Acquisition: Selected Lovecraft letters, 1929-1931; 1932-1934; 1934-1937. He died in 1937, so these are the final three volumes. There are two earlier volumes which might be nice to get eventually, but for insights into his views on economics and politics these are obviously the key ones. This is the wonderful thing about "you buy so many books we don't know what you'd like so here's some birthday money" presents.Recommendation: For anyone in the Northern Virginia/Washington D.C. area, I recommend Grand Cru Wine Bar and Euro Cafe. Kate took me there for dinner last night - it's a very unassuming website, but the food is quite good. We had brie and honey as an appetizer (I've never had that together before - my family makes brie and brown sugar all the time, but this was a nice surprise). I had the duck with mashed sweet potatoes. Kate had the wild mushroom orzo. We each had a different flight of wine, which we always like to do if they have flights. We also shared a flight of ports, a nice cup of coffee, and a creme brulee for dessert. Also, we were at a friend's house for a joint birthday celebration on Friday night and they had some great mini-cheesecakes from Capital City Cheesecakes, in Takoma Park, Maryland. Kate also got me a key lime pie from Firehook Bakery. Firehook has several locations in the D.C. area, but we go to the Farragut Square shop for coffee all the time. All good, local shops to support - despite the wave of posts denouncing "locavores" on several libertarian blogs lately.
Maybe I'll write a birthday post later today... actually, it will end up being about the same: books, and local alcohol/food.
ReplyDeleteCould you post links to some of those locavore critiques, Daniel? I never understood the idea of libertarians critiquing private decision-making like that. Their whole is/ought identification strikes me as often out of whack. But perhaps the critiques are of a different sort than I'm assuming they are.
We don't object to people wanting to buy locally. That's no issue at all. You can buy food wherever.
ReplyDeleteI think the problem libertarians have with locavores (I hadn't heard it until recently) is that there is a lot of government policy directed towards "Buy American" and such. As long as there are no protectionist measures on local or non-local food, I can't think of any objection.
Mattheus - I'd be careful not to speak for all libertarians. I've been called tribalist and xenophobic for the preference.
ReplyDeleteThe recent libertarian postings also have nothing to do with "buy American" laws, which really aren't very substantial in the first place.
I think for the most part it comes from the sense among libertarians that buying local is "liberal" and therefore bad. More thoughful libertarians don't have a problem with it, but it would be wrong to say that libertarians don't have a problem with it.
I'll try to post on this soon.
The point may also be worth making that "libertarians" make the argument, although it isn't necessarily a "libertarian" argument in itself. That is, there's a cultural aversion to certain things, although the opposition isn't theoretically essential to any libertarian system.
ReplyDeleteThis distinction is surely applicable to most any group of people with a coherent system; what I think makes it more frustrating from libertarians is the extent to which (and surely I'm generalizing- I think that goes without saying) libertarians tend to offer a proportionately greater amount of their opinion as supposedly following logically from their theoretical system of libertarianism, rather than from more personal and nuanced stances.
Where was I going with this? I guess I was just saying that it's reasonable to assume that "libertarians" as a group of folks trend towards certain tastes, opinions, and preferences just like anyone else... and the more sophisticated defenders of libertarian theory need not (to a certain extent) fear the fact that their school has cultural tendencies as much as any other school of thought does.
Being a locavore is a trendy signaling device. While I don't have a problem with it, that is all that it is.
ReplyDeleteOh, and let us not fool ourselves here ... the locavore movement has numerous elements who want to mandate their lifestyle by law. Libertarians are thus rightfully wary.
Yes, a veritable Bat Signal... and... a totalitarian Trojan Horse?
ReplyDeleteThis is getting a bit over the top, Xenophon.
There's nothing "Trojan" about it. Like most groups who want to mandate their morality they are quite open about it.
ReplyDeleteI'd definitely buy that for some people it's a signaling device. What's over the top is your claim that "that is all that it is". You betray an ignorance of what you're talking about when you make statemetns like that.
ReplyDeleteWell, since there is nothing to the so-called positive claims about "buying local," and since it resembles every other healthfood, etc. movement we've since in the U.S. since the early 20th century (these things tend to come in waves) it looks like a signaling device to me.
ReplyDeleteWhat "so-called positive claims" do you have in mind? I'm sure some are exaggerated or debunked, but your statement seems pretty hyperbolic.
ReplyDeleteEvan,
ReplyDeleteThe primary claim of locavores is that somehow decreasing transport distance leads to all sorts of positive environmental spin-offs. There really isn't any reason to believe that to be the case.
Not that there is really anything like "local food" to begin with. As with anything like this, it really depends on how one defines "local," and that seems to be entirely arbitrary.
