We Should Just Stop Ordering So Much Health Care

Robin Hanson has written a fascinating essay at Cato Unbound in which he claims that Americans are not really being ripped off by anyone when they over-spend on health care, but that they are simply demanding too much of it.

Car inspections and repairs take a small fraction of our total spending on cars, gas, roads, and parking. But imagine that we were so terrified of accidents due to faulty cars that we spent most of our automotive budget having our cars inspected and adjusted every week by Ph.D. car experts. Obsessed by the fear of not finding a defect that might cause an accident, imagine we made sure inspections were heavily regulated and subsidized by government. To feed this obsession, imagine we skimped on spending to make safer roads, cars, and driving patterns, and our constant disassembling and reassembling of cars introduced nearly as many defects as it eliminated.

This is something like our relation to medicine today. Our public today is like a king of old whose military advisors spent most of their time and budget reading omens and making sacrifices, to gain the gods' favor, instead of hiring soldiers and talking battle strategy. These advisors knew omens and sacrifices mattered little, but they saw the king was comforted, and feared losing favor by talking of battle strategy. A truly loyal advisor would have told the king what he did not want to hear: "You are obsessing about the wrong thing."

I have said before that the main cause of our "health care crisis" is that we expect "insurance" to cover all health care costs. Car insurance only kicks in when we manage to inflict more damage on our cars than the deductible will cover. Most people go years between making an insurance claim on their cars, but use their health insurance many times a year. Hanson is claiming that demand for health care has increased to absurd levels, and that the best way to reduce costs is to simply cut back on how much of it we buy. He sites a number of studies that show that most medical spending results in no significant difference in actual health, and in many cases can cause adverse effects. I recommend reading the whole thing, even though it is rather long and detailed. No, in fact I recommend reading the whole thing because it is long and detailed.

Society has been placing more emphasis on health lately, insisting on healthy eating, healthy kitchen appliances, healthy exercise, healthy soda. All this has apparently changed our priorities enough that we now spend one sixth of our income on health.

Personally, I prefer to spend my money on things that don't involve pills and needles.

UPDATE: EconLog is saying that Hanson is more mainstream than one might think.

Corporate Taxes

Here is a video on corporate taxes that I consider a must see for anyone not entirely acquainted with the issue. HT: Club for Growth.

NAR and Spin

The Motley Fool has a fun little article on how the NAR has been spinning the decline in housing sales.

OECD on BioFuels

Reuters reports that the OECD has stated that biofuels may

"offer a cure that is worse than the disease they seek to heal."

"The current push to expand the use of biofuels is creating unsustainable tensions that will disrupt markets without generating significant environmental benefits.

"When acidification, fertilizer use, biodiversity loss and toxicity of agricultural pesticides are taken into account, the overall environmental impacts of ethanol and biodiesel can very easily exceed those of petrol and mineral diesel."

"The OECD said tax incentives put in place in many regions, including the European Union and the United States, to encourage biofuel output could hide other objectives. 'Biofuel policies may appear to be an easy way to support domestic agriculture against the backdrop of international negotiations to liberalize agricultural trade,' it said." (Emphasis added)

"Instead it encouraged members of the World Trade Organization to step efforts to lower barriers to biofuel imports to allow developing countries that have ecological and climate systems more suited to biomass production.

...

"The OECD, which said in July that it saw biofuels keeping prices at high levels into the next decade, said it would lead to an unavoidable 'food-versus-fuel' debate.

"'Any diversion of land from food or feed production to production of energy biomass will influence food prices from the start, as both compete for the same input,' it said."

Zoned: NFF-1

LA is considering putting a moratorium on fast food restaurants in South LA - a portion of the city with a disproportionate number of fast food establishments per capita, as well as more obesity per capita.

"'The people don't want them, but when they don't have any other options, they may gravitate to what's there,' said Councilwoman Jan Perry, who proposed the ordinance in June, and whose district includes portions of South L.A. that would be affected by the plan."

