The line is open to interpretation, as Osbourne indicates in the following line, "It's symbolic, of course."

But what if with "it's symbolic, of course", Osbourne was being ironic, and really meant that the previous line is not open to interpretation?

This is what Badiou fails to consider.

Man, Crichton really is a hapless piece of shit. This deserves to be Googlebombed.

I thought of Aleistar; does that count? Other than that, who cares? Chrichton's a dick, actual false accusations of pedophilia are about as wrong as it gets, but, OTOH, those fucks at TNR deserve more or less everything they get short of death.

Tim staking out the moderate Unfogged position. Yeah, I guess my dislike for Crighton's BS pushed aside my dislike for TNR.

Last night, I dreamt that Ben was a pelican. Or maybe a wossname, a fish-bladder.

Not to interrupt the TNR hate, but the particular thing the TNR guy did to offend Crichton was to point out that he was full of shit about global warming. I approve of that.

I can't believe I'm one of Labs' heroes!

At last, I've finally made something of myself!

The first thing I thought of was indeed the song. And now I can't get it out of my head.

Oh shit, Landers is one of Labs' heroes too? Landers? Of Lander's Folly infamy? I guess it's not quite the honor I figured it to be. Damn.

I've got to say that this is pretty hilarious. There's very little that Crowley could've written about Crichton that would have made him look as much like a childish dickhead as this little act of revenge does.

Well, Crichton's an ass, of course, but this was an obscure joke that hardly anyone would have noticed except that Michael Crowley is trying to get some publicity out of it. To his credit (at least from the New York Times article I read about it) he didn't seem to pretending to be terribly injured by this. But the funniest thing about this is that the Crowley character in the book is not just a child-rapist -- he is a child-rapist with a small penis.

Oh, c'mon, that's hilarious. What could be more awesome then to get back at your critics by casting them as absurdly over-the-top villains in novels? I hope he put a drunken surgeon named Leon Weiseltier tries to harrass Maura Tierney's character on the next ER.

Does Crichton even have an editor? I doubt that any good one would have let him leave this in. "Crowley's penis was small..." Why am I reading this?

Suffice it to say that writing about toddler ass-rape disqualifies Crichton from running for Senate.

Sure, it's hilarious, but the funny bit is what an incredible schmuck Crichton is.

13 -- yes! this is awful prose. I wonder if the whole book is like that.

From Gawker:

Crowley handles the whole thing with aplomb: He lays out his case with little bitterness and makes Crichton look like more of a penis than his earlier profile did, which is no small feat. The best part of the piece, though, is his reference to the "obscure publishing doctrine known as 'the small penis rule,'"

As described in a 1998 New York Times article, it is a sly trick employed by authors who have defamed someone to discourage their targets from filing lawsuits. As libel lawyer Leon Friedman explained to the Times, "No male is going to come forward and say, 'That character with a very small penis, 'That's me!'"

Last night at panel I heard a libertarian dismiss global warming alarmists in the same breath as he challenged supporters of the transfat ban—alleging a neoprohibitionist element within the media!

Baa, what when on in your head?

I mean, if Crichton and Crowley were old drinking buddies, this would be hilarious, but when it's someone the novelist has a real beef with, feh.

17 -- The Times quoted that bit too, and quoted Crowley's further assertion that by talking about his penis, Crichton has acknowledged that he was in the right in his criticisms.

18 -- those positions don't seem very contradictory to me. Is that what you're saying?

Once again, baa shows the true face of the Right.

true face s/b 'small penis'

So, Michael Crowley becomes the 2nd male in recorded human history (Howard Stern being the first) to publicly admit to having a small penis.

Sorry--he was dismissing global warming alarmists (meaning scientists) as friends to the nogoodniks who want to take away your Crisco and Camels. I guess libertarians are sympathetic to all those viewpoints, but otherwise there's not much to link them conspiracy wise.

I'm with baa. C'mon, you can be fairly certain that anyone who reads this Crichton novel and doesn't see it as a super over the top joke, doesn't read TNR. Um, well, except for the Gayatollah.

If anal toddler rape can't be funny at Unfogged, I dare say it can't be funny anywhere.

"The defendant, thirty-year-old Mick Crowley, was a Washington-based political columnist who was visiting his sister-in-law when he experienced an overwhelming urge to have anal sex with her young son, still in diapers."

If he left the kid's diapers on, at least it was safe sex.

Or is it Mick Crowley wearing the diapers? Crichton really can't write.

It just doesn't matter. Y'all don't seriously believe that people make connections with real people who share similar names to people in novels, do y'all? It's kinda-funny because it's petty and there's just no harm done. I don't see what y'all are in such a huff about.

There's a story that face of Judas in the painting of The Last Supper is the face of an Abbot who annoyed Leonardo. I don't know if this is true, but I find this hilarious.

I'm trying to imagine how I'd react if I were sympathetic to Crichton on the substantive issue (global warming), and someone had written a piece about how very very wrong he was. I think I'd probably think this was hilarious, in a good way. The problem is that you can't avoid seeming like a prick when you get huffy about something you're totally wrong about.

23. oh please

Oh, and baa raped my puppy.

Dammit, baa and ogged are spoiling my indignation. I think part of why it comes across badly is that Crichton's tone, judging from these very small excerpts, is sort of like the Deadly Serious prose of that Orson Scott Card thing we joked about a while back. If it were Kingsley Amis I'd be weeping with laughter, but it isn't, obviouslam.

30: Dude, it's a joke. I'm sure baa's penis is huge.

But's that's kind of the point -- when someone pwns you on something substantive, and your response is to find a sneaky way to call him a tiny-dicked babyraper, you look like an incredibly pathetic tool.

Did you know that Kingsley Amis wrote the first post-Fleming James Bond book? I'd totally read Lucky James, a book about a middle-aged over-sexed man in the bowels of Whitehall coping with ministerial politics.

It's funny, but we're not laughing with him.

Yeah, if Crichton had gone on Larry King and said that he thinks Mike Crowley is a small-dicked baby-rapist, that would have been funny.

Do we know that Crowley isn't a small-dicked baby-rapist, or are we taking his word for it?

I'm not going to repeat what Spack had to say.

37: I still walk funny.

Holy shit -- I just typed out substantively the exact same comment as 37 (but then I erased it without posting because I realized it wasn't funny).

Brock: quicker on the uptake than -gg-d.

Oh come on. I need the spackereaction.

33. your history with baa makes it difficult to tell

23 was awesome. So's 33.

The problem is that you can't avoid seeming like a prick when you get huffy about something you're totally wrong about.

I think you can drop everything after the word "huffy" from that sentence and it'll still be true.

44: only because "huffy" is evaluatively loaded. How dare you demean my rightous anger by calling it that! So it jsut becomes a question of when anger is huffy and when it's not, and being totally wrong about something might pop up in that context.

43: I have history with baa that implies I have firsthand knowledge of his dick size? No one tell Buck, okay?

30, 33: "Michael was a humorless child rapist from Arkansas who was wracked with envy over his big-dicked friend, baa."

It seems like there are a lot of recent works of right wing dramatic fiction that are elaborate revenge fantasies against liberals. Orson Scott Card, Michael Creighton, and the Left Behind series are obvious examples. Atlas Shrugged is an older example.

