"Locavores" and Libertarians, Part 1

In the comment section of this post, Evan inquires about my reference to the sometimes rough relationship between libertarian bloggers and the "buy local" movement. I've seen lots of posts on this over time, particularly on Cafe Hayek, but the recent series of posts started with Stephen Landsburg's post (cleverly interchanging "loca-" with "loco-") suggesting that locavores are wrong because more often than not, locally grown produce is more energy-intensive than non-locally grown produce (this shouldn't be too surprising to people who know about comparative advantage and scale economies and can put the two together for both agriculture and transportation). Don Boudreaux follows up on it here, and Arnold Kling follows up on it here. Their argument rests on the basic point about the information content of market signals. Markets know more than locavores about the costs and benefits of different food production, so when locavores eschew non-local foods they are somehow going against the market. I have two main complaints about this criticism - the first is economic, and the second is more philosophical.

First, the whole problem with the market for carbon is that the market doesn't have reliable informational content, as it doesn't with any product where externalities prevent markets from accurately communicating information. That doesn't make locavores who make the energy efficiency point right - I wouldn't be surprised at all if locally grown food was still more energy-intensive despite the externality problems associated with pricing it. I simply wouldn't go out on a limb to defend the market on accurately pricing anything having to do with fossil fuels. It seems a little odd, though, that Kling and Boudreaux are criticizing locavores for ignoring market signals even as they participate in a market. Clearly they use market signals, and they have different assessments of the value of non-locally grown food than Kling and Boudreaux do, and they act in the market accordingly. Most locavores don't eat entirely locally grown food. I don't even come close. Usually the margin I'm concerned about is price. I'm much more likely to purchase locally grown vegetables than meat because it's a cheaper product in which I can express my localist preferences. Crabs I often buy locally, other meat less often. I buy wine and beer from local producers far more often than I do from non-local producers. I'm taking my subjective value judgements to the market and interacting with market signals in all of these purchases. Nobody is bucking market judgements of the cost of non-locally produced foods. It's just not the only information that people use. The other side of the market process is consumer demand. So the juxtaposition of locavores and market signals was a little odd in that respect.

The second critique I had is actually my primary critique: people who buy locally generally speaking don't do it for energy-intensity reasons, in my experience. Maybe there are some environmentalists that give this justification primacy (although even for them I doubt it's the only reason), but I really don't get the sense this figures very prominently. I certainly don't - I don't get the impression Evan does - I've never heard the friends I mentioned in the previous blog post bring the energy-efficiency point up. In fact, it's precisely the energy intensity of local production that is praised in many circumstances. There's an ethic to the work involved in small-scale, unmechanized farming. There's an ethic to the work involved in gardening. The additional work of craft production is seen as a labor of love - a humanizing toil. It's the "shop class as soulcraft" idea. I could understand why people who live and breath neoclassicism might get confused about how to incorporate this subjective value into a framework where leisure is always considered a "good" and labor is always considered a "bad", but I'm surprised so many self-styled Austrians or Austrian sympathizers are tripping over this point.

Aside from the simple points that (1.) the market may very well be wrong in its pricing of carbon, (2.) just because you have subjective values doesn't mean you ignore the market, and (3.) in some cases energy and work-intensity is considered a feature, not a bug, there seems to be a lot Landsburg, Boudreaux, and Kling don't understand about the motivations for localism. My impression is that the major drive behind the movement is to personalize and diversify production and make local communities and social interactions more robust and fulfilling. One of the things our friends liked about the local cheese cake shop they told us about was that they knew both of the proprietors. I think I'm going to take this community-building point up in a subsequent post, because it's been featured on Cafe Hayek recently as well, and it's really a post in itself.

Birthday Acquisitions and Recommendations

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.

Links on States, Localities, and Federalism

Longer-term readers know I have a deep interest in federalism and the role of the states in American society. Our federal organization provides the opportunity for a lot of experimentation ("laboratories of democracy"), decentralization of power, more responsive government, and the development of distinct regional identities that make our culture more robust. Unfortunately, these opportunities are often wasted.

One thing I've been concerned about is the role that state governments have played in aggravating the downturn. Balanced budget practices that cut spending dramatically at the state level when revenue is down have neutralized much of the federal stimulus. Analysts who don't take the time to look further than the federal budget insist that we've implemented massive fiscal stimulus. But the emphasis on the federal budget is meaningless. Total government spending in the U.S. - spending that includes the state and local governments - has been much less pronounced. That's a huge danger that many proponents of fiscal stimulus seem to be unaware of, and the many opponents of fiscal stimulus seem to ignore when they decry Keynesianism in America today. However, we do have some good news. The Wall Street Journal reports today that state tax revenue has started to stabilize, and since budget cuts have largely been a response to reductions in revenue, this is a good thing. It still probably won't add any deficit spending, but the cuts should stop. Recently, Megan McArdle blogged on state debt levels, although I think her treatment leans too heavily on the very real moral hazard concern and doesn't engage enough of the other important issues that need to be considered. Finally, Veronique de Rugy does an abysmal job engaging the issue of intergovernmental transfers and the stimulus, and draws a lot of misleading conclusions. Thankfully, it's been thoroughly covered and disputed, but it is unfortunate. The last thing politicians need is more sloppy research to work with.

More good news is shared by Coordination Problem. They link to a paper by Robert Nelson on sub-local government. Nelson argues that sub-local governance structures can operate more efficiently than state and federal governments, and should be created more freely. Peter Boettke, highlights the fact that as government gets bigger, it also may very well be getting more decentralized as a result of these sub-local governance structures. This reminds me of something I blogged about last summer: the work that my great-grandfather (H. Vernon Eney) did in the sixties writing a new constitution (which was never ratified) for the state of Maryland. Most of my blog post focuses on the role that the discourse surrounding "states' rights" played in the failure to ratify, but it's also worth pointing out that one of Eney's biggest goals was to make it easier to establish and adjust sub-state governance structures. He wasn't thinking of sub-local organizations in particular. My understanding is that he was thinking of more regional structures. But the idea is the same: local communities can govern themselves better, and hamstringing these governance structures by relying on a more rigid system of states and counties can be counter-productive. Eney always emphasized that states' rights does not have to be a reactionary position. It is a very reformist position. He thought that the federal government demonstrated that it was not up to the task of solving a lot of modern social problems. An effective reform movement would have to strengthen the states to accomplish anything.

I'd also highlight some posts that Evan has written in the past on localism that are somewhat related. More recently, he's written on "what localism should not be" (his answer: "a romantically quixotic attack on the very technologies that are good for it"). This post rightly denounces the tendancy of people to equate localism with primitivism. He's also written on localism, food production, and culture, and I responded with some agreement and some critique.