We drove for 11 hours yesterday, ending in Charlotte, NC. We got in around dinner, so didn’t get to see much of the downtown area; what we did see looks vibrant and very “happening,” however. After we walk around today, I’ll have more firm impressions to share.
We stopped in Charlotte on our way to the beach, because the city has taxed itself (I know–amazing, isn’t it!) to provide public transit, and we wanted to see that transportation system. (If you’re a regular reader of this blog, the nerd-iness of that won’t surprise you.) More on that, too, tomorrow.
Three brief observations from the road:
The 2012 campaign is in full swing, but I have seen very few bumper stickers this cycle–certainly, far fewer than at this time in 2008. Interestingly, the few I have seen have seen have all been Obama stickers; I have yet to see a single Romney one. My very unscientific conclusion from this is that this is a low-enthusiasm election across the board, but what enthusiasm there is seems to favor Obama.
We hit a construction site on I75, between Jellico and Lake City, Tennessee. Signs for miles ahead warned that the right lane would be closed. Most drivers (including this one) dutifully migrated into the left lane, but there were plenty of jerks who sped up in the right lane in order to pass the line and then “merge” at the point where that lane was blocked. We’ve all seen this sort of rude behavior, some people’s willingness to make the delay much longer for everyone else in order to gain a few minutes advantage for themselves. As I sat there fuming at them (they all seemed to drive SUVs, too…), it occurred to me that I was seeing a metaphor for humanity: you have the folks who play by the rules and the ones who think the rules (legal and moral alike) are for suckers. (OK, maybe I’m drawing an excessive lesson from a traffic incident, but we sat there for at least 45 minutes…)
Finally, someone on the radio was relaying the results of a poll. The question: does government do too much or too little? I didn’t hear the result, but the poll itself is a great example of Americans’ addiction to useless, idiot polling. The question itself is meaningless, just like our endless debates over “big” government vs. “small” government. The question is: what should government do, not how much. (There’s significant research showing that people who bitch about government doing “too much” are the first to scream bloody murder when services are curtailed. It’s sort of like those pious folks who love humanity but hate all their neighbors.)
If this post sounds grumpy, I did drive 11 hours yesterday….
Eugene Robinson makes a point that many political junkies are pondering:
Romney has spent the better part of a decade running for president. Did it never occur to him that if he ever won the Republican nomination, surely there would come a time when he was under pressure to release multiple years’ worth of tax returns? Did he think everyone would forget that it was his own father, George Romney, who set the modern standard for financial disclosure? Did he not recall that when he was being considered for the vice presidential nod four years ago, he furnished tax returns spanning more than two decades to the John McCain campaign?
There are two parts to this puzzle. One, of course, is the tantalizing question of what is in those tax returns? The general conclusion at this point is that it must be something really damaging, else why would Romney prefer being criticized for lack of transparency rather than incur whatever criticisms would follow disclosure.
The second part of the puzzle is actually more damaging. As Robinson notes, Romney has been running for President for what seems like forever–surely he and his campaign staff knew he’d be asked to provide tax information that has become a routine and expected part of candidate disclosures. In the decade he’s been running, he surely could have tailored his taxes so as to avoid major issues when they were ultimately made public. This lack of foresight is ultimately more troubling than whatever tax avoidance or other issue might emerge from disclosure of his tax returns.
Among the qualifications for the nation’s highest office, an ability to think strategically–to see the likely long-term consequences of a course of action, and plan accordingly–is vitally important.
If a candidate can’t even think ahead sufficiently to act in his own self-interest, how can we trust him to steer a course for the country?
In the interests of shameless self-promotion, I am yielding todays blog post to the Journal Gazette, and encouraging you to read the whole thing!
On a different note, we’ve been having internet connectivity problems at my house. This periodic lack of access throws me into panic and depression. I guess addiction isn’t limited to drugs….Anyway, posting will be iffy until it’s fixed, which we hope will be today.
We talk a lot about ownership in America: George W. Bush promoted an “ownership society;” people trying to change institutional systems are urged to help those involved to “own” the changes.
The disconnect comes when we consider corporate ownership–which, increasingly, doesn’t exist in any meaningful way.
Think about the origins of the business corporation. A Henry Ford, an Eli Lilly, a J. Randolph Hearst would begin an enterprise that continued to reflect upon its founder whether or not that founder retained majority ownership (which most did). Other shareholders profited or not, participated in the election of the board or not, attended annual meetings or not, but it was understood that they weren’t owners in the way we understand that word.
A business school colleague once described today’s shareholders and bondholders as two different kinds of lenders. The guy who purchases corporate bonds wants priority and a secure rate of return. They guy who buys shares is gambling, in a sense: he’s willing to risk a greater downside in hopes of a bigger return. Neither of them is really interested in the company or its business, except to the extent necessary to make an investment decision.
Meanwhile, the company is managed by hired guns who rarely have any sort of emotional connection to the corporation, and whose own “ownership” is limited to stock options and other incentives–incentives that tend to reward quarterly rather than long-term performance.
Real ownership is so different.
Last week, the Indianapolis Public Library hosted a small reception for the Lacy family, one of the increasingly rare exceptions to the picture I’ve just painted. The impetus for the reception was the family’s donation of a book–a history of the company–to the Indiana collection. The book traced the company from its origins manufacturing corrugated cardboard boxes to its current incarnation as LDI–Lacy Diversified Industries. During the brief talks, someone made the point that multi-generational family ownership like LDIs currently represents perhaps 3% of American businesses.
If you are thinking, “so what?” think about the contributions made to this community by family-owned companies like LDI or MacAllister Machinery. These are enterprises still run by their founders, or the children and/or grandchildren of their founders. Such businesses are connected to this community in multiple ways that the more impersonal, shareholder-owned companies and their managers are not. They are also far more likely to make business decisions based upon the long-term interests of the enterprise, rather than on the next quarterly or annual report. As a result, they are more likely to be corporate good citizens.