I can't think of many examples from the left, although there was a recent made for cable zombie movie in which dead veterans rise up to vote against the politician who started the war (and also eat the brains of a Ann Coulter look alike). Majikthise' mom worked on the movie.

You can go to deep history to find other examples that aren't Republican. Dante and Michaelangelo are obvious ones.

The whole thing seems childish and unfunny. Dante wouldn't be famous if all he did write revenge fantasies.

45: Sure, but I think one way to distinguish huffiness from righteous anger is how it manifests. Calling your opponent a small-dicked baby rapist? Huffy.

The "small penis" gambit doesn't make any sense. The victim wouldn't say "that's me!" He'd say "I do indeed have a big dick, and unless the author has evidence to the contrary, he's displayed reckless disregard for the truth."

The revenge fantasies were one of the weaker elements in The Inferno.

"If anal toddler rape can't be funny at Unfogged, I dare say it can't be funny anywhere."

and modus ponens gives you....

It is funny at Unfogged!

I repeat -- oh come on! -- it's funny to attack people in crazy ways in fiction. And I say this having met Crowley, liking Crowley, and thinking Crowley is right that Crighton's attack on global warming is wrong.

Sure, it's funny. In that "no, we're not laughing with you" kind of way.

Another example: Bill Buckley's Redhunter, a fictional rewriting of the McCarthy era that makes McCarthy look like a hero.

There is something really cheap about the urge to create fictional worlds where you are right and your enemies are wrong. I taught a class on environmental utopianism that read Huxley's Island, and for contrast, parts of Atlas Shrugged. The most prominent parallel to my mind (HUXLEY SPOILERS) is that Huxley has his utopia ultimately crushed by the forces of capitalism while Rand's book is all about her utopia ultimately taking over the world, because it is capitalism.

Also there should be a was in the last sentence of my last post.

54 -- how does the lame quality of Crichton's prose affect your point? I'm with FL above that if he could write, this would be much funnier.

54: I am forced to agree with baa until it happens to me or someone I care about.

Baa, I'm bound by oath and by tradition to say that you're right about everything, but this one is more trying than most. If it were a funny or madcap or zany attack, ok, I'll grant that, but small-cocked child-raping?

56 - That's one of the nice things about Ursula LeGuin's best book, The Dispossessed; the happy hippie anarchist utopia colony she's contrasting with the nasty statist capitalist metropolis is both desperately poor and kind of awful and demeaning, the way a !state run by hippies would probably be.

I'm with FL above that if he could write, this would be much funnier.

It would still be toolish, though. And the colossally toolish part is that he actually used the name "Mick Crowley" for the character, in addition to making him a liberal Yale graduate and Washington political journalist. I mean, using the actual name? That's idiotic.

Better to just include a slightly more specific piece of identifying information, like where he used to work, or some distinctive personal habit other than baby-raping. Better, but still toolish.

56: On a more serious note, that's why I'm suspicious of using fiction as a device for moral instruction.

Snarkout: I was just thinking about the Dispossessed. I was tempted to say that like Island, it was a utopian novel that undercut its own utopianism, but I don't think that's entirely right. Really, it is not a utopian novel at all. We aren't supposed to think the anarchist moon people have got it right. Huxley is just being a pessimist--perfection can't last. LeGuin is on to something deeper.

Actually the nice thing about both books is that they don't assume a free energy source. Giving your utopia a free energy source is just cheating.

I see the way to consensus.

1. authors slandering people in their fiction is funny
2. authors slandering people in fiction who slighted them in some fashion is funny
*But*
3. Crighton did his slandering in a remarkably crude way
Thus either:

4. Crichton is being intentionally over the top, in which case it is hilarious (in a laughing with MC way)
or
5. Crichton is being unintentionally over the top, in which case it is hilarious (in a laughing at MC way)

58: "Tim was a child rapist who was wracked with envy over his big-dicked friend, Kwame."

Giving your utopia a free energy source is just cheating.

Dammit, now you tell me.

Maybe we should have invaded a place with a higher oil-to-person ratio, like Equatorial Gunea.

I'll grant that, but small-cocked child-raping?

Small-cocked child-raping is much more humane than huge-cocked child-raping. So really, Crighton is cutting Crowley some slack.

64: I've never actually read any Michael Crichton. With your highbrow tastes, Baa, I'm sure you know his voice well, so I'll take your word for it if you say that stylistic hints favor the "making a joke" explanation.

baa's ploy of using the initials "MC" when the principles are named Michael Crichton and Michael Crowley is typical of the mendacious equivocation at the heart of rightist intellectualism today.

No, he takes pains to point out that Crowley's cock, though small, was enough to cause painful damage to the infant.

In other news, I have no idea what this book is actually about, only what's mentioned in Crowley's TNR article.

65: At last someone admits that Kwame is an impressive physical specimen.

70: Good to see writing like this coming from the party of decency.

the mendacious equivocation at the heart of rightist intellectualism today.

OK, *this* is the new hovertext.

I have no idea what this book is actually about, only what's mentioned in Crowley's TNR article.

Well, if ever there were a source you could trust, it would be the institution that gave us Glass and Gillard's fake e-mail. I want to know if the fact checker at TNR actually asked Crowley if he'd raped or wanted to rape an infant. And first forced Crowley to stipulate that infants can't consent. On past performance, you'd have to assume he didn't.

OK, *this* is the new hovertext.

OK, *this* is the new hovertext.

SCMT, I hate when people treat a person as indistinguishable from the organization he works for. I'd be all for it if Martin Peretz was depicted as a baby-raper in a novel, because he's the only person who can really be said to be "synonymous" with The New Republic. Anyone else is a writer, with his own opinionw, who will someday write for some other magazine. You don't have to sign a pledge of allegiance to the Likud and do a ritual denouncement of blogs to write for TNR.

This is particularly relevant for TNR and the New York Times.

I'm sure you know his voice well, so I'll take your word for it if you say that stylistic hints favor the "making a joke" explanation.

I only know Crichton's series of one-act plays, so I can't help you. I suspect 5 is the answer, however.

You don't have to sign a pledge of allegiance to the Likud and do a ritual denouncement of blogs to write for TNR.

Or so the Likudniks would have you believe.

There is no signing, but one does have to eat a special matzah.

Baa, are you suggesting that Crowley has engaged in baby-blood-eating?

I've read a couple of Chrichton's books. This is comparatively schlocky for him; he's usually at least two steps up from Dan Brown-style prose.

81: two baby steps perhaps? From what little I've read of either (only by desperation while travelling) they are both pretty much pedalling unmitiged pap.

76: In the general case, I suppose that depends on the nature of the wrong committed and the nature of the institution. I think that we were wrong to fire Baathist teachers, but it seems like a genuinely difficult problem to sort out which Baathists to fire and which to keep on a case-by-case basis. (I note that I'm aware of no evidence that anyone at TNR was in any way complicit in the slaughter of 20,000 Kurds. (But absence of evidence....))