So, apparently, people don't want to eat at fast food joints, but they do because there aren't other options . . . right.

"'While limiting fast-food restaurants isn't a solution in itself, it's an important piece of the puzzle,' said Mark Vallianatos, director of the Center for Food and Justice at Occidental College."

"This is 'bringing health policy and environmental policy together with land-use planning,' he said. 'I think that's smart, and it's the wave of the future.'"

As Fark would say, "This should end well."

"Fast-food restaurants haven't missed the cue: From their menus, diners can choose salads over burgers, yogurts over shakes and grilled over fried these days. And many food manufacturers have reconfigured their recipes to eliminate trans fats, the most unhealthful unsaturated fats made of partially hydrogenated oils."

So, do people choose those options when they are presented with them or do they keep buying the worse-for-you burgers and fries? If the answer is the later, guess what will happen when they are presented with establishments that sell nothing but better-for-you food.

"The state enacted legislation last year to increase the purchase of fruits and vegetables to be sold in corner stores in lower-income communities.

Rep. Mary Bono (R-Palm Springs) introduced a bill in Congress in June that, among other things, would try to increase the availability of nutritious foods in economically depressed areas."

So, when these don't actually end up doing any good, will the problem be lack of funding?

The Welfare State (Not) At Work

1 in 5 people in the UK have no reported income other than government handouts.

Link

Debt to Society?

MSNBC has an interesting article regarding the ruling of a South Korean appeals court that the CEO of Hyundai Motor Corp. should not serve a three year prison term for being found guilt of embezzling $100 million into a lush fund because he is too important to the country's economy:

"South Korea - An appeals court suspended a three-year prison sentence for Hyundai Motor Co. Chairman Chung Mong-koo on Thursday, saying the tycoon is too important to South Korea’s economy to go to jail for embezzlement.

...

"Presiding Judge Lee Jae-hong told the packed courtroom that Hyundai Motor has great influence over the nation’s economy and Chung, its hands-on leader, is the symbol of the company.

"'I am also a citizen of the Republic of Korea,' Lee said. 'I was unwilling to engage in a gamble that would put the nation’s economy at risk.'

...

"But Park Wan-gi, an activist with the Citizens’ Coalition for Economic Justice, denounced the ruling, saying it reinforced the perception that the rich can avoid jail.

"In a similar case, the Seoul High Court in 2005 suspended a three-year prison term for accounting irregularities handed to Chey Tae-won, CEO and chairman of South Korea’s leading oil refiner, SK Corp., now SK Energy."

Hyundai is currently the world's sixth largest car manufacturer and, combined with Kia, constituted 72% of automobiles exports, which, as a whole, represent 13% of total national exports.

The larger question here seems to be whether it is a valid principle (abstracting from particular South Korean law, etc.) that persons who are extremely important to a society (let's take for granted that he is) in one way or another (economically, culturally, diplomatically, etc.) should be spared jail time for a crime of which they were found guilty assuming that such a sentence would be detrimental to the common good of the nation.

I suppose it would depend on how one looks at punishment. If the goal of punishment is to reform the person for his own good, then the decision would be that between the private good and the common good. If punishment aims at retribution, then such a decision would be unjust by definition. If punishment aims at fulfilling a debt to society incurred by means of the crime, then it seems as if the question would be between which will provide society at large with a larger "pay off" - jail for the offender or the various benefits that they would otherwise be able to generate for society.

Missing from that paragraph is the corresponding cost of commuting a sentence even if there are substantial gains to be had for society, e.g., moral outrage or discouragement on the part of common people at the unequal way justice handles citizens.

Thoughts? Comments?

Ethanol Strikes - Vol. VIII

While this is an old story, I can't resist. Today's victim: popcorn.

Economics and Property Rights

Townhall has a short article entitled "Economics and Property Rights" in which the author briefly outlines how such things as property rights and various regulations affect how the laws of economics manifest themselves. Short and sweet - worth the read, though the author could have fleshed out the issue more, e.g., by mentioning the principle of the Tragedy of the Commons.

