From Arnold Kling at
EconLog:
Ed Glaeser writes about another one of my pet peeves, locavorism. I always tell locavores that they should go further and only buy clothes made from local materials. Only use computers made from local materials. In fact, they should only consume goods that we can make ourselves using materials we can find on their own property.
My response:
It's easy to deliver an off-the-cuff dismissal of local food. But, did you even read Glaeser's article? Like many of the commenters here, he likes local gardens for their educational value. And surely Kling doesn't mind people choosing local food according to their own preferences.
You might object to government policies that strictly favor local food, but basically there really aren't many policies like that in the real world. Most government policies favor the conventional food system. And you might object to an over-sold argument that we should eat ONLY local food, but if that's your complaint, you should quote a particular opponent, because I think most writers on this topic are more reasonable.
The thing that I don't like is headline writers who exaggerate an argument to get us arguing among ourselves, when we all probably come pretty close to agreeing on the substance anyway. Notice that the Boston Globe subheading -- "Urban farms do more harm than good to the environment" -- has nothing to do with what Glaeser wrote.
Really, Glaeser should write the Boston Globe to ask the newspaper to change its dimwitted headline.
2 comments:
My comment over there:
As the Glaeser article points out (below the part where you seem to have stopped reading), it's worth knowing that English tomatoes eaten in England come with higher costs than eating Spanish-grown ones. I always thought economists were in favor of consumers knowing more about their choices, about factoring in externalities. Maybe some are but others seem more interested in political posturing.
As for locavores indulging in "a form of silliness that certain people want to embrace, like getting their chakras aligned or something" I see commentary on other people's personal choices as an even lower practice. In a free market/free society, the freedom to vote with our dollars is at least as important as the ritual we observe at the polls.
It would be a full time job responding to this crap
The thing that I don't like is headline writers who exaggerate an argument to get us arguing among ourselves, when we all probably come pretty close to agreeing on the substance anyway.
Well said. Strengthening local and regional food systems is getting portrayed as some hippy-dippy, idealistic Utopia, when I think it should be seen as a way to diversify the market (products and producers), which is practically econo-orthodoxy. The point that progressive crank made about externalities is well-taken, too. That sort of thing, I think, is inevitable as we struggle to create an economy (and economics) that gets us off the path to self-destruction. (sounds serious, huh?)
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