Specific to this instance, I think baa's right: I can't imagine anyone actually believing that someone's a baby rapist. With a diaper fetish. That just seems waaay over the top. Dickish of Crichton, but not the sort of thing that should cause Crowley any problems or even embarrassment. It's nasty, but it isn't a real allegation, and I have a hard time believing anyone would take it as one. So someone's been rude to Crowley in a piece of fiction; he and Philip Roth's targets can get together and commiserate.

Yeah, what Crichton has done here is not materially different than Larry Flynt portraying Jerry Falwell having sex with his mother in an outhouse. And I think Flynt deserves the Congressional Medal of Honor for that.

You know, I didn't think the Falwell thing was very funny either. Constitutionally protected satire, sure. Funny, no.

England is the place to sue for this type of thing.

Plus, Crowley might not be a public figure who is "intimately involved in the resolution of important public questions or, by reason of their fame, shape events in areas of concern to society at large."

Doesn't matter whether it was funny; Falwell just deserved it.

Maybe I'm just mean and sour. I've just gotten into a spat over at ObWi about economics -- I hate arguing with people when I can't figure out what they're arguing for. I tend to get louder and louder until they're either satisfyingly clear, or stalk off in a huff, and it's usually the latter.

What were you arguing about, LB? (Or did you never quite figure it out?)

88:Uh-oh

Somebody above made the point that Crichton could not say this on Larry King.

Is Crichton making meta-points about the differences between Journalism and fiction here? You could not even get away with the "Mick Crowley" stuff in a blog-post. And is Crichton saying "I can say anything I want about global warming, including lies, because it is fiction, and the footnotes and sources at the back don't change its nature?"

Or to put it another way. Crowley you ass why were you discussing my novel as if it were non-fiction?

You know, why can't it be *both* funny and toolish (and therefore funny, yet again)? Not to mention also being probably the most important and best piece of writing Crichton's ever done.

Roughly in the area of "Does Fair Trade coffee really hurt, rather than helping, coffee growers," based on an article Hilzoy linked. I jumped in with 'the argument made in the article is silly', and it went downhill from there. I suspect I was intemperate.

Is Crichton making meta-points about the differences between Journalism and fiction here?

I think you're giving Crichton way too much credit here.

Finally, how much licence does Crichton have? Considering who he is? Could he write a book about Big Macs causing testicular cancer, with sources and footnotes, treat as if it were true, and not catch any flack?

Did she link to the recent Economist article? And if so, why did you think it silly? (I suppose I could/should just go read all this myself. But that's a lot of work.)

I just watched a dicumentary about Hunter Thompson the other night, so to pwn myself, I suppose you can get away with absolutely anything in print. And mix fiction and journalism in many interesting ways.

Its arguments that Fair Trade coffee will hurt growers appear to me to depend on an assumption that coffee growers are irrational, which seems screwy to me. But the argument got long and vague -- it's the More Boycotts thread if you're interested.

97: That's funny, I guess I'd think this sort of thing was hysterical from Hunter S. Thompson, and from him it'd be much more like real defamation than this sort of clearly unserious joke. I may think Crichton's a schmuck just because it's so petty and smallscale.

94:I give Crichton quite a bit of credit...he has writing fictional non-fiction for years. He was among other things, telling Crowley and whoever else might mess with him, that legality is irrelevant, and reputationally, court of public opinion, Crichton can get away with much more than Crowley could dream of.

94 gets it exactly right.

See, if it were someone who *could* write, I'd feel like it was a lot meaner. I mean, look at what Pope did to Cibber. (Though it's funny all the same.) Whereas a hack like Crichton, it's just so pathetically lame.

98- I just read some of it but got bored quickly. The fair trade coffee point was, to my mind, by far the weakest example from that article. I don't think the author understood basic economics very well, which is odd, considering the article purported to use basic economics to lecture people on the unintended consequences of their purchasing decisions. But if you try to graph the author's fair trade argument, I think you'll quickly find it's nonsense. (You can probably tell it's nonsense just reading it, but an economist would never accept that fact unless it was graphed for him.)

Although I think it's true that very little of the markup on fair trade coffee is really making it to the poor farmers.

101: "could write" is so irrelevant when talking about a perpetual mega-selling author. Crichton has more credibility than any of the bloggers. That is why made his global-warming novel got attention and very few can even spell Bjorn Lomborg correctly.

If I were Crowley, I would avoid Midwestern playgrounds and schoolyards.

On the one hand, it's an honored tradition. Dante fictionalized quite a lot of his enemies into hell. Galileo's dialogues have caricatures of Cardinal SomeoneorOther as 'Simplicio.' Poor Leibniz's nose fell off from syphilis in this best of all possible worlds. On the other hand, Crichton isn't that skilled a writer, he's wrong about global warming, and the toddler-raping joke is just in very poor taste. I'd think it were funny if it were a zany madcap crook or puffed-up vain caricature, but this smacks too much of a little mind thinking nasty things to say. "I know, his cock can only rape babies ('in the face!' shouts FL.) !!' Gimme a break.

I don't think the author understood basic economics very well, which is odd, considering the article purported to use basic economics to lecture people on the unintended consequences of their purchasing decisions. But if you try to graph the author's fair trade argument, I think you'll quickly find it's nonsense.

This is what makes liberals crazy on the subject of economics -- the prevalence of this kind of handwaving. And The Economist is supposed to be sane and respectable, yet.

Although I think it's true that very little of the markup on fair trade coffee is really making it to the poor farmers.

That's true, but it just means that coffee-shop owners aren't saints. The poor farmers get a good deal, and then the FT middlemen sell the FT coffee to coffee shops at not much more than standard coffee prices, and then the coffee shops jack the price up because the silly hippies will pay more for FT coffee. But that's okay -- the poor farmers still get a good deal, and the silly hippies don't mind, because they're happy that the poor farmers are getting a good deal, and the coffee shop owners are making more money because they're delivering a product that the market will pay more for. Everyone's happy.

105 is right, unless you think that the reason the silly hippies are happy is because they imagine the entire markup, or most of it, is going to the poor farmers. If they'd be rather unhappy if they realized it was actually Giant SuperMarket Chain that was keeping most of the markup. (Which I suspect is the case for a non-trivial number of purchasers of fair-trade coffee). In which case there's a market failure here with respect to information. Which doesn't make it a bad deal for the farmers, of course, but still.

True -- at some point FT turns into a fraud. But considering that there are websites detailing what the producers get from the program, I'm not too worried about the hippies: if they cared about being defrauded, they'd do the research.

105: I had to live with his shit. My lady does not use the internets for educational purposes, other than to look up actors. She reads fiction like Clive Cussler. She believed most of the scientific arguments about global warming in a book whose title I do not even want to remember...Crichton. "What did he say that was wrong" she says. I don't read his garbage. I tried to point her to Crooked Timber threads, fair and balanced, but she wouldn't go, and considered me
depressingly serious. "Whatever. Now go away."

She will not watch Gore's movie. Multiply her by millions, and try to raise her gas taxes.

What is this elitism, not to take Crichton seriously? He is dangerous.

108 105 s/b 104

83: Kwa...er Tim, I don't think Crowley is the least bit insulted here, he's essentially declaring himself the winner in the debate by the application of reductio ad Godwin. Which is, I think, right.

