Libertarians Surprise One.

From Volokh conspiracy

"And the poor and politically weak are the most important potential beneficiaries of libertarian public interest efforts in the fields of economic liberties and property rights, among others. The wealthy and powerful can usually defend their property rights and other economic interests in the political process and therefore have much less need for judicial protection."

What the Internet Is Missing

It's missing ads. No, not electronic ads, but the print ads which will be indispensable for social historians of the future. I say this because yesterday the Post ran a full page ad which I'd like to link to, but I can't.

Instead I'll link to the website--LifeLock, which is an identity protection service.

The service itself, LifeLock, appears to be consolidating a number of things you can do for yourself, requesting free credit reports, taking your name off junk mailing lists, etc. You aren't paying for a magic formula, you're paying for convenience. Is it a good deal--damn if I know, might be, particularly for someone with paranoid tendencies who simultaneously is willing to trust someone to guard their identity.

But what it does have is a great gimmick--the founder puts his social security number in the ad. It's a great example of what used to be called "eating your own dogfood" (I think that was it--anyway the idea is, when you're developing an IT system, the big test of its usefulness is whether its developers use it themselves. Sort of like Congress--if they come up with a new health care system, do they scrap their own current system and switch to the new one.

Farmer's Hard Choices

What to plant? See this NYTimes article and the related slideshow.

Particularly note two things--the slide showing the farmer's messy desk (see-my messy desk is a result of being a farmer's son) and the sidebar graphics, particularly the one showing wheat prices adjusted for inflation--in the early 70's wheat hit $25 a bushel in today's prices.

It's a Changing World--The Richest Are Indians

From the WSJ blog:

No, the biggest surprise is the rise of the Indian rich — four of the top eight billionaires in the world are from India. Topping the ranks is steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal, whose worth Forbes puts at $45 billion. Next up are the Ambani brothers, Mukesh and Anil, with $43 billion and $42 billion repsectively, largely from petrochemicals. Rounding out the list is KP Singh, the real-estate magnate, at $30 billion.

Global Warming Isn't All Bad

That's my thought, not the researchers. An academic says the longer growing season for corn over the past 30 years accounts for part of the yield increases.

More generally, there seems to be some controversy over the causes of corn yield increases--better farming, better seeds, more inputs, better weather. The yield curves should be a source of discomfort to some in the organic farming community who believe that industrial ag exhausts the soil. May do so, but it's been a while.

And back on global warming--some in the environmental community preach that it's disastrous. I'd disagree, in part. It's change that will be disastrous to many and helpful to some and disconcerting to all. If we were just worried about humans, I'd like to see increased efforts on mitigation of effects--planning now to relocate sea-level communities, etc. But since we have to worry about the whole world, we also need to worry about things like a carbon tax.

Gloom and Doom--the Obits and Lost Skills

On a gloomy Friday:

Q? how do you know you're getting old?

A When you spend more than a minute skimming the obits for your year in the college alumni magazine.


A When you can identify almost all the obsolete skills on this list (Thanks to Ari at The Edge of the American West.) (Debugging EBCDIC core dumps should be on there.) Wood burning kits!!--I remember when my sister got one. And yes, darning a sock is one.

Privacy or Public's Right To Know?

USDA faced that question back in the 1990's. A public interest group, Environmental Working Group, had requested records from ASCS (now FSA) on the people getting payment. We initially denied the request based on the Privacy Act of 1974. (I well remember when that was enacted, the Act required that before someone could be required to give information, you had to describe the legal basis for the requirement, the uses to be made of the info, and estimate the amount of time required. In brief, all the fine print you can see on IRS 1040's. It was a major pain to figure out how to get that stuff in all the forms the agency used.)

But, we eventually lost the case in the Appeals Court. Turned out our assumptions back in 1974 were wrong--data wasn't covered by the Privacy Act (except Social Security numbers and a bit of other data) so our IT shop had to figure out how to give the data to EWG in a usable form while leaving out the SSN's--they succeeded, and the rest is history, as you can see in the EWG farm database.

Now USDA has lost another appeal on other data. I'm not clear on the files covered, but might be the basic acreage data--the location and acreage of farms and fields and the yearly report of planted acreages.

It's nice to know how realistically the courts view agriculture:

"The appeals court noted that disclosure of crop information may compromise an individual's privacy interest since not all farms are owned by large corporations. However, in this instance, the court found that this was not a valid concern.

"We conclude that the public interest in disclosure of the Compliance file and GIS database outweighs the personal privacy interest...

It's not EWG asking this time, but Multi Ag Media LLC, which seems to own some magazines for dairymen. The decision is here.

Say It Ain't So--FSA Declines Since My Leaving

The county executive director in Logan County, CO describes the process of implementing a farm bill and says:

Producers may be interested to know that, on average, 64 days go by from the time the initial Farm Bill is passed by both the House and the Senate and receives presidential signature. Why is this important? Because from the date of presidential signature, it typically takes about six to eight months for FSA to be positioned to start making payments to producers.

I'm not sure of the source for the 64 days--some historian with nothing better to do looked at all the farm bills? I do know sometimes legislation could be passed and FSA would act faster than 6-8 months (although I might have to get in the weeds of terminology and definitions).

Becoming Obsolete--Fruits and Vegetables

Dan Owens at Blog for Rural America has a discussion of the prohibition of planting fruits and vegetables on base acres. Marginal Revolution also has a post on the subject.

When I read the MR post I reacted--"this isn't right". Fortunately I did some checking before posting and found that the things I was challenging were indeed correct, or at least correct enough for purposes of discussing farm programs. (I don't think the bar's too high there.) I find I do that more these days; what knowledge I accumulated during my career is becoming obsolete.

I do remember when fruits and vegetables first came in, at least I think I do. It was the 1985 farm bill, which introduced the concept of "flex" acres, or 50/92--the idea that a farmer's payment acreage for a program crop could be planted to other than the program crop. We were working away on the implementation when the fruit and vegetable people started calling to ask what could be planted "other than the program crop"? We said, according to the way we read the law, anything. The next thing you knew there was a small little bill flying through Congress amending the 1985 act to exclude fruits and vegetables. From that little seed a mighty issue has grown.

Judging by the rhetoric around this issue, the only reason President George H.W. Bush didn't eat his broccoli is it was too high-priced--if we just had a few million more acres of carrots and broccoli prices would fall to the point that everyone would eat their 6 or 8 servings of fruits and vegetables a day. Pardon my skepticism, but while removing the prohibition might lower the price and expand the acreage a bit, I don't think it would mean a major change in the nation's diet.

Seek Your Fortune in Town

From ERS, via this article in the dailyyonder:

a high school graduate living in a rural county earns 13 percent less than a city dweller with a high school diploma.

A rural college graduate, however, earns 23 percent less than a college grad living in the city. And someone living in a rural county who has an advanced degree (law, medicine, doctorate) earns 25 percent less than a person with the same qualifications who lives in an urban county.

I suspect, with no basis at all, that this discrepancy also relates to the forces that have driven up the income of the top 20, 5 and 1 percentiles.