Today, a man who lives in a country where a Senate candidate promised to do BJs for Votes, chose to make a post in his very popular blog, about US politics. Specifically, how our unusual election system (as opposed to one, say, that has paralyzed the government for 150 days as they try to deny French speakers the right to vote for French-speaking representatives), is promoting bad global food policies in order to prop up a broken bio-fuel initiative.
First, it’s no secret that our ethanol plan can’t match the efficiencies of Brazil’s. But you know, you can’t start at the finish line. Here’s how you decrease your dependence on foreign oil. You identify some native resource that can fill the need. Then you build up the infrastructure so you have this biodiesel available at all. Now that you have the fuel, you can build machinery (cars, trucks, SUVs etc) that use it. Now that you have this fuel in gas stations and biodiesel-friendly cars on the road, you can slowly let the economy find its own competition and efficiencies.
It’s impossible to command farmers to plow in their cornfields and plant sugar-beets instead. I don’t even know if they grow well here. However, if there was a good demand for bio-fuels, over time, if it makes economic sense, farmers will choose to in order to better compete and make more money. The universe runs on enlightened self-interest, after all.
America doesn’t change quickly. We’re a big country with a very diverse population, and it is precisely the natural role of our government to use subsidies and incentives in order to lead the country into the future.
Now, Tobold also criticizes a system which front-loads the primary season with such minority opinions as Iowa and New Hampshire. Trust me, the politicians would like NOTHING BETTER than to campaign in Florida, Texas, California and New York only. We start off our election year listening to the people who ordinarily have no or little voice in the government. For a couple of months, everyone in the United States listens to Iowa and New Hampshire, states without that many people in them, states almost fanatically anti-urban, before the high-population states dominate all political conversation. Disclaimer: I am from New Hampshire. My parents live in a small town called Deerfield. They actually have monthly meetings in the town hall. For a couple of months every four years, politicians actually listen to their concerns, precisely because our election system is built to listen to people in all walks in life and all parts of the country, not just the Californians and New Yorkers.
Hey, politics is fun, and if we lived in a relatively small and compact European country, maybe we could be more efficient. But we live in a huge, wide-open country and are a nation of immigrants from a hundred nations and a thousand cultures, so it takes us some time to do things. But we get there eventually.