Since I'm procrastinating, I'll elaborate as to exactly how stupid the the Economist argument on FT really is, for the benefit of all our readers less insightful than LB (likely: all of us). It's confused about the fundamental point it is trying to make: in the author's mind, does the price of (regular) coffee go up or down? Which is it? The article tries say there will be even worse overproduction than there currently is because the price will go up, which will attract new entrants. But it says the farmers will be worse off because the price has gone down so they are all poorer. Which is it?

The author (I think) is trying to say that the increased price of FT coffee will lead to lower prices for regular coffee, but why would this be? That would only be even hypothetically plausible if farmers had to just blindly grow coffee on the the hope that at the time of harvest it would be purchased by a FT merchant at an above market price. But that (to my knowledge) isn't even close to how the FT program works. And even then, the average compensation (FT + regular farmers) would need to go up to attract new entrants -- if average/expected compensation went down, we'd expect to see a decrease in total supply. So even under this absurd counterfactual, coffee farmers as a whole would be better off.

I suspect i"m the only person here who cares about 111.

No, it's a nice check that what I was thinking (pretty much, exactly what you just said) makes sense. The argument at ObWi was driving me nuts, because I couldn't figure out what the counterarguments were, and started to worry that maybe I was the confused one rather than Andrew and rilkefan.

88 People buy Fairtrade goods because they feel it gives them moral superiority points. People who don't buy Fairtrade goods don't wish to concede these points. I expect most nonbuyers don't care about third world agricultural labor rates but this sounds a little heartless so it is easier to say they are nonbuyers because the extra price is actually going (mostly) to middlemen or is actually hurting third world laborers in some convoluted way. So nonbuyers will be prejudiced in favor of such arguments against Fairtrade. Similarly buyers will be prejudiced against such arguments even when valid because they don't want to surrender their moral superiority points. This can lead to people talking past each other. You are correct that repeating the same arguments in a louder voice is not a particularly effective way of dealing with this.

112: Nope. I care. I think that hilzoy is basically right about this -- it is odd that conservatives don't like people expressing this particular kind of preference (in econ-speak, taking the conditions of production as an attribute of a good) through markets. You can come up with some second-order arguments about how the effects might not be as straightforward as you think, and it is certainly true, as BL says, that only a small part of the gain may be experienced by the small producers, but that doesn't alter the basic point that this is a preference that can be expressed through markets.

113: Just as a follow-up, there is nothing wrong per se with moral superiority points, if they motivate people to do good things.

You know, James, you occasionally have something interesting to say -- that is, you're not entirely valueless as a commenter, and I mean that sincerely. That said, when you say something like:

People buy Fairtrade goods because they feel it gives them moral superiority points.

do you actually mean to make a sweeping statement that no one buys Fairtrade goods out of genuine concern for the welfare of the producers? And if you do, are you making that statement because you enjoy pissing people off, or simply because it hasn't occurred to you that it might piss people off?

(Yes, you said equally nasty things about people who don't buy Fairtrade goods. But of course unpleasantness doesn't cancel out unpleasantness.)

I'm just trying to figure out if you're baiting us for fun, in which case you're really very good at it, or if you're setting a new record for interpersonal tonedeafness.

115- and it's especially odd that conservative economic types would be opposed to this since it's what they constantly advocate should replace any sort of governmental regulation.

117: Yep.

116: I'd hazard a guess in this particular case, it's more a lack of insight about both fairtrade and purchasing choices, combined with confident presentation of simplistica and flawed analysis. Could just be sample bias and flawed generalization, instead, I suppose.

or trolling, you could have it there.

113 Well when Andrew conceded he didn't know what a market distortion was I would have taken it as evidence I was arguing with a moron.

Which is not to say you can't come up with some convoluted scenario in which the Fairtrade program hurts growers. Markets can behave in complicated ways and it is difficult to exclude the possibility of an unexpected result.

Similarly it is difficult to absolutely exclude scenarios in which CO2 releases cause global cooling through some complicated feedback process. However skeptics latch on to such possibilities not because they are likely but because it is more palatable to declare the science is uncertain than to say they don't care enough about the ill effects of climate change in 50 years to make any substantial sacrifices today to avoid them.

If they'd be rather unhappy if they realized it was actually Giant SuperMarket Chain that was keeping most of the markup. (Which I suspect is the case for a non-trivial number of purchasers of fair-trade coffee). In which case there's a market failure here with respect to information.

I think there's more of a market failure here with respect to fair-trade coffee that isn't marked up by the middleman. I think people who buy fair-trade coffee along with their Pop Tarts aren't in danger of making the perfect the enemy of the good.

'Moron' s/b 'someone without a functional econ. vocabulary', which doesn't actually make you a moron. But yeah, after that bit I wasn't so much worrying that Andrew was understanding the argument on some level that I wasn't. I still couldn't figure out what Rilke was on about.

Which is not to say you can't come up with some convoluted scenario in which the Fairtrade program hurts growers.

Come up with one.

to 112: I just read that irritating article myself, so I care, brock.

One that was offered over at ObWi is this: There is some alternative crop that coffee growers would be better off growing -- it's more lucrative even than FT coffee. There are costs to switching crops, though, so growers are reluctant to switch. If they can only get the standard pricing for their coffee, they'll switch to the more lucrative crop. If they can get FT pricing, they won't switch, despite the fact that it's in their self interest -- they're rational enough to see that the m.l.c. is better than standard coffee, but not that it's also better than the (superficially more attractive, because of no switching costs) FT coffee. And so they're better off without the FT option, because they'll take it even under circumstances when it's not in their best interests.

This isn't impossible, I suppose, but it's awfully convoluted.

106: I think it's unreasonable to assume that though. I know a fair number of people who make those sort of purchases because it is both easy and helps a bit. It isn't like they are particularly deluded about the process, but willing to spend an extra couple of bucks knowing that some of it ends up in the right hands.

And it isn't like there is nothing to it but smoke and mirrors. I personally know a terribly earnest couple who mostly quit their jobs to set up a FT company years ago on a volunteer basis, then again the same thing for packaging (also done in south america). Whether or not you agree with their approach to the whole thing, the vast majority of markup in everything they imported stayed in s.a.

122: Which probably makes one better off than someone who quit after Econ 101. Just saying...

I buy FT, despite my aversion to consumer politics precisely because I think that the desire for moral superiority is apolitical and obnoxious. I do it b/c I think the payment workers in the developed world usually get for growing/producing goods we buy here is absolutely fucking obscene.

And yeah, in an unreflective way I kinda assume that a chunk of the markup is going to the growers. But if I think about it for half a second, I know that organic foods (which I also buy) are ridiculously overpriced relative to their non-organic counterparts, and of course FT coffee is as well. All the same, if the growers are getting a fair price for their coffee, and the cost to me of helping create that market is that I'm being a little ripped off by the coffee shop or grocery, well, better me (who can afford it) than the growers (who probably can't, or at least not as well).

125: But that argument's terribly paternalistic. We're doing them a favor by paying them shit, because it gives them an incentive to change? Please. If the conditions theorized are in fact accurate, then I see nothing wrong with growers deciding that FT prices are "enough," and opting out of trying to maximize profits (heresy though it be). After all, if you're growing something for which there is a guaranteed and enduring market, you're better off in the long run, as many California raisin grape growers who've seen the price of their product plummet will tell you.