We Are Now Media . . . And There Was Much Rejoicing

The FEC has ruled that blogs dealing with politics are media for election law purposes. In the words of TechCrunch, "Essentially it reaffirmed the right of American bloggers to exercise their free speech rights without being subject to US electoral law, in the same way that media organizations are able to."

If Our Prisons Were a Corporation, It Would Be Bigger Than Detroit and Wal Mart

From a Reason Post:

We have a corrections sector that employs more Americans than the combined work forces of General Motors, Ford, and Wal-Mart, the three largest corporate employers in the country, and we are spending some $200 billion annually on law enforcement and corrections at all levels of government, a fourfold increase (in constant dollars) over the past quarter century

I am stunned. I just never thought about the shear numbers of people we have to pay to keep dangerous stock traders and dope smokers off the streets.

Great article on the housing bubble

From The Motely Fool, comes this headline (and article): "Desperate Realtors Applaud Bailout" with the gem of a subtitle: "The National Association of Realtors likes the idea of a subprime bailout. Big surreise."

Cyber War

Techdirt makes an interesting point about alleged attacks from China on foreign computer systems: such attacks probably inhibit Chinese tech firms selling their products abroad (for fear that there will be back doors built in, etc.). Thus, are such attacks actually counter-productive to the nation as a whole?

Speaking of Zimbabwe . . . .

China is apparently ending all economic assistance to Zimbabwe except humanitarian aid.

British Cancer Survival Rates

Apparently, while I was gone, some fun figures came out about British health care. This is the best summary I have seen in my collection of feeds, and it contains some nice links to other stuff. From the Telegraph:

Cancer survival rates in Britain are among the lowest in Europe, according to the most comprehensive analysis of the issue yet produced.

England is on a par with Poland despite the NHS spending three times more on health care.

Survival rates are based on the number of patients who are alive five years after diagnosis and researchers found that, for women, England was the fifth worst in a league of 22 countries. Scotland came bottom. Cancer experts blamed late diagnosis and long waiting lists.

In total, 52.7pc of women survived for five years after being diagnosed between 2000 and 2002. Only Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland, the Czech Republic and Poland did worse. Just 44.8pc of men survived, putting England in the bottom seven countries.

And soon our government will be bringing the same quality care to our shores. Hooray!

Update: Just found a report that most senior NHS doctors have private insurance, thus avoiding themselves what their patients must undergo.

Ethanol Issue Analysis - Vol. III

From Rolling Stone, comes the latest in a series of overarching looks at the ethanol issue entitled "The Ethanol Scam: One of America's Biggest Political Boondoggles". Definitely worth reading all the way through. Apologies for posting this soooo late.

HT: Fark

For posts regarding the first two "holistic" analyses of the Ethanol issue, see here and here.

And You Thought The Post Office Overcharged

From Bloomberg:

A small South Carolina parts supplier collected about $20.5 million over six years from the Pentagon for fraudulent shipping costs, including $998,798 for sending two 19-cent washers to an Army base in Texas, U.S. officials said.

The company also billed and was paid $455,009 to ship three machine screws costing $1.31 each to Marines in Habbaniyah, Iraq, and $293,451 to ship an 89-cent split washer to Patrick Air Force Base in Cape Canaveral, Florida, Pentagon records show.
...
The scheme unraveled in September after a purchasing agent noticed a bill for shipping two more 19-cent washers: $969,000. That order was rejected and a review turned up the $998,798 payment earlier that month for shipping two 19-cent washers to Fort Bliss, Texas, Stroot said.

HT Cato

More From Zimbabwe

Some of you may remember that Zimbabwe is experiencing hyperinflation. Now, in order to combat this, the government of Zimbabwe is outlawing pay raises. From the NYTimes:

Zimbabwe’s government slapped a six-month freeze on wages, rents and service fees on Friday, the latest step in what some analysts call an increasingly desperate campaign to sustain an economy gutted by hyperinflation.

