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Market See, Market Do by Brad Edmonds
First,
I’m reminded of the “noble savage.”
Among the worshipful mantras bandied about in praise of American
Indians by leftists are that they used every part of each buffalo they
killed. This was noble
because it minimized the number of buffalo necessary to kill, it expressed
reverence for mama earth and her happy critters, and so on.
Frankly, it isn’t so noble when you think about it:
It’s easier, in a pre-industrial setting, to make clothing from
animal skin than from cotton. As
long as you have the bones, you might as well make tools and weapons,
rather than hunting for the right rocks.
And it’s easier to keep cutting meat from the animal you killed,
even if it’s relatively unpalatable, than to kill another animal.
(Still and all, I’d be interested to know whether, when the
Indians ran herds of buffalo off cliffs, they ate only the prime cuts from
the giant pile of dead animals that resulted.)
So, we’re catching up with the noble savage in our comprehensive
use of the cow. And the noble
savage proves our equal in recognizing the natural disutility of labor. (Side note: The
“natural disutility of labor” doesn’t mean we’re all lazy; it
means if we see two ways of meeting the same goal, and one way is more
efficient than the other, we gravitate to the more efficient method
without hesitation.) Next,
we’re proving a well-established trend that’s only recently made its
way into the mainstream media, to wit:
Societies become more efficient and “green” as they get
wealthier. Whenever
gross domestic product per capita reaches $5000 (US dollars, 1987-size),
the environment starts getting cleaner.
Another trend, even more telling and less ballyhooed by the news
networks, is that as populations gain wealth their birth rates slow.
The United Nations has quietly published its concerns that the real
population problem 50 years from now will be underreplacement.
It seems the economic reasons for having lots of children 100 years
ago have disappeared, and people are having children only as they want
them. The free market solves
its own problems, even the most dire ones expected by the alarmists of the
1960s and ‘70s. The
market always precedes government intervention in the market.
The Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) and other government
interventions in the stock market took real root only in the 20th
century, whereas the historical roots of the New York Stock Exchange
predate the United States itself. There
were plenty of roads before the government began exercising its
“right” of eminent domain and building them for us (and making them
available to anyone who wants to use them, including the 9/11 terrorists).
And there were plenty of schools, doing spectacular work, before
the government decided education should be handled centrally and forcibly. Now,
the market has found a new, more efficient way to get more money out of a
cow for the producer, and more value for the consumer. I can only imagine the government regulations that will arise
on the heels of this new discovery: Regulations
on how many pounds of a given-sized cow must be made into steaks;
regulations on how much waste is allowed; whatever else a legislator’s
heart desires. There’s
more that hasn’t been done to the beef cattle industry.
“Certified Angus” beef is certified by a professional
association that bases its certifications on the lineage of the cattle.
Angus cattle are found wherever ranches are found.
The Angus trademark is not a guarantee of perfection, and there are
competing beef cattle lines. But
the cattle’s lineage is a prime niche for government intervention,
especially once DNA coding is second nature for geneticists.
Right now, according to a rancher of my acquaintance, beef cattle
ranching remains among the least-regulated industries.
Give it a few decades. The
lure of government largesse will have state and Washington legislators
handing out more protections (against, e.g., Brazilian and Argentinean
beef); genetic, procedural, and other regulations (to protect existing
ranchers against new competition from within the US); and anything else
you can imagine. The result
will be the same as it has been with sugar, potatoes, and plums:
less variety, lower quality, less availability, and higher prices
for you and me. It’s
funny how the tiniest, least significant-seeming news item brings forth a
flood of associations and speculations.
None of us has the imagination to predict either how the market can
suddenly make life better, more interesting and enjoyable, and less
expensive at the same time; or how legislators will find a way to take
consumer dreams and turn them into bland, inefficient, overpriced
realities. Let’s hope the
legislators don’t discover beef cattle before we all have at least one
chance to enjoy these new steaks.
discuss this column in the forum Brad Edmonds, MS in Industrial Psychology, Doctor of Musical Arts, is a banker in Alabama. |
According
to a recent news item, researchers have found a new
way to cut parts of the cow normally reserved for hamburger.