125- okay, but there's no way to model that. It doesn't make sense given any consistent set of behavioral or informational or market-organizational assumptions (no matter how poor the assumptions). So I'm not sure I'm willing to grant that there's any validity to this at all, even as a bad model for how FT could hurt coffee growers. Or at least it's no better than saying FT could hurt coffee growers because any beans labeled "Free Trade" might actually turn out to be dragon eggs, which will hatch into firebreathing dragons and kill the farmers, making them worse-off. Well, yeah, I suppose. But that's not economics. Not even bad economics.

Or at least it's no better than saying FT could hurt coffee growers because any beans labeled "Free Trade" might actually turn out to be dragon eggs, which will hatch into firebreathing dragons and kill the farmers, making them worse-off. Well, yeah, I suppose. But that's not economics. Not even bad economics.

Well, yeah, pretty much. It requires very defined and specific irrationality, and while I'll believe people will be irrational -- of course they will, sometimes -- a claim that you know specifically how they're going to be irrational needs to be backed up with a whole bunch of data.

Hmm. Either B or I misunderstood what LB was saying in 125. Not sure which.

No, you both got it. B took the insane assumption at face value, and reacted by saying "If the farmers are going to be irrational, that's their business and it's paternalistic telling them that they shouldn't be." You rejected the insane assumption on the grounds that it is, in fact, completely unjustified. Both strike me as legitimate reactions to the argument.

Probably me. But if the misunderstanding is that I seem to be arguing with LB, I didn't think *she* was putting forth that argument; I thought she was hypothesizing it and dismissing it. I was just saying it's dumb as a kind of agreement.

If the misunderstanding's something else, though, I'm quite sure it's mine.

I really think 131 gives the argument in 125 too much credit. There's no data that could help it.

No? Say the difference in income between standard coffee and m.l.c. would pay for the switching costs in two years, and between FT coffee and m.l.c. would pay for the switching costs in four years. And say that it's a good idea to make any change that pays for itself in less than ten years, so a coffee grower should switch regardless of whether they're now standard or free-trade.

Now say that coffee growers are insanely conservative about estimating future income streams, and value them at a third of what they are actually expected to be. So the standard coffee grower thinks it'll take six years to pay off switching costs, and the FT coffee grower thinks it'll take twelve years. So the standard grower switches, and the FT grower doesn't, and misses out on a good deal.

This requires them to be irrational, but it's a possible sort of irrationality, just an unlikely one.

So here's a question: the argument JBS gives in 114 is ridiculous primarily because it is so sweeping. However, I'm sure you can find some people who pretty much fit either description. So, if a person is doing something like buying FT coffee primarily because of how that affects their life in a localized way, do you think it is more likely as a way of feeling good about it (and in JBS's scenario, lording that over others) or to avoid feeling bad about not doing it?

116 said:

"do you actually mean to make a sweeping statement that no one buys Fairtrade goods out of genuine concern for the welfare of the producers? "

I didn't believe I was making such a statement. Such a genuine concern sounds like a moral concern to me. So such buyers are buying Fairtrade goods (even though they cost more) because they think this is morally superior to buying other goods. Hence moral superiority points.

"I'm just trying to figure out if you're baiting us for fun, in which case you're really very good at it, or if you're setting a new record for interpersonal tonedeafness."

Well interpersonal relations are not one of my strengths but I think there is a bit of a culture clash as well. I am use to posting in forums which seem a bit less touchy (or perhaps just more in agreement with my general worldview). Also there is a general internet incentive towards posting in provocative terms (since most posters would rather be reviled than ignored) to which I will not claim to be immune.

This particular issue (arguments about some specific point A which are really about some moral issue X) is a bit of a sore point with me because I repeatedly see people taking positions on A which are predictable from their position on X without acknowledging (or even cases even seeming to be aware) of the obvious (at least to me) linkage.

93--
LB says "I suspect I was intemperate."

of for fuck's sake, LB, you were far too temperate, the voice of sweet reason and I wish you'd *cut it out*. You were being *far* too nice to those jerks over there, and wasting your afternoon in the course of it.

You need to take the bob mcmanus refresher course in never cutting anybody slack.

138: You do realize though it is entirely unrealistic to attempt to characterize something as complicated as a decision to buy FT in as simple a package as you presented, right?

138--

"So such buyers are buying Fairtrade goods (even though they cost more) because they think this is morally superior to buying other goods. Hence moral superiority points."

Sorry, there's no 'hence' about it.

You go from "S did A because he believed A was the morally superior action" to "S did A for moral superiority points" or "because they feel it gives them moral superiority points" as in your original claim.

This amounts to claiming that there is no such thing as acting morally in good faith; it's all self-regarding narcissism. All of it--Mother Theresa, Nelson Mandela, Abraham Lincoln, anyone you care to name.

If I thought you really believed it, I'd say you were a cynical adolescent jerk.

Instead, I think something different happened--you took a cheap shot at liberals in your original claim, then made up a rationale in 138, and it's not one whose consequences you really believe or can really live with.

You are trolling. Cut it out.

138: No worries, but 'moral superiority points' is a peculiar way to say 'genuine moral concern' -- it sounds much more like 'pure snobbishness', which is a strong claim to make, and an irritating one. Eh, I was being rude about your perceived rudeness, and there's no reason you should treat that particularly respectfully.

I will say that that this isn't a terribly touchy place for people who disagree about stuff -- arguments may get heated, but they're enjoyed. It gets much more touchy with people coming off as intentionally unfriendly or unpleasant. So to the extent this:

Also there is a general internet incentive towards posting in provocative terms (since most posters would rather be reviled than ignored) to which I will not claim to be immune.

is a significant motivation behind your prickly posting style, I think you might enjoy commenting here more if you ratcheted it back a notch. But do what you like -- I am certainly not a dictator around here.

123 How about this? The Fairtrade program makes a lot of people feel guilty about buying regular coffee reducing demand but some of these people are not willing (or able) to pay the additional price for Fairtrade coffee to replace all the regular coffee they are no longer consuming. So even if all Fairtrade coffee production is taken from regular coffee production there will now be an over supply of regular coffee leading to regular coffee price decreases. Given appropriate assumptions this could hurt growers overall.

But that assumes that there's a market for FT coffee at the price of regular coffee. And as we've established (or at least surmised), most of the premium for FT coffee is price discrimination rather than necessitated by any additional cost of production. So wouldn't you expect that retailers would tap into the cheapskate FT-desiring market by selling more FT at a lower price point?

So such buyers are buying Fairtrade goods (even though they cost more) because they think this is morally superior to buying other goods.

It's not just a moral concern, though, so even if "moral superiority points"="genuine moral concern", JBS is still wrong. I think many, if not most consumers, particularly those that are likely to buy FT coffee and other similar goods are aware of the fact that their actions, in the aggregate, have an effect on markets. It's the same reason we vote: everyone knows that their vote doesn't matter a whit, but that aggregated votes make a difference. So from the principle of aggregation, people vote, people buy FT coffee, people obey traffic signals even when it would be safe not to.

