Locavores versus roundabout production

This page is inspired by the following:
http://www.fee.org/in%5Fbrief/?id=51
The above URL is an essay by eminent economic policy analyst Russ Korves.
To give you an idea where www.fee.org and Korves are coming from,
here are the keywords given (in the keywords meta-tag) for the page:
liberty, economics, education, freedom, free-market, In Brief, capitalism,
private property, free, newsletter, email, daily, commentary
I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume the adjective "free"
modifies the noun "newsletter," or perhaps "education."
The gist of the argument is that locavores (defined as people who
value minimal travel distance for their food, perhaps with high
priority) are mistaken in believing that minimization of food travel
goes hand in hand with efficiency. This evaluation is based on the
apparent rejection by the locavores of the theory of "roundabout
production" expounded by famed Austrian economist Böhm-Bawerk.
The purpose of this mensaje is not to critique the locavores from the
standpoint of Austrian economics; rather it is to critique them based on
considerations of feasibility.
First, let's address the notion of a nonzero tolerance policy.
This policy is based on the assumption that any normative parameter
(see norm spec) is subject to being compromised in the interest
of the normspec as a whole (or norm set or ortho norm as a whole
in the case of group norm's.
Korves describes the locavores as people who resolve to try to limit
their dietary intake to commodities within a fixed radius of home.
This binarily categorizes grocery items into the categories
"acceptable" and "unacceptable," effectively creating a
zero tolerance policy.
Using the maxhi schema, the objective would be quantified differently.
For a one-item market basket, straight-line distance from point of
origin to point of consumption might be a parameter to be minimized
with high or low priority. The assumption of a linear relationship
between distance so measured and financial or other costs of transport
is, of course, naïve. Nevertheless, the neutrality principle
means respect and toleration for the assumption that minimization of
distance, in itself, is of value. Without loss of generality,
of course, the same could be said of maximization of distance, perhaps
in the interest of increasing efficiencies due to roundabout
production... :) Ideally partisans of both signa will be
running simulations against the same databases at some point in
time.
Straight line distance (very approximate, based on (say)
country-of-origin labeling) might be a more database-feasible "raw"
parameter (especially given pervasive GIS and the like) than
informational unknowns (or little knowns) such as odometer mileage on
the truck, energy consumption, internal supply chain trade secrets,
etc.
For a multiple-item market basket such as one represented by an
efficient shopping list, the question arises of what number most
uniquely and appropriately represents the "distance" travelled by the
market basket (or the items on the shopping list) as a whole. I offer
two suggestions. One is a sum of terms, each term being the distance
traveled by one item (in SI distance unit meters), multiplied by the
mass of the item (in kg), giving a weighted travel distance
measured in "meter-kilograms." A second suggestion is to calculate a
sum weighted by dollar value. Being highly partisan (for economic
purposes, normative) and somewhat willing to sacrifice
bang/buck ratio (per my own "self interest") for making "political
statements" through vendor and product selections, I might be inclined to
prioritize minimizing the dollar-weighted distance parameter with high
priority (minhi) and minimizing the kilogram-weighted one with low
priority (minlo).
The Korves essay goes through a typical textbook demonstration of how
affluence begets more varied tastes, as well as explanation of
differential comparative advantages of various geographic regions to
optimization of various crops. I found this presentation vaguely
reminiscent of an ADM PR-fomercial I once heard one about "each food being
grown where it grows best" or something.
To quote Korves:
Try anything close to the locavore approach in Tokyo or Helsinki,
and it would be a disaster.
Here's a suggestion for an informational research project:
Plot (on a map of the world) "feasibility (or efficiency of outcomes) of normset 'locavore'"
as a function of (longitude,latitude).
Korves again:
Public-policy activists who are skeptical of roundabout production 
 methods can play an important role in ensuring economic efficiency by not 
 supporting government policies that distort market prices for goods and 
 services. Both producers and consumers respond to price signals. The only 
 way to judge which of two supply chains is the most efficient at using 
 resources is to have market prices that reflect the cost of the goods and 
 services used in production, processing, storage, and transportation. 
In English:
Public policy activists who are skeptical of roundabout production
methods should get a clue, see the light and become instead public policy activists
who are skeptical of public policy.
I can't speak for the locavores, but there should never be an assumption that
economic efficiency (however defined) is or is not a goal of a normset
used for analysis as part of a public domain data mining project.
My own proposed research projects actually are based on an
assumption that both producers and consumers respond to price signals.
I'm not a "liberal," but I'm not a fundamentalist either. I wouldn't
propose the creation of a database if I didn't value positive
empirics. While I can endorse the notion that some kind of
"efficiency" is inherent in the market mechanism, I am biased (for
largely emotional i.e. normative reasons) toward the notion that this
efficiency is highly compromised (i.e. price signals highly
distorted) by government policies, but also (significantly, and
importantly) by information asymmetry, opacity, trade secrecy, package
dealing (i.e. "bundling"), nonlinear pricing, critter ships, etc.
The purpose of this essay is not to advocate for or
against deregulation of prices or other phenomena of the economic
sphere. One definite purpose is to "valuate" certain
intangibles such as the "price" (once "unbundled" from other prices)
of preferring a locally-produced market basket, or indeed the cost of
holding any normative preference.