The Market in Farmer's Markets

The market in farmer's markets is not good, according to this NPR story.  Too many markets chasing too few buyers.  Another case where the free market in agriculture is overly productive.

Kids Are (More) Less Mature These Days

Was reading a Slate article by a woman who thought she could pass on what she learned as a teenager navigating romances to her daughter.  Turns out, according to the woman, her daughter needed no teaching; she found the waters very different given social media but handled them just fine.

Then there's this NYTimes piece entitled Children Are Grown, But Parenting Doesn't Stop.

I like to bridge opposites, so I suggest that in different times/societies people develop different faculties at different rates.  Perhaps today's society provides more models of how to develop emotionally for people to learn from while simultaneously making it more complicated to maneuver through society.  Compared to my youth individual development is more emphasized and more important, while discussion of social forces is more restricted to race and gender.

Beto and the Bulletin Board

Philip Bump in the Post has an article describing Beto O'Rourke's background as a "hacker". 

It brings back memories, including when Jeff Kerby started running a BBS for ASCS, and the periodic upgrades of my modem--back then progress was real and tangible.

Mom Loved Her Hens, Or the Fox in the Henhouse

But I didn't.  Chickens can be vicious, particularly when you're trying to scoot eggs out from under a hen.  They use their beaks to grab the skin on the back of your hand, and then they twist it, hard.  Mean #%$^%^%

To confirm it, see this BBC report (via Marginal Revolution) on how the fox in the henhouse met his demise.

Dairy Supply Management for US?

Tamar Haspel, a food writer I follow on twitter, praised this article in Civil Eats about dairy supply management.  The article describes rising grass roots interest in supply management among Wisconsin dairy farmers and some other areas.  The Farm Bureau opposes it, of course. 

Canada has used supply management for dairy, poultry and eggs since at least 1972 according to this wikipedia article.  (I write "at least" because supply management was a feature of depression-era ag policies but I'm not sure Canada used it for dairy.)

Essentially supply management means assigning production quotas to farms, with penalties for over-production.  The US used to have supply management in place for wheat, cotton, rice, peanuts, and tobacco, rules which dated back to the 1930's.  Over time they've all been dismantled.   Judging by the impace of the change on tobacco farmers, the effect of supply management was to slow the decline of farm units.  In other words, it was harder to get bigger and easier to stay small, but the trends were the same.  The advance of technology and the power of markets still work, just slower.

Slow is what, IMO, the proponents want.  If you're a farmer in your 50's, you'd like to keep going until you can retire. Supply management might make that possible.  But if you're a young go-getter in your 30's looking to expand and adopt new technologies, you don't like the concept.  Politically there's always been more old farmers than young farmers.

The Cost of Glasses

I've worn glasses since second or third grade, I think.  After I got my first pair I remember the revelation it was to see leaves and twigs on trees rather than a green blur. 

Now glasses are a technological marvel so obviously they are and should be relatively costly.  I think my last pair, with all the coatings and stuff were three or four hundred dollars.  But it's my eyesight, so I paid.

So I'm flabbergasted by this Vox piece drawing from an LATimes article.

"This week, the Los Angeles Times spoke with two former executives of LensCrafters: Charles Dahan and E. Dean Butler, who founded LensCrafters in 1983. Both admitted that today, glasses are marked up nearly 1,000 percent.
“You can get amazingly good frames, with a Warby Parker level of quality, for $4 to $8,” said Butler. “For $15, you can get designer-quality frames, like what you’d get from Prada.”

They attribute the high prices to having one big company which controls the industry.

Pork in DOD? Say It Ain't So

I think this story about how Congress highly regards certain construction projects in DOD bears out my warning to Trump back in February.

The Virtue of Lynch Mobs

Yes, the title is bait.

I'm reading Richard Wrangham's The Goodness Paradox?, about 3/4 of the way through.  I like it and the argument he makes, having read the recent book on the experiment in Russia of rearing silver foxes selected for non-aggression, which seems to support a "domestication" theory.  After 40 generations the foxes were much like dogs, both physically  (floppy ears, changes in skull shape, etc) and in behavior.

So in the chapter I just finished Wrangham's discussing how humans might have developed a moral sense (as part of their self-domestication).  His basic theory is: lynch mobs, triggered by observations of chimpanzees.  The idea is, if and when an alpha male gets too alpha, the subordinate males discover by forming a coalition they can take him out.  From that we can evolve to coalitions which enforce social norms, and innate behavior which makes us hyper conscious of norms and therefore very moral.

That's a quick and dirty summary; no doubt one Wrangham would shudder at.

It's an interesting subject, and he's a careful writer.  I want to see if he explains why we still generate alpha males like our current president.

[I should note, Wrangham doesn't call them "lynch mobs", but his description would match a description of a generic lynch mob--a bunch of males converging to execute justice on someone who is perceived to have violated a norm.  He has some descriptions from anthropology of societies/tribes where there are strong norms covering such actions.]

Why Is Uber Like Farming?

Megan McArdle had an op-ed this morning arguing that Uber and Lyft were losing money because they weren't charging enough for rides.

Boosters of the ride-share revolution like to point out that most of the nation’s cars spend most of their time parked; there ought to be money in liberating all that unused capital. True enough — except that someone has to drive the car, including the time spent circling as they wait for rides.
In 2014, journalist Timothy B. Lee spent a week driving for Lyft. He drove for 50 hours but spent only 14 of those hours actually ferrying passengers. All that circling wears out the car and burns both gas and the driver’s valuable time.

The other day I noticed someone tweeting, I think, defending the usefulness of Uber.  The woman was divorced, supporting kids and with an odd work schedule (might have been an adjunct academic, I forget).  The point is that not only did she already have a vehicle, she had free time but at odd hours, odd enough she couldn't work a regular job, but she could drive for Uber and make money.

In a way she was similar to a farmer, someone who has land and equipment available and the decision is whether to use it to the fullest or not.  She, like the farmer, did, because that's what the market provides incentives for. When you look at what the farmer or driver is earning with the extra work, it may be very little, but as long as it covers the extra expenses incurred, if there's positive cash flow, the farmer or driver will likely work the hours.

A side issue:  I think cars are more reliable these days and last longer.  And in some cases, like mine, there's a mismatch.  All of my cars have become obsolete before they really became uneconomical to drive.  Repair bills were creeping up, partly because of age issues, not so much wear issues.  To the extent that's true for many people, Uber and Lyft will enable fuller usage of assets.  At least until the advent of self-driving cars which may change the paradigm again.

No Bloomberg

I'm glad Mike Bloomberg isn't running.  He'd be a good choice for a cabinet position assuming we can beat President Trump in 2020.  Now if some of the other "B" boys (Beto, Biden, Brown, Bennet) stay out, the more centralist lane will be less crowded.