60: Totally OT on the FT coffee ('cause I never touch the stuff), The Dispossessed irritated me when I first read it because I thought it was, in fact, promoting an anti-anarchist analysis of how an anarchist society might look. After having read We however, I think there's something to be said for trying to theorize a revolutionary politics that doesn't wind up degenerating into some sort of fascism in the name of "permanent revolution". Leaving aside the question of magical free energy sources (represented in The Dispossessed by the surprisingly hemp-like miracle crop that the whole economy seems to be based on), it seems to me that Le Guin does a fairly decent job of outlining exactly what would be so bad about a truly communist economy. Of course, I suppose that Randroids and schmibertarians are horrified to read that Shevek can't get his magnum opus published, but if that's the price one person pays for a basically just society in which everyone's needs are provided for, that sounds okay to me.

I'll always be suspicious of statist solutions to these questions. It's like they said in that movie that was about a fictionalized Baader-Meinhof group: "Red cops are still cops."

Meanwhile, back in Oaxaca...

JBS, LB has a good point. It may just bet that you articulated your thoughts poorly in 114, and you actually had something more nuanced in mind than that one reads.

I think most people here are quite willing to believe that you are brighter than you appear in posts like that one --- which has the effect (given history, of, oh, all the interwebs) of forcing people to wonder if you are just trolling.

141

"This amounts to claiming that there is no such thing as acting morally in good faith; it's all self-regarding narcissism. All of it--Mother Theresa, Nelson Mandela, Abraham Lincoln, anyone you care to name."

No it doesn't, if I say I say I did something because it gives me pennypinching points I am not saying I don't actually care about the money saved and just want to appear like a tightwad.

"Instead, I think something different happened--you took a cheap shot at liberals in your original claim, then made up a rationale in 138, and it's not one whose consequences you really believe or can really live with."

I had the meaning in 138 in mind when I made the original post, it is not something I made up after the fact. I meant to include both the desire to do the moral thing and the desire to appear to be doing the moral thing.

136- LB, I think your example is mathematically impossible. If sc=switching costs, m=the price of this other super good (I didn't understand what m.l.c. was meant to abbreviate, but no matter), FT=the price of free trade coffee, and c=the price of regular coffee, you example is that sc=2(m-c) (switching costs from regular can be recuperated in two years), and sc=4(m-ft) (switching costs from ft can be recuperated in four years). This means 2(m-c)=4(m-ft), so 2m-2c=4m-4ft, so m=2ft-c. But in your example m/3>ft>c (even at 1/3 of actual prices for m, there was still a benefit to switching -- it would just take longer to recoup costs). But since m=2ft-c, this gives (2ft-c)/3>ft>c, or (2/3)ft-(c/3)>ft>c. There is no way for (2/3)ft-(c/3) to be greater than ft, obviously, unless we're considering negative prices.

Other than the mathematical impossibility, which is not exactly a minor flaw, it's very weird that the farmers would be hyperconservative in estimating future cash flows from other crops, but not their own. On what basis are their estimates being formed? Presumably current or futures market prices in either case. Not to mention that the blanket idea that a good change is "any change that pays for itself in less than 10 years", taking into account no other factors makes no sense. On what basis would this be true?

I'm not actually arguing for this position, just saying that it's conceivable. Irrational, but possibly irrational.

But say there's political unrest such that landowners don't expect to be able to retain ownership of their land for more than ten years -- any investment has to pay for itself in ten years or risk being wasted. That gets you to the "Switch if it pays off in ten years or less, not otherwise" assumption.

And I was inexact with my claim about how farmers might regard future cash flows. Say they're conservative in a way that makes them value net future cash flows resulting from change at 1/3 of their actual expected value -- that is, they would mistakenly expect m-c or m-ft to be 1/3(m-c) or 1/3(m-ft). Undervaluing the difference, rather than the total future income. It'd be weird as hell as a way to think, but I don't think it's literally impossible.

Or, to be snide, I wasn't inexact, you misinterpreted me. I think when I said that the farmers would wrongly expect to pay off the switching costs in 6 years rather than 2 for standard coffee, and 12 years rather than 4 for FT coffee, that should have made it clear that I was talking about a third of the difference, not a third of the total future income.

149: these aren't value neutral terms, James. If I say you are being pennypinching does it really convey the same information as if I say you are being fiscally responsible?

What Tyler Cowen thinks abotu free trade coffee. Guardedly pro!

144 I am not claiming it is likely this scenario would hurt growers overall, just that it could if you assume certain values for the parameters involved and that the possibility of that the parameters actually assume those values cannot be excluded on theoretical grounds alone. The basic idea of the scenario is that the Fairtrade program decreases the perceived value of regular coffee more than it increases the perceived value of Fairtrade coffee thus hurting growers overall. This is certainly possible and does not even seem all that unlikely to me.

Another scenario depends on the fact that the person buying the coffee is not always the person consuming it. So the teenagers may want Fairtrade coffee, the parents may think this is a bunch of nonsense and refuse to buy it and the teenagers may stop drinking coffee, again hurting growers.

As before I am not saying this is likely, just that any complicated system like a modern economy can react in unexpected ways which are difficult to rule out on theoretical grounds alone.

Fair enough.

145 I don't understand your point. If people are buying Fairtrade goods because they think this will in aggregate help poor growers this is still a moral concern.

Some notes from my cousin's coffee company. The stuff on the tea side looks pretty good, too. Not that I'm plugging, or anything . . .

148 Or perhaps I got off on the wrong foot with some of you in the math is hard thread and so get less slack than for example ogged got for his "good kind of affirmative action" comment.

159: I doubt it's anything that specific, but yes you may have got off on the wrong foot. People can only go on their limited interactions with you here, and that may well leave them uncertain of your motives. The same isnt' true of ogged. This is a pretty natural thing though, no?

Besides, make fools of themselves here all the time (at least I do). So you're not special that way, and while people will call you on it if you say something silly I don't think anyone here holds grudges or keeps score that way.

153 The underlying meaning is basically the same although there is a connotation of approval in one case and disapproval in the other case. This is the conjugating irregular verbs game.

161: .... and so by choosing connotation, you change your statement about the subject. You also make it difficult for someone to accept your statement without accepting the implicit judgement. This is why, if you are not trying to present that judgement as truth, you should avoid value laden terms.

Which is *part* of what you did in 114 that people reacted to. It was also far too sweeping to be correct.

160 is true. I say almost exclusively dumb shit. Once in a while something sticks.

162 It appears the value loading was greater than I would have anticipated. Note I was mostly presenting the thinking of the Fairtrade opponents and hence depicting their view of the Fairtrade movement. Fairtrade advocates may not be intending to convey feelings of moral superiority but that is the way they come across to many people.

164: "many people" probably s/b "me and some people I've talked to"

these sorts of generalizations usually have limited utility.

146 - The thing that's stuck with me most about that book is the old woman acting on her forbidden (and from her and Shevek's point of view, perverse) desire for Shevek and Takver's apartment. "If men were angels, no government would be necessary" is not a symmetric statement.

... you should avoid value laden terms

Uh, is this really possible? Aren't almost all terms oozing infected blessed whatever with some level of value?

