It’s impossible to say. Some countries will find it to their advantage to import food, some to export it. The nature of comparative advantage alone is so potentially complex that no smart person would hope to guess how things would work out, and of course any number of factors could change what can be produced where; emerging economies, global climate change, new technologies, trends in what foods are desired, and so on. What is for sure is that food would probably be more plentiful and cheaper.
I’m fine with much of what you say, as long as all externalities are properly priced in. Currently, this frequently does not happen.
For example, hypothetically a country could produce a food product cheaper, but only by pumping it full of pesticides and synthetic chemical fertilizers. Cheap product, but at the cost of damaging the environment. If this damage to the environment is considered to be “free”, then importing this “cheaper” food would not be good.
Any country that does not price in externalities like this could then produce food “cheaper”. We have to choose; Do we want to properly price in things like damage to environment, pollution, C02 emissions, overuse of water, etc. to global trade? OR are we happy to simply go to the lowest common denominator, and let countries with the worst record in protecting common resources get the best share of the market?
Or, if a
I would have to nitpick that artificial fertilizers are not necessarily bad for the environment and have probably saved billions of people from starvation. So that’s good.
Of course it’s theoretically possible a country could make food cheaper by, say, using something that is very polluting. That said
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That doesn’t mean Canada will end up importing it. Countries will end up trading based on comparative advantage, not competitive advantage.
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At the risk of, again, pointing out the crazily obvious, this happens NOW. Canada has stronger labour protections and environmental regulations than the great majority of countries we trade with and yet we are not overwhelmed by foreign stuff - because, again, things being cheaper don’t mean it’s to our comparative advantage to import them. In essence, the Canadian dairy farmer isn’t competing with the New Zealander dairy farmer; he is competing with Canadian machine shops, plastic injection molding factories, and software companies. The dairy industry has successfully used politics to extract money from those industries and take it for themselves, thus increasing their welfare at the expense of everyone else.
This is a really important concept to get.
I’m all for the world coming to agreement on, say, carbon emissions, but if you think Canada’s dairy farmers are insisting on protected status and government handouts to save the world from CO2 emissions, I’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn you can have for a good price. Those are different issues, and politically corrupt protectionism is absolutely not going to help the world avoid externalities like the ones you describe.
I asked because I wondered if no government control, ever, is always the best way. Humans left to their own devices eventually find a way to screw up even the most vital endeavours, the financial crisis of 2008 being a glaring example.
You might want to think about that more carefully.
Right. Increased production leading to increased prosperity.
Here’s the problem: We already live in what economists of a century ago would have considered a “post-scarcity” level of productivity; poverty still exists. It will never be enough to simply “produce” our way out of poverty. Who is entitled to the profits, who has ownership, still matters.
Comparative advantage is measured on an average level, like GNP; free trade still screws over many persons within the society. Unless you’re proposing some kind of neo-Blanquist wealth-sharing, free trade is socially counter-productive.
Look up phosphate-induced algal blooms and get back to me, Pollyanna.
In any case, what you’re calling “artificial” fertilizers are made of mined phosphate, and that supply will get more expensive and scarcer. Feeding people a fossil resource is unsustainable.
Was that for me? I don’t get it if it was.
Yes. They should do us a favor and starve themselves to death. Or, you could propose another solution. I’m thinking that anything with the word ‘organic’ in it isn’t going to be one of them, well, unless your name is ‘Pollyanna’.
“Pollyanna” refers in English to someone who sees no negative side to anything, a position no rational person could possibly divine from anything I’ve written.
Anything we do impacts the environment. There are problems that have to be solved, sure. As a privileged rich person in a rich country it’s easy for you to shrug off the real problem people in other places face of not having enough food.
Guys, not to junior mod or anything but this shit has nothing to do with the election which is, newsflash, over. I think any of the current lines of discussion could go in a GD thread.
Sorry, we are way off topic.
New thread:
Outlook for high-yield agriculture is not good
Is anyone else a little worried about the high expectations being piled upon our new PM-in-waiting? It reminds me of 2008 when Obama was elected. Everything is different now! Everything will be better! Except for the fact that this election was about a lot more than one guy.
I’ve already seen a Facebook meme about how Justin Trudeau has already done more in a few days than Harper has done in ten years. I can’t find it but it mentioned some things that cannot be possible until he’s actually sworn in. But the expectations are already there. He’s going to legalize weed like immediately (and FWIW I appreciated Mulcair’s perspective on this one- there are things we can do right now but legalization is a process so in the meantime smoke another one because it will be a while). He’s going to find the answer to the missing and murdered aboriginal women. He’s going to defeat climate change. The economy will soar and Canada’s crumbling infrastructure will be shiny and new after a few years of careful deficit spending.