I'm not sure that's the primary claim, but it's certainly a claim that is made. I'd be interested to know why someone shouldn't believe these claims. It seems that transport from Chile to my local grocery store in Chicago pretty obviously presents much more in transportation costs than transport from a farm in Illinois. I imagine that the shipments from Chile are a lot bigger, which of course dilutes the cost... but this surely isn't the only issue involved in local buying. What about freshness? What about the inevitable link between local food and smaller scale production (which avoids the growing methods that make mass produced food taste like crap in comparison to local food)? What about the benefit of being able to talk to the guy who grew your tomato, or brewed your beer, or bottled your milk, and ask them questions about it?
ReplyDeleteOne of the biggest reasons I've heard to support local food (or other products, of course) is that much more of the money you put into a local business goes back into your own community, whereas with non-local products your community gets a proportionately smaller amount to put back into the system. One would think that libertarians, who object to large governmental systems of welfare and community development, would support such a market-based strategy for supporting the growth and development of one's local community. With Wal-Marts coming into towns and making a mess of local businesses in order to sell goods that break easily and are made under conditions that hardly provide a livelihood for foreign workers, localized business isn't just a trendy signaling and faux-environmentalism... it's a very down-to-earth, provincial, low-tech, and non-cosmopolitan attempt to get a grip on the human exchanges that have been more or less taken over by technocrats, bureaucrats, and entrepreneurs who care less about creativity than about profit production. That hardly sounds "trendy" to me. It almost sounds reactionary and backwards!
Evan -
ReplyDeleteScale economies in transportation may actually make the trip from Chile less energy intensive per piece of produce carried - that's the point. I wouldn't be surprised about it at all. I don't know the data, and unfortunately none of the recent libertarian bloggers go into the data (I would have thought that would have been central to their case, but apparently they disagree).
Landsburg makes a somewhat confused case - he tries to extract one element of cost (energy costs) from the price of produce, therefore claiming that because imported produce is cheaper, it must be less energy intensive. Of course that all depends on the share of the price of the produce going to energy.
But I agree - this idea that this is a driving motive behind the localism movement is very, very strange to me - and sounds suspiciously convenient for Landsburg, Boudreaux, and Kling.
ReplyDeleteI'm going to address the "keeping the money in the community" point in a subsequent post. I'm sure you'll get responses on that one - some of them good, some of them bad. In my opinion there is a right way and a wrong way to make this case.
ReplyDeleteOn the long transport, and in the vein of your suspicions about the accuracy of carbon costs (though without the intention of trying to prove the supposed loca- case correct)... I wonder if they take into account 1) the extent to which long-transport products are pitched when not sold compared to local products (I suspect this may be higher, though I'm not sure) and 2) as you point out I think, other externalities... long term degradation of the land where this stuff is being grown and what this does for carbon, or whatever else locavores supposedly hem and haw about.
ReplyDeleteJust two additions... not necessarily significant, and again, not necessarily proving any point about long-transport being more efficient or offering less net cost at whatever efficiency level.
Obviously because transport is a very tiny portion of the actual energy input associated with a product. It looks like it would be a large input, but it is in fact a rather small one. So it really depends on what X farmer is doing on their farm ... and as a general rule the professional, large scale farmer is per unit using energy far more efficiently than small-scale farmers. Of course it is also the case that it is impossible to feed the world's population via localism - a couple of billion people would have to volunteer to die if we really wanted to go that route outside of some niche movement.
ReplyDelete"What about the benefit of being able to talk to the guy who grew your tomato, or brewed your beer, or bottled your milk, and ask them questions about it?"
I grew up on a farm. I just don't get this notion of making it any more than it is.
"One of the biggest reasons I've heard to support local food (or other products, of course) is that much more of the money you put into a local business goes back into your own community, whereas with non-local products your community gets a proportionately smaller amount to put back into the system."
I just don't understand that POV at all. It sounds like autarky to me.
"With Wal-Marts coming into towns and making a mess of local businesses in order to sell goods that break easily and are made under conditions that hardly provide a livelihood for foreign workers, localized business isn't just a trendy signaling and faux-environmentalism..."
(a) I shop at Wal-Mart and Target; (b) foreign workers who work in export industries have better livelihoods than their traditional alternatives (e.g., subsistence farming) and such work over time raises the prosperity of those workers and their families; and (c) most of the stuff I buy from Wal-Mart and Target doesn't break.
Evan -
ReplyDeletePitched produce is going to be figured into the cost, but I agree w.r.t. to the depletion of the land. Don't count on this being accurately priced by the market.
Xenophon -
Of course it is also the case that it is impossible to feed the world's population via localism - a couple of billion people would have to volunteer to die if we really wanted to go that route outside of some niche movement.