Even as President Robert G. Mugabe declared the freeze, however, Zimbabwean newspapers suggested that the government’s two-month-old drive against inflation had backfired by drying up tax revenues needed to run the government.

This is only the latest in a long line of great ideas from the government.

The freeze follows a decree issued in late June that forced merchants and wholesalers to reduce all prices by at least 50 percent. Shoppers stripped store shelves of clothes, meat and other basic goods after that decree, and producers have largely failed to ship new stock because goods now sell for less than it costs to make them.

Most commodities are now available only on the black market, where prices have continued to skyrocket. Moreover, as the last remaining stocks of goods trickle out of factory warehouses and onto the market, Zimbabwe could soon see the start of an inflationary spiral that would make today’s prices seem cheap, John Robertson, a Harare economist, said in an interview.

Unfortunately for Zimbabwe, politicians never learn that they cannot control an economy by passing silly laws. A national economy is one of the most complex systems of human interaction mankind has ever developed. For a few politicians and bureaucrats to think they are going to manage the sum total of free transactions for a nation by defining what can and cannot be charged for any good or service, while at the same time violating every fundamental principle of the nature of money by printing it to pay its expenses, is not only stupid and dangerous, but typical.

As If We Need Another Reason To Hate Canada

Carpe Diem has a post, inspired by this article, about the average wait times for an MRI in Canada vs the US, along with a scary story as anecdotal evidence.

. . . Lindsay McCreith, who was told in 2006 that he probably had a brain tumor. His case was an emergency and he needed an MRI fast, but the wait time for a "free" MRI was 4.5 months in Ontario, and it's illegal to purchase a private MRI in Ontario. So he was told to get to the end of the MRI line with his suspected brain tumor and wait 135 days for his free MRI.

What to do? Lindsay contacted Timely Medical in Vancouver, a three-year old private medical broker in Canada, which got him an MRI the next day across the border in Buffalo, NY. Result? As suspected, he did indeed have a brain tumor the size of a golf ball. McCreith then was able to schedule brain surgery within a week in the U.S., surgery that would have taken eight months in Canada -- if Lindsay had still been alive.

Mandatory Checkups and Other Things That Keep Me Up At Night

John Edwards is proposing mandatory "preventative care" for all US citizens.

"It requires that everybody be covered. It requires that everybody get preventive care," he told a crowd sitting in lawn chairs in front of the Cedar County Courthouse. "If you are going to be in the system, you can't choose not to go to the doctor for 20 years. You have to go in and be checked and make sure that you are OK."

He noted, for example, that women would be required to have regular mammograms in an effort to find and treat "the first trace of problem." Edwards and his wife, Elizabeth, announced earlier this year that her breast cancer had returned and spread.

Of course this makes perfect sense. If we the people are going to be paying for everyone's health care from birth till death, then we the people have every right to force you to take care of your self as we think best. It is just good public policy. After all, seatbelt laws have been defended with the same argument for years. When someone objects that not wearing a seatbelt hurts no one but oneself, the response is often, "But I have to pay for your hospital bills if you get hurt."

With this rational, anything that might make the average cost of national health care increase becomes a national threat. Alcohol, skydiving, mountain climbing, wilderness hiking, exposure to the sun, bacon, real made-from-cow-milk ice cream, anything can be controlled, limited, rationed, or banned. I will not even mention smoking, since it is on its way to being banned already.

Some people may think I am being hyperbolic for rhetorical reasons, a habit I am in truth not above. Sit back, however, and think over the last 40 years. Children used to run around their neighborhood playing. Now they can't be in the back yard alone. People used to be able to order a hamburger rare, now most chain restaurants daren't offer the option. We used to be able to walk on to a plane wearing shoes. 18 year olds used to be trusted to drink responsibly (and are still trusted to use fully automatic weapons and tanks responsibly). Little freedoms we used to take for granted are being taken away one at a time. Calls for restrictions and limitations "for our own good" are becoming ever more common. From hanging a picture without a license to drinking caffeinated beer, all aspects of our lives are coming under the control of a government we continue to expect to "do something." After all, it is for the common good. We can't allow you to continue to run around selfishly risking your health, then expecting us to pay for it.

