From: mrh@centerline.com (Mike Huben)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.libertarian
Subject: Re: Real world example of society profiting from startup subsidies.
Date: 12 Oct 1992 14:24:30 GMT
Organization: CenterLine Software, Inc.
NNTP-Posting-Host: 140.239.2.36

In article <1992Oct11.231600.24860@netcom.com> rlglende@netcom.com (Robert Lewis Glendenning) writes:
>There is a better real-world example of an agricultural product which has
>been improved tremendously in the face of government suppression :
>
>	MARAJUANIA !
>
>If there is demand for a product, the government doesn't need to subsidize
>anything about it.

Translate "supression" into "price supports" (a very real and obvious effect
of making marijuana illegal), and it is obvious that the government has
subsidized marijuana.  (I forget whether it is the largest or second largest
cash crop in California.)  This is a classic case of government control of
the market causing outrageous profits. 

Personally, I'd question whether there have been any real improvements to
marijuana: more likely existing knowledge from the third world about culture
has made its way to the US.  If you disagree, why don't you start naming
agricultural varieties of Cannabis that are bred for improved yield.  I'm
not talking about "Maui Wowee" and other such colloquial trade names,
but distinct breeds.

This is one of the subjects where I agree with libertarians: supression of
drugs such as marijuana is foolish.  Where I disagree is that I think
marijuana and tobacco ought to be strongly regulated, perhaps by prescription
only with a minimum age for recreational usage (such as 18 or 21.)

>As for the land-grant colleges and Agricultural Extension Service, ask
>most farmers about them and you will get a long list of simply crazy
>ideas they have fostered. Examples are hedges such as the multiflora
>rose which have covered the countryside in Ohio and now need a program
>to suppress them.
>
>It is a little hard to be sure they have, net, fostered agriculture.

Yes, there have been some crazy ideas coming out of land grant colleges.

However, your last statement is just plain foolish.  I'd venture to say
that 95% of the crops grown today are from varieties developed at land
grant colleges.  Nobody has been coerced into growing those varieties:
they have been adopted by millions of independent farms whose managers
have deemed them better.

Commercial crops predominantly developed by land grant colleges:  all grains
(including soy, safflower, sunflower), most vegetables, some tree crops
(stone fruits excluding cherries, some apples.)

Commercial crops partly developed by land grant colleges, partly by private
business: tomato, some tree crops, many flower crops, probably a few more.

Commercial crops mostly developed by discovery, not breeding: orange, apple,
some other fruit, probably a few more.

It would be nice to see fewer posts with "giggle factor" factoids like
multiflora roses.  They are as bad as "golden fleece", "welfare queen",
"trees pollute", and "self-made man" stories.  When they are true, they
turn out to be exceptional cases at the ends of a bell curve: the question
is what does the vast majority of the area of the bell curve represent.

Mike Huben

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
						George Santayana

"Those who misremember the present are pleased to repeat it as `proof'."
						Mike Huben