Sure, but (1.) if anyone wanted anything like that it would presumably be a slow process that population would adjust too, just like it adjusted to the green revolution over time, and (2.) though I really don't see anyone calling for anything like this. What I see is a call for more diverse, robust, introspective communities rather than the end of free trade. In other words - I want to know there is a lot of food produced in Northern Virginia and I want to partake in that. I don't care if 100% of my diet is from Northern Virginia. Very, very few people in the localism movement do that I'm aware of.
Of course it is also the case that it is impossible to feed the world's population via localism - a couple of billion people would have to volunteer to die if we really wanted to go that route outside of some niche movement.
ReplyDeleteI've heard this a lot, and from Daniel too actually. I've personally never advocated for some sort of localism-to-feed-the-globe. Sometimes a niche movement is just a niche movement.
Now, stuff like micro-investment and development ventures seem related to a the concept of "localism", and perhaps this is what you mean? If so, I can't see how it would be anything but a good thing. Previous breadbaskets turned into barren land and aid-dependent villages, being encouraged to renew their own market and productivity? How does this not help the situation?
I grew up on a farm. I just don't get this notion of making it any more than it is.
Who's making it more than it is? It's a reason to buy a gallon of milk. That sounds pretty mundane to me.
...I think the only one who's "making it more than it is" (with regard to localism in general) is you. I'm not sure where the need to argue it comes from.
ReplyDelete"What I see is a call for more diverse, robust, introspective communities rather than the end of free trade."
ReplyDeleteI can think of no more diverse, robust community than the global community.
That's a rather tenuous sense of "community". What bonds of community do you see operating on a global scale?
ReplyDeleteI agree - presumably social bonds and familiarity are an important part of anything we would call a "community", Xenophon.
ReplyDeleteThat's not to say I don't take your point. But you're going to have a tough time making the case that localists are isolationists. You're trying to twist an embrace of the local community with insularity or parochialism - I don't see how you connect the dots there.
I am constantly in awe at the goods and services provided from a distance by people who are basically anonymous. That sort of bond is of great importance to most people I'd say. I compare this to the life of medieval peasant or the 17th century merchant or yeoman, who had to deal with people on a face to face basis daily for the most basic of needs. Really, the global community promotes and diversity and tolerance in large part because of that sort of anonymity. The 21st century producer of clothes cares far less about my way of living than the 17th century tailor might have.
ReplyDeleteXenophon -
ReplyDeleteI'm still confused about why you're juxtaposing these two things. You're trying to disagree with Evan and I on the basis of free trade and global exchange. Do you really think anyone is questioning that?!?!? Once again, I get the sense you're tilting at windmills.
It's also worth considering the dangers of anonymity... in your situation, this bond (admittedly of some importance) is based entirely on provision of goods and services. But it can also work to veil the conditions and livelihood of the producers. What if there is massive abuse of human labor in sweatshops? How do you familiarize yourself with these abuses, much less cease to be a part of the problem?
ReplyDeleteYou say that the 21st century producer cares less about your way of living than centuries ago, and this is good in certain senses. But on the other hand, the 21st century consumer cares less about the producer's way of living. This can be much more serious, if labor is exploitative.
Your only response to this thus far seems to be "it could be worse-- sweatshops beat subsistence farming." Even if we were to grant that, though, does this paltry justification allow one to sleep at night? Is there no room to argue for better factory conditions rather than just bad-but-better-than-the-worst-case conditions?
...never mind the fact that, even if anonymity is a good thing, it's not necessarily a communal virtue. Can community be anonymous? I'm sure it can be in certain senses... but only in situations like this blog, where we interact with you even though we don't know much about you and you use a pseudonym. It seems that the anonymity you're talking about is based entirely on ignorance and distance rather than any interaction whatsoever. Again, surely there are some good things about this, but I'm not sure what it has to do with community. I think my suspicion of your global community still stands more or less as it did a few posts up.
ReplyDelete"What if there is massive abuse of human labor in sweatshops? How do you familiarize yourself with these abuses, much less cease to be a part of the problem?"
ReplyDeleteDidn't you read that post on economic enlightenment and liberals?!?!?!?! It is economically UN-enlightened to think that multinationals violate people's human rights!
"But on the other hand, the 21st century consumer cares less about the producer's way of living."
ReplyDeleteReally? Is this an argument for some paternalistic past? A sort of Christian respublica?
"Even if we were to grant that, though, does this paltry justification allow one to sleep at night?"
I don't consider such dramatic advances in prosperity to be paltry.
"Is there no room to argue for better factory conditions rather than just bad-but-better-than-the-worst-case conditions?"
Factory conditions tend to get better as prosperity increases in a region.
"Can community be anonymous?"
Yes. All community requires is interaction after all.
Daniel,
I am sure that multinationals violate - in combination with the state - human rights. I'll defend globalism.
Oh yeah, and HBD!
ReplyDelete