Now don’t get me wrong. I like Trudeau and I wish him all the best. I think he will take a productive and inclusive approach to politics and will run things much differently than his predecessor. But putting the hope upon him that he and he alone will fix all that ails Canada strikes me as a bit optimistic. Not every Liberal MP is a Justin Trudeau. Not every problem has a simple solution. I think Justin Trudeau will do the best that he can but that will not always be enough.
What he needs is the Nobel prize. That’ll prove that he can get’r done.
It’s not quite the same as Obama, though. A president cannot enact legislation on his own initiative, he has to cajole Congress into doing it, which is quite difficult if Congress is controlled by the other party. But a parliamentary democracy, by its very design, does not have this problem (assuming a majority government, of course). The fact that the PM is the PM means he controls enough votes to get legislation introduced, and usually passed. The only limit on what Trudeau can do is if there’s a major revolt by his own party, which is incredibly unlikely this soon after such a major win, and a major comeback win at that. No MP with even half a brain will want to publicly oppose the PM over one of the major planks of the party in the recent election.
What terrifies me isn’t high expectations, but the complacency that comes trusting the Liberals. The public needs to jam a semi-constant fire under their the seats of Trudeau and his party lest the current majority-rule situation goes to the heads of “Canada’s natural governing party.”
The paranoid demands (of nothing less than total unquestionable obedience) that the Harper Conservatives had shown to the Canadian public; the daily displays of divisive political spin, complete secrecy, bureaucratic muzzling, party member criminality. These must serve as a lesson to us. We have a RIGHT to be informed; these people are NOT your rulers, they are your PUBLIC SERVANTS.
The last ten years was a continuous walk towards the complete removal of public oversight from misgovernance. The flippant dismissal Parliamentary questions, the proroguing of Parliament to avoid confidence votes, the repeated cases of election fraud, the expansion of the PMO to ungodly heights, the appointment of party cronies to key areas of government, cash payment to sitting Senators, the wasted government money advocating party politics or fighting the Supreme court on hopeless party issues, the creation of useless offices governing the control (or out-right silencing) information related to scientists/bureaucrats.
No, the Liberals probably won’t be as bad (Harper’s Conservatives were just disgustingly horrible), but the Tories were only able to get away with so much because:
[ol]
[li]They never cared about alienating non-Tory voters.[/li][li]Their base (about 30% of Canadians) were unshakably obedient to the party.[/li][/ol]
Don’t foster such attitudes towards the Grits. No government deserves such obedience (or even complacency).
Hear, hear!
I’m thumping my desk, as of old in the House, because there isn’t a microphone attached. I hope.
The Liberals should pass a law. Anyone running for prime minister should be required by law to have an MRI to exclude psychopathy.
The Who said it best:
First, what Horatius said. The PM and the party is very powerful in a majority situation, and will not be subject to the same obstructionism that Obama faced. The only stumbling block may be the senate, who may decide that they will block legislation (for a while), out of purely partisan spite. They do this at their peril, however, as the public is not in the mood currently for partisan shenanigans, particularly from the unelected and (perceived to be) unethical senators.
Second, some things are already happening, even before Trudeau is sworn in:
- Canada post has announced they are stopping with the move to community mailboxes
- The (god-awful) “monument to victims of communism” which was being pushed by Harper against the wishes of pretty much everyone is now dead in the water.
- Scientists have been told they are no longer under any “gag orders” and may now discuss science as they did in the pre-Harper days.
- Premiers and opposition leaders have been invited to the international conference on climate change, returning us to how things were done Pre-Harper.
And all this without one piece of legislation being passed!
I don’t know that Trudeau had much to do with #1 and I hadn’t even heard about #2.
However the last two are very good news and reflect a return to normalcy from the kinds of stuff that Harper wrought on us that orcenio was talking about in his excellent post #876. And much good stuff yet to come – Trudeau has promised increased funding for the arts, another sector that Harper trashed along with science and the environment.
There’s a surprising amount of euphoria in the media around this charismatic young man and his unexpected majority win, and I find myself becoming more and more optimistic about this outcome, even though I might have preferred a historic NDP win. Getting Harper kicked out for good may be just the beginning of a lot of good things to come. I always thought Justin’s father was one of our finest PMs, controversial though he may have been. As I said before, there’s no higher compliment than having Richard Nixon call you a “pompous egghead” and “an asshole”! 
(This is presumably what Nikki66 wanted to discuss in the thread start that didn’t go anywhere because we’re having it here.)