I must be dreaming
Asymmetrical Information
God, how I hate celebrity advocacy. Oh, how I hate celebrity advocacy. This is roughly 35% because I think most celebrities who plump for some cause are stumbling airheads doing so because their publicists told them it would be good press, and about 65% because they back causes that are either silly or actually make me angry. I have dreams of Tim Robbins on fire.
But I never thought I would dream this: Celebrities backing a cause I wholeheartedly agree with -- and one without any cutesy appeal whatsoever! Yes, I am talking about celebrities against farm subsidies, a new campaign from Oxfam America.
Are you wiping your screen with a hankie, unsure you read that right? Yes, Michael Stipe, Coldplay, Antonio Banderas, Thom Yorke and more have taken on a cause darling to economists, but to few others. America, Europe and Japan egregiously subsidize farms, wasting their own tax dollars to produce food that's dumped on world markets, depressing prices and undercutting poor-world farmers. Yet there are too many links in that chain, too many supply-and-demand issues going on here, to make this the kind of huggable issue that attracts celebrities.
And yet! And yet! Minnie Driver: "People think more aid will help, but it won't. Trade is the surest way of decreasing the savage amount of poverty in our world. These countries have got to be able to trade fairly." Minnie, you were not only adorable in Grosse Pointe Blank! You are speaking my language! Will you marry me, right here, on this blog?
Ahem. Sorry. Got carried away there.
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