

(3) Lovelock mocks the idea modern economies can be powered by wind turbines.

As he puts it, "so-called ‘sustainable development' ... is meaningless drivel ... We rushed into renewable energy without any thought. The schemes are largely hopelessly inefficient and unpleasant. I personally can't stand windmills at any price."

(4) Finally, about claims "the science is settled" on global warming: "One thing that being a scientist has taught me is that you can never be certain about anything. You never know the truth. You can only approach it and hope to get a bit nearer to it each time. You iterate towards the truth. You don't know it."

Food Choice: Children voted with their feet.

School is out for another year and the report card on Policy Memorandum 150 has just trickled in. What's that you ask?

In a December 2011 posting, I commented on the Ontario Ministry of Education's commitment to making schools healthier places for students by instituting Policy Memorandum 150, cooked up by the McGuinty Liberals. As I suggested then, the Liberals of Ontario are out to shape your world. Their tool of choice is to eliminate choice by instituting universal bans. In that December posting, I suggested that this ban might invite some enterprising students to flout the new rule. But my abilities at prediction seem to be no better than the legislators who crafted and instituted this policy. Government action frequently leads to unintended consequences, and that is the case here. Schools across the province are reporting shortfalls in cafeteria income (not surprisingly) that is used to fund a variety of programs.

The largest school board in Canada, the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) is forecasting a $1.2-million shortfall in cafeteria revenue this past school year. The Ottawa-Carleton School Board estimates a loss of $900,000 in cafeteria revenue, while the Greater Essex County District School Board in Windsor, which gets a commission from a private operator, has projected a $95,000 loss in revenue. This information is outlined in an article in the National Post this week.

In Toronto the shortfall would have been used to support cafeteria infrastructure and maintenance, in Ottawa cafeteria funds are used to pay for field trips, academic tournaments, clubs and sports teams. But the loss means parents can expect to pay more for their children's school activities. In Toronto alone, more than 30 money losing school cafeterias may be closed before next September.

Ontario was not the first jurisdiction to institute new rules for school food menus, Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and British Columbia all do the same thing. Nova Scotia seems to have had more success in implementation, because it was done in stages over a number of years so students became educated and acclimatized to the changes. In Alberta, individual school boards are allowed to decide for themselves - a sensible course of action in my opinion.

The simple truth is that real food is cheaper and often more nutrient rich than so called junk food as the illustration above suggests. Students should be taught that lesson from their parents and their schools. But education is a gradual process and when choices are eliminated the wrong choice often become more appealing; that's human nature. Too bad there are not stats for the lunchtime boom in fast food restaurants near schools.

Early in May a couple of enterprising young lads posted a widely viewed YouTube video that expressed their displeasure with the Ontario ban. That was a clue certainly to what the financial report verified this week.

So what did McGuinty say about this story? “They put a man on the moon 40 years ago, don’t tell me that we can’t make healthy, delicious, tasty, attractive food for teenagers in the province of Ontario in 2012.” Brilliant.

    

Sacred Cows and the Dairy Tax

Cowed by politics?

Name a product that is found in the refrigerators of virtually every home in Canada and for which we each pay too much? Yes, milk, good guess.

The average Canadian family pays up to $1.44 a litre more for milk than their American counterparts, up to $300 more per year, even though the dollars are roughly at par today. That amount does not count the additional price of cheese, butter, ice cream, or eggs. Yes, eggs too and chickens!
What's going on?
The irony here is that most Canadians are typically so disconnected from politics they have no clue they are being robbed BECAUSE of their own ignorance and misplaced trust. The scheme called "supply management" was cooked up more than 40 years ago by farmers in cahoots with politicians. The misplaced trust is in the politicians.
Everyone knows what is meant by supply and demand, that is how economics is supposed to work. Too much supply, prices should drop, too much demand, prices should rise. Price has meaning and it regulates supply. But what if supply is regulated by a powerful lobby group, that uses its monopoly powers to exclude competition, and set its own prices by controlling how much supply is produced. That is supply management. Here is another explanation from a recent article.  

"What is “supply management”? It is a government scheme to raise agricultural prices and farm incomes by a strictly enforced system of licences and quotas that controls who may produce a handful of important commodities, such as milk, cheese, poultry and eggs, and how much they may produce. High tariffs also are imposed on imports of these commodities. By thus controlling both domestic and foreign supply, supply management increases the price of covered commodities. Thus do we repel potential trade partners who would like to sell those commodities to Canadians at competitive prices." 

This issue is a sacred cow amongst politicians and the extra cost borne by all Canadians amounts to a hidden tax adding even more to the cost of living. (ibid)

"Do supply management’s domestic benefits outweigh its obstruction of trade?
On the contrary, its domestic costs are high, and are borne disproportionately by low-income Canadians.
The lower a household’s income, the higher the share of their income that goes to food. In fact, lower income households spend nearly a quarter of their income on food compared to middle- and upper-income Canadians, who normally spend 5% to 10% of their income on that category.
Just as supply management disproportionately burdens lower-income families, eliminating it and lowering prices for basic food goods disproportionately benefits lower-income families. They would immediately have more disposable income for other necessities, thus increasing their standard of living."

So much for the sham of politicians helping the poor, they just help themselves.

All of the major political parties favour supply management, why not, the parties are kept happy by generous donations from Canadian Dairy Farmers due to the unwarranted profits made through supply management.

Supply management has come to the fore in recent weeks because of two different papers published here and here, as well as recent trade negotiations.

