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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jacob Snyder who wrote (124868)	2/20/2004 3:17:18 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Respond to of 281500

<If you work slaves to death, to grow food for export, how is that different than eating the slaves directly?> Having read "A modest proposal" and learned a bit of economics in recent years, as well as read a bit about Maori cannibals, there is quite a difference. For a start and most importantly, there would be a net food loss. Selling slave meat instead of the agricultural products they produce would result in less total food to sell, and reduced income. One slave produces a big food surplus - especially these days with combine harvesters roaming the landscape. Then there's the quality issue. Maoris say that human tastes like pork. Which, looking at pigs and humans, with their hairless [relatively] fat little bodies and habits of snuffling in the government trough or sty trough, not to mention their omnivorous dietary inputs, isn't surprising. Jews and Moslems, vegetarians would be out of the market. Many others would find the meat distasteful just as they dislike pork, even if they like fish, beef and lamb. But then there is actually a difference between actually eating somebody and making them grow food on a farm. An actual literal difference in that the person isn't eaten. <Today, the rich world spends $300B/Y on agricultural subsidies, which beggars farmers in the world's poorest nations. $100B$/Y each, for the U.S., EU, and Japan. The result is chronic malnutrition and intermittent famine for a billion Others. How is that different, from directly butchering them, and serving them for dinner in our homes?> Jacob, that's the result of democracy and pork barrel politics. The democratic principle of concentrated benefits and diffuse costs means politicians can take a little from all taxpayers and hand it over to a concentrated group. The mass don't worry about a dollar each, but the special interest gets a very noticeable payment. It is actually a different process from directly butchering the farmers outside the political system. It really isn't New Zealand's business if European and American farmers and politicians want to ban our products. We shouldn't grizzle and whine. It's their world to run as they see fit. We can try to persuade them that they'd be better off overall by buying cheaper and better products and spending their efforts on doing something of higher value, such as inventing more CDMA, but if they wallow in ignorance and pork barrel products, that's up to them. It's up to us to do something for ourselves which is economic. Bad luck for us if they don't wish to trade. Because there is a consumer surplus in transactions, they actually miss out more than we do, so it's more of a problem for them than us. It means we can't buy their things since we can't sell our things to them. They don't seem to be very intelligent, because they have trouble figuring that out. In case anyone has trouble understanding that, if we can't earn a US$ by selling a sheep, we don't have a US$ with which to buy a CDMA cyberphone. Which means we miss out on having a cyberphone and the USA misses out on eating our enslaved NZ Maori - if you see "Long Pig" on sale, that's the name we use in NZ for human meat, [which is delicious and nutritious, if somewhat fatty these days - great for your Atkins diet]. I'll put it to George [a golfing buddy] and see how much he wants for his children - we could set up a roaring trade. Mqurice PS: Maoris aren't really "ours" and we Pakeha don't enslave them, despite claims to the contrary. They have actually got a cannibalism process going as you describe. Pakeha work and earn a lot of money. Helengrad confiscates it and gives it to Maoris who get to be special people because we have apartheid here [established in 1840 with the Treaty of Waitangi]. It has been quite a gravy train for Maori in recent decades. Pakeha served up, with gravy. Yum. They are up to their old ways, but using modern methods such as you described [don't eat us directly, just get us working and they consume the benefits]. They are against Chinese immigration because they know the Chinese and especially the Koreans, won't put up with that crap and the Koreans will eat THEM! There aren't many dogs roaming the streets these days. Cats stay close to home too. I'm not saying Koreans have been catching them, but there are definitely almost no dogs just out roaming the neighbourhood as there were when I was a child, and there are a LOT of Koreans and Chinese living in the area now. In Thames, they still have dogs roaming loose and eating neighbourhood children [one was chewed just a week ago - a little 3 year old]. I quite like it that the dogs have disappeared. Koreans seem okay [there are lots out at my golf club]. They use a LOT of CDMA in Korea, so they can afford to come and live in NZ.

To: Jacob Snyder who wrote (124868)	2/20/2004 5:20:39 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 281500

Today, the rich world spends $300B/Y on agricultural subsidies, which beggars farmers in the world's poorest nations. $100B$/Y each, for the U.S., EU, and Japan. The result is chronic malnutrition and intermittent famine for a billion Others. How is that different, from directly butchering them, and serving them for dinner in our homes? I think its very different from directly butchering them, but its still awful, and it also hurts us as well as them. Tim

To: Jacob Snyder who wrote (124868)	2/20/2004 5:54:37 PM
From: Ish	Respond to of 281500

<<agricultural subsidies>> Evil incarnate for sure. Or not. They help the US farmers and in the case of grains only kick in when grain prices are way low. Peanuts, tobacco and sugar are driven by campaign donations. Those subsidies we can do without. Without subsidies many grain farmers would go broke. Grain is one of our biggest exports. Under Clinton's last year it cost more to grow a bushel of corn than what it brought. Same price as in 1900. Ethanol from corn gives 35% more energy than it takes to produce it. And a 10% of alcohol mix cuts emissions 60%. Now there's something needs a subsidy.