And that is the key. Selfishness. People are selfish. If you tell someone that their rich uncle is buying lunch, they are much more likely to order the steak and lobster. Any plan that would work if only people would be less selfish is doomed. The only way to control selfishness is to ensure people bear the costs and benefits of their actions themselves. If people are not free to both succeed and fail, the incentives are for ever greater risk taking.

HT Club for Growth

Update: Read a similar rant on this here

Reagan Sees Success Overseas

Although protectionism and tax-and-spend ideologies are ascendant in the US, Reagan's vision is alive and well abroad.

The Reagan economic philosophy of lower taxes, less regulation and free trade has never been more in vogue abroad — so much so that it has become the global economic operating system. …nations of old-Europe seem to be in a sprint to see which country can get their tax rates lowest quickest. Nicholas Vardy, the editor of “The Global Guru” economic newsletter calls the phenomenon “Europe’s Reagan Revolution.” …Austria cut its corporate tax rate to keep pace with its neighbor, Slovakia which recently adopted an 19% flat tax. Singapore is cutting taxes to compete with its 16% flat-tax rival Hong Kong. Northern Ireland wants to cut its tax rates so that it can compete with the economic gazelle of Europe, the Republic of Ireland. In 1988 Ireland was a high-unemployment stagnant economy with a 48% corporate tax rate, today that rate is 12.5% and the rest of the world is now desperate to match its economic results. Meanwhile German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck sold the latest tax cuts as “an investment in Germany as a business location.” …it is a testament to the Reagan economic revolution launched in 1981 that, a quarter century later, global tax rates are 25 percentage points lower on average today than in the 1970s. And those figures don’t even include this latest round of chopping under Reaganomics 2.0. The enactment of supply-side policies is helping ignite one of the strongest and longest world-wide economic expansions in history.

I can only hope that after the eight years of democratic control of government we have coming, free market ideals can again assert their hold on Reagan's homeland.

More Insanity

Classically Liberal makes the argument that Americans are crazy, based on the reactions of a New Hampshire town to some flour in a parking lot. Also, the precautionary principle makes a return.

Record Lows

While I try not to spend to much time on Global Warming issues here, since they are neither Society nor Money, I do find it interesting from a social point of view that when the predictions were for the hottest summer on record back in June and July, it was all over the headlines, but now that the records are being broken in the other direction, there is much less noise being made. I suspect that some of the blame can be attributed to money, since no one gets a grant to study the possibility that nothing really important is happening. In addition, one must always beware of using an anecdote to prove a universal. Neither record highs nor lows on a local level really signify anything on a global scale. As John Brignell likes to say, it is the nature of records to be broken.

Liberty or Equality

While I am quite pleased that my co-author, Maarek, has returned from his honeymoon, I cannot resist the temptation to point out that, while he somewhat mockingly said that he hoped not to read anything on his honeymoon in response to my having read Freakonomics on mine, he went ahead and read Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn's Liberty or Equality on his. At least mine could be called "light" reading . . .

British Gun Ban Is Working Just Fine

After all, since the near total ban on handguns in 1997, gun-related crimes have only risen by about 100%.

DC Education Spending

Great post from Classically Liberal about DC public school spending. I highly recommend reading the whole thing. Besides the typical stories about spending millions to employ useless people for political reasons and unions demanding free money in exchange for political support at the cost of actually teaching children anything, for me the most interesting thing was the cost of private schools in the District.

St. Gabriel School has a tuition of $4,500. The more prestigious German School in the suburbs charges $10,000 per year. The most expensive, elite private school in the city, St. Albans charges $26,500 per year.

The most expensive school in DC is $26,500 per annum. The budget for the public schools comes to $20,000 dollars per student. DC could eliminate the public school system, send every student to a "prestigious" school in the suburbs, and still save $10,000 per student per annum.