Canada is a trading nation, however, the high tariffs imposed by supply management act as a barrier to this trade as spelled out here:

"That’s exactly why Canada agonized in Los Cabos over U.S. president Barack Obama’s invitation to join negotiations for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Our system of supply management is not acceptable to many of that trade club’s members; and while we may now be at the negotiating table, we are not in the TPP yet.
Canada is a trading nation, and joining the TPP would give us access to the fastest growing markets in the global economy. The TPP originated in 2005 with Brunei, Singapore, New Zealand and Chile. Australia, Peru, Vietnam, Malaysia, the United States, Japan and others including China may join in due course. It may well be one of the most important trade blocs in the 21st Century.
The sheer size of the countries involved represents a real opportunity for Canada to expand its opportunities for trade. If all the potential members join the TPP, it will represent $35.2-trillion in GDP and 2.7 billion people." 

The National Post ends its recent editorial on this issue with:

"...both New Zealand and Australia offer models of how Canada could manage a phased transition to a free-market dairy industry. In both of those countries, consumers and producers alike have prospered, with lower prices and higher productivity, just as economists would expect.
This is what the future of our quota-controlled agricultural industries should look like. In furtherance of that vision, we urge that the two reports published this week become required reading in Ottawa. Stephen Harper's government already has proven its free-market bona fides by removing the monopsony power of the Wheat Board. Many other agricultural sectors cry out for similar reform."

Climate Correction

Exaggeration or just wrong? 

A friend alerted me to an article that appeared in The Telegraph published in the UK this week. The article by Professor Fritz Vahrenholt, who is one of the fathers of Germany's environmental movement, is based on his presentation to the 3rd Global Warming Policy Foundation Annual Lecture at the Royal Society in London, UK.

In the article Vahrenholt essentially recants his belief that the burning of fossil fuels and the resulting release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere is the primary driver of global warming/climate change. Of course that is the theory espoused by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and numerous environmentalists around the world.
In the article here, Vahrenholt uses historical data which shows that dramatic shifts in climate occurred in the absence of carbon dioxide fluctuations (no kidding) which Vahrenholt now attributes to the Sun. Imagine that? Here is a quote from the article:

"Based on climate reconstructions from North Atlantic deep-sea sediment cores, Professor Gerard Bond discovered that the millennial-scale climate cycles ran largely parallel to solar cycles, including the Eddy Cycle which is – guess what – 1,000 years long. So it is really the Sun that shaped the temperature roller-coaster of the past 10,000 years."

Vahrenholt goes on to say:

"... the IPCC's current climate models cannot explain the climate history of the past 10,000 years. But if these models fail so dramatically in the past, how can they help to predict the future?"

Indeed. 

Vahrenholt even suggests that a model proposed by Danish physicist Henrik Svensmark (which has received very little public exposure) might be promising. I pointed out this hypothesis about a year ago here and here.

Given all of this and the data that shows there is a lack of correlation of temperature rise with CO2 increase Vahrenholt says:

"In the UK and Germany, (and I will add McGuinty's Ontario too) for example, power-station closures and huge expenditure for backup of volatile wind or solar energy or harmful ethanol production will raise energy prices massively and even threaten power cuts: the economic cost will be crippling, all driven by fear." .....and that there is no need for "....the massive (energy) poverty currently planned."

So what's going on here, is this the beginning of the end of the carbon dioxide theory, or should I say hypothesis of climate change? Vahrenholt seems to hedge, he thinks its time for "rational decarbonizing," whatever that means. He has too many friends in the system to just flush them away, so he calls for more research (keeps his friends happy) and all the usual central planning but with a greater variety of energy sources including fossil fuels.

Vahrenholt is no libertarian, but he does deserve credit for speaking out against the current orthodoxy.

 

Political Favouritism and CBC Radio Current Events

My previous post was about the Rio+20 Conference which was promoted on CBC Radio's Quirks and Quarks June 16, 2012.

I admit to being a long time listener to this program, way back to the days when David Suzuki was the host. The program often carries good science content, and interviews with people not usually heard on radio or TV for that matter. I listen because I have an interest in science, real science.

Over the years, most of the hosts, like Suzuki, have presented heavily biased stories on sustainable development, green energy infrastructure, and anthropogenic global warming etc. I say biased because each of those issues has become highly politicized, to the point where its difficult to separate the science story from the politics associated with it. The June 16th story is a perfect example.

In 1992 during the original Rio Conference, Elizabeth May was an environmental lawyer working on behalf of the Canadian delegation and the Mulroney government of the day. On June 16th as Leader of the Green Party and a sitting MP in Canada's House of Commons, May was allowed to speak on Quirks and Quarks (here is the podcast - she is the first 20 minutes or so).

If you listen to the podcast you will no doubt be able to detect her bias against the current Harper government and her advocacy for Rio+20.

I'm certainly not a friend of the Harper government, but there is an issue of fairness here. The CBC is heavily funded ($1.2 billion) by taxpayers, so why is she allowed to speak on public radio on a political issue without any corresponding representation from another political party or better an expert that holds an opinion different for Ms. May?

Furthermore, she speaks about anthropogenic global warming(AGW)/climate change as if it were a foregone conclusion. A theory so widely accepted as to be gospel truth. This irks me about CBC too. The fact is, AGW is at best an hypothesis and one that seems to be inadequate as an explanation for any perceived climate change.

Finally I will add , that this incident does not surprise me at all, but I think redress is warranted.