That's what he was asking. I think he meant "is this the only reason why we use high fructose corn syrup everywhere" to which I think the answer is "no." There's no shortage of corn subsidies, and farmers have been looking for new ways of utilizing corn for years. HFCS has been one of the ways which has payed off. Additionally, fructose is rated higher than sucrose on the Relative Sweetness Scale (140 and 100 respectively) so that less product may be used.
Also the web page is woefully out of date. There is absolutely no corn surplus anywhere. Ethanol production ate up every last available kernel, to the point that chicken feed became scarce - endangering your tasty mcnuggets!
I dont think its an actual subsidy (price support). Its more like insurance, production control (CRP) etc. My brother grew corn for 20 years, and never received any direct "subsidy". That web link doesn't explain any of this, it just throws around careless terms without explaining them - slanderous yellow journalism?
From Wikipedia: Socialism refers to various theories of economic organization advocating public or direct worker ownership and administration of the means of production and allocation of resources, and a society characterized by equal access to resources for all individuals with a method of compensation based on the amount of labor expended.
Of course Wikipedia might be wrong here, but even my rudimentary understanding of "socialism" is aligned with wikipedia's stated definition.
How are the sugar import quotas socialism, or is it merely popular nowdays to label every overstepping of government as socialism and/or communism?
The word "public" is used here to mean the State, as in, the current capitalist state, not a worker's state controlled and administered by councils as in socialism. If it were public, as in non-private property, it would be administered by the workers themselves, not agents of the bourgeoisie.
So in America, its worse than in a true socialist state. How about compared to existing corrupt socialist states? Probably better. I can forgive people comparing such policies to socialism, since we rarely see true socialism, and cynically we regard our elected representatives are hardly better than socialist councils.
Whether you agree or not, everything seen so far has been an iteration of Stalinism, without question. Additionally, in either a degenerate socialist state or a capitalist society like the U.S., productive means are most certainly not under the control of workers in any real capacity. Whether the said productive means are controlled by a bureaucratic elite from a single party, or from a "two" party system that unabashedly represents capitalist interests, the end result is still the same: subjugation of the worker.
Easy to say "subjugation of the worker", in the sense that the worker doesn't guide policy. But the ideals of capitalism are supposed to work in the worker's favor, which softens the claim. If the worker values receiving compensation for what they do, has the right to spend their money as they please, wants to live in a thriving economy with choices, that is hardly subjugation.
A worker may feel subjugated because they are frustrated by policy decisions made by others. Is it better in Socialism where the committee of workers makes the decisions, if the worker isn't on that committee? How does it matter that the committee is "closer" to the worker? The subjugation is the same. (except now the committe is made up of amateurs,but thats another argument)
I think "subjugation" if it exists, is actually the decision by the governed to submit to the will of the whole. No matter what the system this "subjugation" must exist - its the foundation of civilization.
> "But the ideals of capitalism are supposed to work in the worker's favor"
The ideals of capitalism favor the bosses. Such a statment is very telling. You've obviously never read any literature on the subject, nor much about history of worker struggles, both in the U.S and abroad, that much is clear.
At least I've read enough about neoliberal policies and the ideas that form the basis of capitalism in order to sufficiently criticize it.
> "If the worker values receiving compensation for what they do, has the right to spend their money as they please, wants to live in a thriving economy with choices,
that is hardly subjugation"
What does this really mean? By your interpretation, capitalism is always "thriving" and people that live under it are always willfully and gainfully employed. Unless you've been living under a
rock for the past few years, you're aware of the joblessness that is plaguing not only the U.S., but the world.
The capitalism of yesteryear is hardly what we have now, and the dynamicism offered up
by neoliberal policies is essentially over. What say you about the inevitable crises of capitalism? What about the increasing pace and severity of boom and bust cycles?
Even in the worst dictatorial Stalinist regime, they at least have full employment. That's more than we can say about our system.
> "A worker may feel subjugated because they are frustrated by policy decisions made by others. Is it better in Socialism where the committee of workers makes the decisions,
if the worker isn't on that committee?"
Your point is moot, as in a worker controlled factory, the actual committees are comprised of the workers themselves, or at the very least the people they directly elect from amongst the factory workforce.
The representatives are also subject to instant recall, and managerial positions are routinely rotated. Every major decision from controlling production, to working hours,
to health benefit and sick time is decided democratically. As such, the workers in the factory have a vested interest in its survival and productive capability. Additionallty,
since the "managerial" aspects of running the factory merely deal with administration of the daily tasks, it is divested of its character of authority. Any worker can
and will occupy the position traditionally held by the boss at a given time.
None of this is fanstasy. It has happened several times throughout the capitalist epoch, most notably in Catalonia during the Spanish civil war
(see http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/spain/coll_catalonia_dolgof...) and the Soviet Union, immediately following the October revolution to about the 1930, before degeneration
at the hands of the state bureaucracy fully set in. For a more current example, see Mondragón (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondrag%C3%B3n) the world's largest worker controlled cooperative.
> " The subjugation is the same...No matter what the system this "subjugation" must exist - its the foundation of civilization."
We're not talking about the idea of the social contract and the rule of law. Subjugation in this sense refers to the subjugation of the worker under a system of wage labor. Tell me, when a worker, through his or her labor produces a certain amount of value for his employer in the form of profit, yet receives only a fraction of that generated value back
in the form of wages, how is that not exploitation? The only reason such a situation persists stems from the fact that the owner possesses the productive means
(a factory, office building, machinery, a mine, etc.), while the worker only possesses his own labor. All he can do is sell it in order to survive. It is his only recourse.