Of course every year politicians campaign for more money for schools. As CL observes,

Markets reward solutions with profits. Politics is used to address “problems”. The more problems you have the more programs and subsidies that you qualify for. The nature of political financing is perverse. It rewards dysfunctionality far more than efficiency.

Yet some people hold up our public education system as a model to be extended to health care. After all, it worked so well for our "most precious resource."

So That's Where It All Goes!

Surprise! We pay a lot of taxes. Turns out that, for most Americans, taxes have been the biggest expenditure increase in the last 30 years.

Although income only rose 75%, and expenditures for the mortgage, car and health insurance rose by even less than that, the tax bill increased by $13,086 -- a whopping 140% increase. The percentage of family income dedicated to health insurance, mortgage and automobiles actually declined between the two periods.

Read the rest here

Trade Imbalance

A bit old, but I am still clearing our my back log of reading. Cafe Hayek's Don Boudreaux has a great post on trade imbalances.

Mr. Gettelfinger grumbles that "the U.S. and South Korea have a huge imbalance in auto trade." Well, duh - that's an inevitable consequence of specialization. Although we cook in our household, my family still has a huge "imbalance" in the prepared-food trade with McDonald's. But we would make ourselves only poorer if my family and I refused to buy from restaurants that do not buy equal amounts of prepared meals from us. In this case, what is true for each household is true for the collection of households that we call the United States.

Even Socialists See the Flat Tax Revolution

The World Socialist Web Site has a column up about how eastern European countries are falling for the capitalist tricks of low taxes to attract "multinational companies and western speculators."

The government of Albania has agreed on a standard tax rate (flat tax) of 10 percent aimed at outdoing its East European rivals and attracting international investors. The government in Tirana is determined to transform the impoverished Balkan state into a haven for multinational companies and western speculators.

From the start of next year, corporate taxes will be reduced from 20 to just 10 percent. The basic rate of income tax, which amounted to 5 percent for average incomes and a maximum of 25 percent for top earners, had already been changed to a uniform rate of 10 percent for all incomes on August 1.

But even this is not enough. In August the head of government, Sali Berisha, announced that the state would make development land available to foreign investors for the symbolic price of one euro. Concessions for socially indispensable services such as health service, education, water and waste disposal, infrastructure, energy and raw material production - are also to be sold off bargain-basement style for one euro.

Should any potential investor be nevertheless deterred by any remaining tariffs, the Albanian government is also ready to step in. A law over foreign trade zones is in preparation and is due to be passed by parliament in October.

Of course, while I would consider these developments to be good things, the author disagrees.

Government representatives repeatedly emphasize that the reform of the tax system is beneficial for the country. The participation of foreign investors in Albania would increase tax revenues, increase transparency, and provide an alternative to businesses, which operate outside of the country’s legal framework and tax structure.

In fact, none of these claims are true. The halving of corporate taxes will inevitably lead to sizable deficits in the national budget, which is already chronically under-financed due to high unemployment and wide-spread tax evasion. The state has already withdrawn financial participation in almost all public services such as health care, education, or infrastructure. Any further decline in the national budget can only worsen the situation.

The main victims of this reform will be those surviving on low incomes. The increase in taxes on low-income earners from 5 to 10 percent means that these taxpayers will finance the tax cuts for companies and high income earners. At the same time those on low wages will be hit hardest by the social consequences of declining tax receipts.

Sixteen years after the introduction of capitalist free-market reforms, the country already resembles an economic and social wasteland. The country’s few profitable national industrial companies have been sold off to the highest bidder and any sort of welfare provision only exists on paper.

It is enough to make one long for the days of plenty everyone enjoyed under the USSR, isn't it?

HT Cato-at-Liberty

Chinese Health Care To Blame For Trade Deficits?

The always fantastic Carpe Diem makes an interesting connection between China's cash-upfront medical industry, and their high savings rates, which contribute to the trade surplus they enjoy with the US. Not that I object to a trade imbalance, but it is an interesting connection.

