Month: May 2001

Boy, Did I Feel Stupid

I had one of those experiences today that made me feel like a complete idiot.

Several days ago I was in the gym getting dressed after showering. I wasn’t having a very good day to begin with, and I was getting my clothes out of my locker when I heard this voice behind me saying something like, “Hey, how’s it going today?” The only person I ever run into who I know at the gym is this acquaintance, Dean, who I know well enough to exchange small talk but not much beyond that. It looked like Dean out of the corner of my eye, and so I started to say “Hi Dean”, when I realized it wasn’t him.

I had never seen this person before in my life, but he proceeded to talk to me like I knew him. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but the way he talked to me was a bit too familiar for being a complete stranger and he was kind of giving me a strange look — I thought maybe he knew me from somewhere or knew my wife or something. I quickly forced myself through the conversation and got the heck out of there.

Anyway, today after showering I’m getting dressed and again the same guy is sitting next to a locker and starts talking to me like he knows me, only now I realize what’s going on and feel like a complete idiot. He was blind. He had a folded up cane sitting next to him today; probably still had that in his locker or gym bag the previous day because I certainly didn’t see it and it never even occurred to me from the previous conversation that he might be blind.

Oy.

Oxfam’s Backwards Argument about Coffee Pricing

Oxfam has noticed that in real terms, the price of buying coffee beans is now lower than at pretty much any time in history, due in large measure to an international glut of coffee beans. Oxfam’s solution? Increase coffee surpluses even more?

The organization is upset that coffee prices have plummeted over the past three years which has seriously undermined the economic position of coffee growers in the developing world. On the other hand, the wholesale cost of coffee isn’t necessarily that large of a factor in the pricing of coffee in the industrial world, so the fall in coffee bean prices essentially means more profits for coffee resellers in places like the United States.

Oxfam’s solution is to set a worldwide floor price on coffee at $1 per pound — which is about double what the going rate of coffee is. But as the British Coffee Association gently puts it, this proposal “fails to address the fundamental economics of the coffee market in the long term.” To put it not so gently, it is the worst possible solution.

Setting a price floor of $1/pound will simply encourage even more farmers in the developing world to grow coffee, which will further exacerbate the existing glut of coffee. At that point either large numbers of farmers will simply have their coffee go unsold (and that would do little to help elevate these people out of poverty), or states will have to step in with programs to buy coffee from farmers and destroy it or pay people to not grow coffee or any number of other measures that countries are inevitably forced to do when they subsidize such industries.

Oxfam’s solution would be worse than the current problem. The low price of coffee is a clear indicator that many farmers involved in its production need to switch to alternative crops, whereas Oxfam would encourage them to keep pounding away at producing a commodity for which there is already a worldwide oversupply.

Source:

Coffee farmers ‘face destitution’. The BBC, May 16, 2001.

Americorps "Volunteer" Takes High School Students on Eco-Protest Field Trip

Eight high school students and a 19-year-old Americorps “volunteer” were recently arrested for their role in an Earth First! logging protest in Humboldt County during what they had told school officials would be a field trip to look at alternative agriculture methods.

The students are enrolled in an alternative education program, San Francisco Unified School District’s Urban Pioneer Program, and Americorps worker David Wehrer had arranged a field trip to take the students to a Humboldt Country ranch where they were supposed to learn about organic farming. Instead Wehrer apparently decided to take the children to the anti-logging protest where he managed to evade arrest but his young charges were scooped up along with adult Earth First! protesters.

Wehrer has been charged with 16 criminal charges, including 8 counts of felony child endangerment and 8 counts of misdemeanor contributing to the delinquency of a minor.

Environmentalists are protesting logging by Pacific Lumber Col. in an ongoing controversy over old growth Douglas firs. Prosecutors argue that taking children to the protest constitutes criminal child endangerment, noting that a protester was killed by a falling tree in 1998 at the same site.

“To use kids as cannon fodder for a cause is an example of completely misplaced values,” Humboldt County District Attorney Terry Farmer said.

The San Francisco Chronicle didn’t mention it, but if Wherer was acting in an official capacity as an Americorps volunteer — which he seems to have been doing — he was violating federal law in engaging in political advocacy (this is an ongoing problem with the Americorps program).

Source:

8 students skip school, get busted at protest; 19-year-old volunteer faces felony charges. Mark Martin, San Francisco Chronicle, May 18, 2001.

Insane Lawsuits/Defenses Do Work

Sometimes I post examples of crazy lawsuits and bizarre defenses, but do these people ever get away with such nonsense? Actually, yes.

According to this Chicago Tribune story, Elizabeth Roach embezzled nearly $250,000 from her employer which she used on expensive shopping sprees (she managed to run up a cool $500,000 in credit card bills).

And she won’t serve even a day in jail. US District Judge Matthew Kennelly ruled that Roach suffers from a compulsive shopping addiction. Rather than send her to jail, he gave her five years probation and ordered her to undergo mental health treatment.

E-Bay’s Anti-Violence Kick

The Cato Institute’s Lucas Mast makes an interesting point about EBay’s recently announced policy that it will no longer list items that promote hatred, intolerance, and/or violence. Which, of course, means that you can’t buy a Nazi flag or Charles Manson recording, but you will still be able to buy flags and other collectibles related to the two most murderous states in human history, the Soviet Union and The People’s Republic of China.

I think Mast is probably correct that by caving in on some items, EBay will find itself under constant attack by one special interest group or another to ban yet another offesnive set of items.

Industrial World’s Population Stabilized; Developing World Still Growing Fast

The Population Reference Bureau recently released the 2001 version of its World Population Data Sheet which confirms other reports on the changes in population growth — the developed world’s growth has almost come to a complete stop, while the developing world is slowing but still adding tens of millions of people each year to world population.

The United States is the only developed, industrialized nation in the world whose birth rate exceeds the 2.1 replacement level. As a result, the industrialized world adds only about 1 million people to world population every year.

That compares to the countries of the developing world who combined added about 83 million people to world population last year. The difference in growth rates is so high that the Population Reference Bureau estimates that by 2050, the population of the developed world will have increased by only 49 million, while the population of the developing world will surge by 2.9 billion. In 1950 there were two people in developing countries for every person living in the developed world. By 2050, there will be six people living in developing countries for every person in the more developed world.

Not surprisingly, the difference is largely accounted for by difference in fertility. Women in developed countries average only 1.6 children, compared to 3.6 children per women in less developed countries (excluding China).

The Bureau reports that in some developing countries data suggests that declines in fertility rates have begun to slow. It reports that, “recent survey data from a number of less developed countries, including Bangladesh and Egypt, indicate that fertility declines measured earlier have slowed.”

Russia, meanwhile, continues its catastrophic plummet, experiencing the most rapid decline in population that has been recorded in modern history. The Russian population is currently declining by 0.7 percent per year, largely due to huge increases in mortality (life expectancy in Russia continued to fall for the second year in a row down to 59 years).

Source:

Population levels stabilize in developed countries. National Center for Policy Analysis, May 22, 2001.

21st century will transform world population. Population Reference Bureau, Press Release, May 21, 2001.