But you say "What stops him from starting his own business and becoming rich like the boss?"
As a prerequisite, one needs a willingness to exploit one's fellow human beings for profit. Logistically speaking though, not everyone can be a boss, as by definition, a boss (and production in general) cannot exist without workers. Even barring that, credit is necessary to initially start operations. When banks aren't lending to make a small
business loans to consumers, it is nearly impossible to start a business, as the case right now.
In a loose sense it's not entirely bogus: this is what economists call rent seeking, and the payoff for that is all the greater the bigger and more pervasive the government is.
Plus that traditional definition of socialism is mostly historical, direct ownership and equal "access" to the goodies just doesn't work in practice and is ruinous in practice.
So when people talk about "socialism" nowadays, they're talking about a diluted form that's in theory more like traditional socialism (e.g. soft Fabian or hard Communism) than corporatist Fascism (the real Italian variety, not Hitler's National Socialism (vs. Communist International Socialism (e.g. the Comintern))).
Isn't this protectionism? Socialism would have given us a State Sugar Company, which we could then privatise in the name of efficiency, and end up paying massive subsidies to protect the workers when the private buyers threatened to shut it down.
Actually, what this story shows is the problem with our federalist system which gives way more political power to the inhabitants of the farming states at the expense of the big population centers. The 2 million people in Nebraska get as many senators as the 37 million in California.
Food is a special case. Fool with it too much and you, personally, will go hungry. No joke - we don't store food in America, we suffer within weeks if the crop is threatened. Not to mention the third world countries we feed, they of course suffer first so our supply is less threatened.
The 2 million people in Nebraska get as many senators as the 37 million in California.
This of course is by design. The state of Nebraska gets as many Senators as the state of California. Senators represent states, not people. Prior to the 17th Amendment, Senators were generally chosen by state legislatures.
Do farmers get federal pork? Sure, and it's just as wrong as populous states getting federal pork for mass transit. The real problem here is the concentration of power in the federal government, which is far removed from the intent of the Founding Fathers. See the 9th and 10th Amendments.
The case of sugar is particularly egregious as we are subsidizing growers who are destroying the Everglades. OK, maybe that's a bit of hype, but it's not that far from the truth.
In Nevada they jokingly refer to "the senator from Reno" and "the senator from Vegas", historically one comes from each population center. So those cities each get a senator, versus California's 37 millions sharing 2
There is a silver lining here. Without American protectionism, the Brazilian biofuel program wouldn't have left the prototype phase. It was (1) the 70's oil crisis, (2) plenty of sugar and (3) nowhere to sell it that made alcohol economically viable.
However, this still damages Americans because we've decided to tax sugar cane ethanol imports as a means to promote domestic ethanol development. This means that the less efficient corn ethanol is cheaper than sugar cane ethanol. Hmm, sounds like another corn product that's replaced sugar in the US.
Corn crops are large; is it even feasible to suggest replacing corn ethanol with sugar? Isn't the total sugar production an insignificant contributor to potential ethanol supply? Sure the import restrictions are onerous, but not a significant factor in the ethanol debate
Corn production is an insignificant contributor to potential ethanol supply.
Ethanol is a white elephant.
To fuel even 1/10 of our needs by ethanol, we would need 53 million acres of farmland dedicated to growing fuel-corn (the process of which is 170% efficient, requiring 70% more energy to grow than can be extracted via ethanol).
In 2006, we only harvest 309 million acres of farmland.
The only reason ethanol is gaining steam is politics. It has no potential whatsoever to become even a major fuel additive. We are much better off investing those corn subsidies that keep corn ethanol cheap into batteries for plugin-hybrids, alternative nuclear sources (LFTR comes to mind), and better mass transport. Especially for freight.
The energy argument is stale: consider this article. To quote their conclusion:
"Corn ethanol is energy efficient, as indicated by an energy ratio of 1.24, that is, for every Btu dedicated to producing ethanol, there is a 24-percent energy gain."
It still doesn't seem quite right to me that our government should invest so much money in something that will reduce food production (and, at the same time, make corn too expensive for people to buy for food in some countries - this is already happening in latin america[1], though Mexico has since set an upper limit on tortilla prices[2]) when world hunger is an important issue. The only sources I could find for this were two years old; not sure if things have improved or worsened in the meantime.
"Protectionists warned that if sugar tariffs were lifted, then the value of slaves working on the sugar plantations would collapse thus causing a general fall in slave values throughout the South."
Sugar tariffs originally supported the slave industry. There's a muckraking point against HFCS that I hadn't heard before. I'm surprised it hasn't been exploited.
The US signed it but the Senate didn't ratify it (they voted 95-0 against it). Which is for the best really because it was a poorly conceived idea even, perhaps especially, if you think man-made CO2 emissions would lead to a world catastrophe in the near future. Note that most of the signatories to the Kyoto protocols have not lived up to them.
I guess my point - poorly made - was elaborating on the article's observation that Congress and the White House have spent the better part of two centuries doing everything they can to prop up the US sugar industry, and then connecting the observation about global warming to the timing (about 12 months after Kyoto).
As a general rule, when a comment or joke takes more words to explain than it did to make originally, that's a darn good sign you missed the mark!