Good For Youuu! :) Thaaanks! ;)

Apparently the fact that people want to be seen to drive hybrids is conflicting with the tax breaks being offered for them. The WSJ recommends offering incentives for things no one else will ever see, such as water heaters, to get more bang for the stolen-by-a-meddling-government-and-spent-on-pointless-market-distorting-subsidies buck.

Caffeinated Beer? That Sounds Great! Let's Ban It!

From US News and World Report:

State attorneys general have asked the federal government to crack down on beers that contain caffeine, saying the alcoholic energy drinks pose serious health and safety risks.

Thirty attorneys general called for an investigation of promotional claims that the drinks provide energy and power, while explicitly appealing to teenagers and young adults, who equate partying with staying up late. "Who's up for staying out all night?" says a promotion for Bud Extra, one of the drinks cited by the attorneys general in their letter to the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau.

Obviously any beverage that someone might enjoy drinking must be bad. I love the fact that Bud Extra had the line "You can sleep when you're 30" on it, at least until they were "asked nicely" to take it off by government busy-bodies. We wouldn't want to imply that people under 30 drink, would we?

Cato on Stossel on The Commonwealth Fund on Health Insurance

A very nice set of nested summaries. I recommend going a few levels deep.

Precautionary Principle

Classically Liberal has the story of Greenpeace activists dumping eleven tons of GM (genetically modified) papaya in front of a government building in Thailand as a protest against something or other. The story is significant for two reasons.

First, when Greenpeace dumped the "potentially" dangerous fruit it was immediately grabbed up by hungry passersby. Frantic warning from the illegal dumpers were cheerfully ignored by delighted fruit-lovers. Said one, “I’m not scared of GM papayas. I’m scared I won’t have any to eat.” Classically Liberal suggests someone attempt to sue Greenpeace for attempting to poison people with deadly food, forcing them to admit that there was no risk involved.

The second interesting facet of this story is the blatant use of groundless concerns and fear by Greenpeace to oppose changes they find unpleasant. The local representative of Greenpeace claimed this incident proves “the failure of government agencies to educate people about the possible health risks of genetically-engineered crops.” Possible health risks indeed. In every study ever conducted, no evidence of health risks associated with GM foods has ever been shown. Ever. The evidence is not "spotty" or "inconclusive." Every study not later discredited shows no danger. But Greenpeace want them banned just in case. They say "Well, they might still be harmful in the long run."

While there is no evidence for harm from GM foods, there is quite a lot of evidence for benefit. Insect resistant crops require less pesticides for the same food yield. Vitamin-fortified grains save lives across the third world. Heartier strains require less watter for irrigation. These concrete advantages, however, do nothing to counterbalance the wholly imaginary risks in the minds of Greenpeace. If millions starve to prevent the possibility of hyperintelligent corn rising up against its God-playing creators, so be it.

The entire campaign against GM foods stems from a feeling that they are "unnatural." Of course, not all unnatural things are bad. Airplanes, for instance. In his natural state the only action of which man should be capable at 30,000 feet is to plummet like a very squishy rock. Today, however, a range of activities is open to the stratospherically inclined, including sleeping uncomfortably, listening to detailed instructions on using a seatbelt, eating 5 dollar bags of chips, imbibing very small bottles of liquor, and fantasizing about a near mythical age when all flight attendants were stewardesses. An argument could possibly be made from a natural law standing that things which are truly unnatural are morally wrong, but if Greenpeace did so, it would open up a whole can of worms about everything else clearly unnatural, such as homosexuality, or Japanese pickup trucks.

Unless Greenpeace wants to get into the business of pontificating on objective morality (not an unlikely possibility) they should quit objecting to GM foods.

Back To Work

Our reader(s) may have noticed a lack of diversity in post authors over the last few weeks. I have been unavoidably preoccupied in recent weeks with the process of preparing for, joining, and adjusting to, the married state. I apologize for my lack of dedication, and will now attempt to throw myself back into my duties with all due diligence.




Thank you.