Mitt Romney to the contrary, corporations are not “people, my friend.” But a dwindling number are owned by identifiable people. And that kind of ownership is infinitely preferable to the lottery-ticket shareholder mentality that has largely replaced it.
My cousin, an eminent cardiologist, sent me a brief essay he recently wrote about GMs–genetically modified foods. It exemplifies the sort of appeal to science and evidence that should guide decision-making. Or so my logic tells me. Nevertheless…Well, let’s start with his essay.
“On May 25, 2012, The New York Times ran an article titled “Battle Brewing Over Labeling of Genetically-Modified Foods.” The article pointed out that for more than a decade, almost all processed foods in the United States — cereals, snack foods, salad dressings — have contained ingredients from plants whose DNA was manipulated in a laboratory. Moreover, almost all the corn and soybeans grown in the United States now contain DNA derived from bacteria. The foreign gene makes the soybeans resistant to an herbicide used in weed control and causes the corn to produce its own insecticide, thus increasing yields and reducing the need for artificially added chemicals. In addition, almost all the food derived from plants you eat has been produced by selective breeding, artificially selected for various favorable traits, including the enrichment of the content of certain proteins.
Regulators and scientists say genetic manipulations pose no danger. But as Americans ask questions about what they are eating, popular suspicions about the health and environmental effects of biotechnology are fueling a movement to require that food from genetically modified crops be labeled, if not eliminated.
Labeling bills had been proposed in more than a dozen states over the previous year, and an appeal to the Food and Drug Administration to mandate labels nationally drew more than a million signatures. The most closely watched labeling effort is a proposed ballot initiative in California prompting a probable subsequent vote that could influence not just food packaging but the future of American agriculture.
Tens of millions of dollars are expected to be spent on the election showdown. It pits some consumer groups and the organic food industry, both of which support mandatory labeling, against more conventional farmers, agricultural biotechnology companies like Monsanto and many of the nation’s best-known food brands like Kellogg’s and Kraft.
The root of this latest push is most likely fear. Anything that is unknown or perceived to be “foreign” is feared by a general public that is ill educated about the topic, and this likely leads to a form of hysteria. Perhaps it conjures up an Orwellian image of “big brother” manipulating our genes to the point of modifying our own makeup and mischievously invading our stem cells and future progeny.
And of course there is the ubiquitous presence of moneyed interests. If the California initiative passes, “we will be on our way to getting genetically-tainted foods out of our nation’s food supply for good,” according to Ronnie Cummins, director of the Organic Consumers Association—with financial gain at stake—who stated in a letter seeking donations for the California ballot initiative. “If a company like Kellogg’s has to print a label stating that their famous Corn Flakes have been genetically engineered, it will be the kiss of death for their iconic brand in California — the eighth-largest economy in the world — and everywhere else.”
Opposing such interests are such organizations as the Grocery Manufacturers Association and the National Corn Growers Association, which stand to lose by required labeling, believing that this would seriously undermine their sales.
What is the science behind such hysteria? A recent comprehensive review* concluded that foods derived from genetically modified crops have been consumed by hundreds of millions of people across the world for more than 15 years and there have been no reported ill effects (or legal cases related to human health), despite many of the consumers coming from that most litigious of countries, the USA. This report pointed out the many advantages of such modification that included, among others, increasing crop yields and more nutritious contents. There are also a number of uses for plants outside of the food industry, for example in the timber, paper and chemical sectors and increasingly for biofuels. Of significance to the medical field is the use of genetically modified plants for production of recombinant pharmaceuticals. Molecular farming to produce such plant-derived pharmaceuticals is currently being studied by academic and industrial groups across the world. The first full-size native human product, human serum albumin, was demonstrated in 1990, and since then antibodies, blood products, hormones and vaccines have all been expressed in modified plants. Protein pharmaceuticals can be harvested and purified from these plants, or alternatively, plant tissue in a processed form expressing a pharmaceutical could potentially be consumed as an ‘edible vaccine’.
In conclusion, I believe that anxiety-producing labels are counterproductive, but if such ill-advised legislation results in their appearance, don’t panic—these foods are harmless! In most cases they are far superior to “organic” products that I have reviewed in a previous publication.”
Why am I not entirely convinced?
First, on general policy grounds, I favor disclosure–whether it be disclosure of political contributions, or state budget calculations, or the ingredients in my food. I may make poor decisions based on those disclosures, but that is still preferable to government exercising “father knows best” paternalism. Accurate food labeling empowers me; it provides me with the information I need to make informed decisions about what I eat–calorie counts, sugar content, or genetic modifications.
Second, while I am confident that my cousin is correct about the results of testing that has been done– science isn’t static. New genetic modifications appear with some frequency, and newer ones have not been tested over a period of years. Manipulation of genes is different from selective breeding, although both result in genetic modification. The risk may be slight, but individuals should have the information necessary to make risk calculations for themselves–including the sort of information about their safety provided by current science.
Third, call me overly cautious, but some problems take time to emerge. We are just now recognizing the deleterious effects of some pesticides and antibiotics used in large-scale farming. While those techniques to increase crop and animal yields are not genetic modifications, they too were long thought to be free of side effects. One of the reasons we trust science is that it is falsifiable–always open to revision on the basis of new evidence. The jury is always out.
None of this is intended to suggest we avoid GM food, even if we could. I am simply arguing that more information is better than less. Decisions about disclosure of ingredients in our foods should not rest with manufacturers worried about market share, just as decisions about disclosure of political contributions should not be made by those profiting from them.