And where's the person who likes mentioning the intentional fallacy - isn't this implicated? That is, just because a term has little or no value connotation for me doesn't mean it isn't heavily laden for someone in my audience.

165 This is the whole red state, blue state thing. You don't think there is a widespread red state belief that blue state liberals think they are better than other people and things like the Fairtrade movement play into it?

I may be tone deaf about some things but some of the rest of you really do appear to be living in a liberal cocoon.

167: I should probably have added `as much as possible'. Of course perfectly neutral language is impossible. There's a vast difference between choosing loaded terminology (such as the post in question, which pretty much asserted all people buying FT were doing so for base reasons) and trying to avoid judgemental or loaded language.

168: My point was different -- assuming your experience is normative is usually flawed. Even if you aren't just extrapolating from your own experience, these sorts of sweeping generalizations are very often deeply flawed. You have to be extremely careful and put a lot of work into to even have a hope of accuracy.

That aside; even if it is correct that a lot of people feel that this is the case (wrt FT) , that doesn't make it true. It may not even be good evidence that it is true (situational, of course). Your original statement were made as if it were simply true. It isn't.

And even if they are doing it for base reasons, who gives a shit?

Didn't some guy once say "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest"?

Fair trade coffee isn't something that pisses off red staters; it is something that pisses off a subset of libertarians. There is a lot of church based distrubtion and advocacy of fair trade coffee.

http://www.acton.org/ppolicy/comment/article.php?id=178

... the post in question, which pretty much asserted all people buying FT were doing so for base reasons ...

The post in question is 114, right? If not, well, never mind.

Perhaps it's my tin ear, or my unfamiliarity with the subtleties of the language, but that's not how I read it.

I took the phrase "moral superiority points" to mean that people bought ftc coffee because they thought the moral aspects tipped the decision. I took it as implicating a certain universe of discourse in which market decisions are assumed to reflect an allocation of points - an item gets certain points for utility, and design, and status marking, and price, and moral attributes, and depending on the results of this calculus one makes a purchase/not decision. Different people assign different point amounts to different attributes.

This analytical universe is certainly open to criticism, but I don't see that it necessarily implies any insincerity, or does more than allow the possibility that different people will weigh moral questions differently. Is that controversial?

173: the moral superiority points in 114 don't accrue to the item, but rather to the purchaser. He didn't say "people buy fairtrade coffee because it has moral superiority points."

I think he's a phenomenally good troll, although perhaps he's just well-suited to trolling Unfogged. Not that half of the regulars don't troll Unfogged, mind you.

To follow from joeo's comment, which made me think if agricultural subsidies (red-state-->rural farmers)*; isn't the fair-trade markup in some ways similar to an subsidy? Except, the market is providing the subsidy, based on value to the consumer, rather than a government supporting a commodity price.

*(my extended family has a couple of farming/ranching operations)

Or maybe this is just the grappa talking.

if s/b of

The grappa is doing some talking, clearly.

James, this is ridiculous.

You don't think there is a widespread red state belief that blue state liberals think they are better than other people

Everybody thinks they are better than other people. The Bible thumpers smugly condemning everybody else to Hell think they're better people. The libertarians clearly think they're smarter than everybody else. The right-wingers snorting at liberal traitors and dirty hippies obviously aren't doing it out of a highly developed notion of equality. And lord knows the red staters view themselves as morally superior to the coastal heathens.

If you really think that people who buy FT coffee are doing it to impress other people, then I don't know what planet you live on. Can I cash in my moral superiority points for fabulous prizes?

... the moral superiority points in 114 don't accrue to the item, but rather to the purchaser

True, but I must admit I don't see the import. That strikes me as customary shorthand.

We could say 'people buy a Patek because it gives them status superiority points' in the same way - the status is a benefit conferred on the purchaser by the purchase. Just as the (putative) moral superiority is conferred on the purchaser of ft items.

I should also concede that there are undoubtedly people who buy ft coffee for other reasons - they particularly like the taste of this brand, or their sister sells it, or it's the only variety sold at the place they go to to meet women, whatever. So yeah, I'm generalizing from scant data. And I'm sure that some people buy Pateks because they can't find a convenient place to buy a Timex.

178: Problem is, there doesn't seem to be any reason to believe any significant number of people buy FT for the reasons stated --- so to start off with an assertion that this is why all people (or even the majority) do so is risible.

... there doesn't seem to be any reason to believe any significant number of people buy FT for the reasons stated ...

I'm sorry, I'm having another stupid night. I don't follow. It's probably time to heed the plaintive calls of my lonely pillow.

By 'the reasons stated' do you mean 'because they have a sincere desire to help impoverished third world coffee growers, believing it's the morally superior thing to do'? My reason for believing that this is a not-unusual reason for buying is the advertising. When I see ads saying 'buy this and help impoverished 3d world producers' I tend to think 'oh, helping impoverished 3d world producers is the reason to buy that product'.

So the teenagers may want Fairtrade coffee, the parents may think this is a bunch of nonsense and refuse to buy it and the teenagers may stop drinking coffee, again hurting growers.

Teenagers shouldn't be drinking coffee anyway. It stunts their growth.

180: The imputation of point-scoring suggests spiritual vanity rather than actual concern.

There was once a hog theater where hogs performed as men, had men been hogs.

One hog said, I will be a hog in a field which has found a mouse which is being eaten by the same hog which is in the field and which has found the mouse, which I am performing as my contribution to the performer's art. Oh let's just be hogs, cried an old hog. And so the hogs streamed out of the theater crying, only hogs, only hogs . . .

Can I cash in my moral superiority points for fabulous prizes?

Only for NPR Ass. Fabulousity of prize may vary.

I also think y'all are a bit hasty to rag on The Economist's assesment of fairtrade. It seems to make sense to me from a pretty low-level econ standpoint and my limited knowledge of how fairtrade works. Price supports of any sort will be difficult to maintain, either causing overproduction within the cartel of high-price producers or requiring strict policing, while those outside the cartel will get screwed over as they compete fiercely for the remaining market. Fairtrade may be small enough that the distortions are minimal right now, but it's still a price support and thus will almost certainly lead to some sort of economic drawback/deadweight loss (even if people believe that to be made up by the small gains for those lucky enough to be chosen as fairtrade producers).

Oops, that first line was supposed to be italicized, and the paragraph was supposed to be well-written. Bah, it's 2 am and I have work in the morning.

183- JAC, your analysis would be spot-on if FT and regular coffee were indistinguishable to the consumer. Then it would basically be a simple commodity price support, benefiting a limited group of growers at the expense of the remainder. As is, there are really two separate goods in the marketplace, so the analysis doesn't make any sense.

As for 151/152, you weren't unclear, and unfortunately I didn't misinterpret you. I just did an embarassingly bad job of transforming the example into equations, without stopping even to consider whether what I was doing/saying made sense. In my (limited) defense I was working on something else at the time, and was tired. And mostly I just didn't worry much with whether or not it was actually correct since I assumed that being female you'd see all those equations and become totally flummoxed and agree with whatever I said. I should have remembered that you're basically a man with breasts, given all the stories you've told about speaking up in your law school classes and such.

Regardless, I retract that claim of mathematical impossibility (a claim that in the light of day seems completely absurd). But I still don't think you answered either of my central criticisms of this theory: there isn't a set of consistent behavorial (or other) assumptions you could model that would generate this example (either to build the model from axioms or to use the model for predictions), and I still don't know what data you could possibly see that would convince you that this scenario you've described was actually occurring. If you can think of some, please let me know. (Again, something more plausible than that the beans could hatch into dragons.) It's simply not an economic explanation, as most economists would understand that term.

This probably isn't worth arguing about, given that you don't actually buy into this but are just playing devil's advocate. And while I don't accept your example, I'll even admit that it was an overstatement to say that there's no possible model under which FT coffee could make regualr coffee farmers worse. (Did I even say that? I don't think I did - I just challanged Shearer to come up with one. And he actually did -- the teenager example in 155 works.) But we have to reach into outer space to find them.

185: I think you are wrong that "there isn't a set of consistent behavorial (or other) assumptions you could model that would generate this example." LB is simply positing that the growers make decisions on the basis of high discount rates.

As BPhD noted, one still needs to be paternalistic to assume that the "correct" decision would use a lower discount rate--if the growers really do place high value on present consumption relative to future consumption (and if they are unable to borrow against future earnings to finance the switch to the non-coffee crop), there's not much basis for saying that they "should" switch.

Back on the topic of Michael Crichton. Did you know he can bend spoons with his mind? Unlike global warming, M.C. knows telekinesis is for real. And open-minded conservatives are inclined to hear him out.

I suppose I should translate the jargon in 186: "high discount rates" = "won't give up $1 today for less than $5 next year". If the farmers can borrow at a 10% interest rate, they "should" make any investment (such as switching crops) that pays off more than $1.10 next year per dollar invested today. But if they can't borrow, and if they prefer $1 today to $4 next year, it would be perfectly rational for them not to switch. FT coffee doesn't make them worse off.

The Economist article is why I became an economist. Too many people run around spouting right wing policy prescriptions on the basis of a misunderstanding of econ 101; the hope was that the PhD means they will have to listen when I point this out to them.

No, high discount rates (valueing present consumption over future consumption) would imply that all future cash flows were worth proportionately less in present dollars, including cash flows from growing coffee. In LB's example the future cash flows from coffee are appropriately weighted but the future cash flows from m.l.c. are discounted more severely. Her example is closer to saying they underestimate the future cash flows from m.l.c. than that they apply a high-discount. And this in itself isn't even implausible: agricultural futures have conservative, market, and agressive predictions for future prices. It is possible that coffee growers would be comfortable with the market predictions in coffee since they are familiar with the industry, but would (as a matter of risk-aversion) be uncomfortable basing their plans on anything but the conversative estimates for m.l.c., since they have less intimate knowledge of that crop. This doesn't seem outrageously far-fetched. But that still doesn't realy make the example work as a model. And now we're really digging way too deep into a hypothetical that no one is actually trying to defend.

JAC, your analysis would be spot-on if FT and regular coffee were indistinguishable to the consumer. Then it would basically be a simple commodity price support, benefiting a limited group of growers at the expense of the remainder. As is, there are really two separate goods in the marketplace, so the analysis doesn't make any sense.

Precisely.

And mostly I just didn't worry much with whether or not it was actually correct since I assumed that being female you'd see all those equations and become totally flummoxed and agree with whatever I said. I should have remembered that you're basically a man with breasts, given all the stories you've told about speaking up in your law school classes and such.

No fair making me laugh loud enough that the secretaries outside my office are giving me funny looks.

Oh, 188 to 186. 188 is totally different -- as you say, FT coffee doesn't make them worse off.

185, 190: This is precisely the reason there are legal challenges to `organic' labelling in some places, correct?

191 should say 189 to 186.

192: I think it's more the not wanting to lose money to organic producers rather than anything terribly principled.

193 should say "Brock Landers."

192: Well clearly they don't want to lose money. But I think the feeling is that if the organic producers are not able to differentiate their product, they are done for.

And hi, 347 -- more sane economists are always a good thing.

<curmudgeon>But pick a goddamn actual pseudonym if you comment again, wouldja?</curmudgeon>

196 wuz me

Oh, I read you backwards, as to challenges that 'organic labelling is unfair because makes people think my non-organic product is unhealthy'

196: Yeah, exactly. Organic food is viable only if the consumer can reliably identify it without too much effort.

189: I don't think that's right.

Suppose we have a 2 period model. Coffee pays $1 in each period in profits. FT coffee pays $2. Bananas pay nothing in the first period (you have to spend it all growing the trees) and $5 in the second period.

Assume that all of these are in real $, the social real discount rate is 0, and the farmers therefore have access to zero-real-interest loans. So the farmers should switch to bananas.

Now suppose that the farmers can't take out loans. They value money in the second period 1/2 as much as they value money in the first period. So without FT coffee, they switch (0.5*5 > 1 + 0.5*1). But if we make FT coffee available, they grow that (2 + 0.5*2 > 0.5*5).

Brock, do you agree with this? Or do you think this is not capturing something important about LBs example? It doesn't capture her "pays for itself in 10 years" exactly, but I think I didn't lose anything by doing this in 2 periods, and it avoids having to figure out how to write a capital sigma in this comment box....

197: Sorry--I thought the consensus a few days ago was that numerical handles were OK. Henceforth, "one armed jester."

Works for me, and you get a Σ like this: '&Sigma;'. No sweat.

No apologies necessary, I'm just working on some lovable eccentricities here. (The number was fine, it was the illogic of calling yourself a lurker at the point at which you had stopped lurking.) But there's no need to actually take me seriously.

197: You are a freak. You know that, right?

201 makes sense as far as it goes, but then how are they made worse off by the FT coffee? Assuming their utility can be expressed in their first-period-dollar valuations, without FT, their total utility is 2.5. With FT, it's 3. So FT makes them better off.

Maybe I was reading something into LB's example that wasn't there. I thought she was saying in this example that the option for FT coffee might lower the utility/welfare of the growers. I understand the point of your example to be that reallocation would be socially optimal, so in a paternalistic sense we can say they're making the "wrong" choice by discounting at a higher-than-market-rate. But if you can't obtain loans that's not necessarily irrational (or "wrong" even in a paternalistic sense) -- it may in fact be the best and most rational course of action. (As it is in the example you provided).

206: The assumption you need to make is that coffee growers' beliefs about their own utility functions are wrong -- that if you compel a FT coffee grower to switch to bananas, he'll thank you five years down the road when the bananas are producing, but he wouldn't voluntarily make the change on his own. Given that we can't practically compel him, better to take away his option to grow FT coffee so that he won't make a bad decision.

This is an obnoxious and paternalistic assumption. But it's not literally impossible: people assume things like that with respect to children all the time ("You'll thank me for it later.")

206: I think this is what LB was saying. If we are willing to judge that they are better off with an income stream of (0, 5) than with either (1, 1) or (2, 2), then the introduction of FT makes them worse off. But we have to be willing to assume that the growers are mis-optimizing, making choices that lower their utility. I'm not opposed to such assumptions at times, but here it seems completely unjustified.

I brought in the idea of loans to try to forestall one possible objection to this conclusion, that with credit markets rational growers should use the market interest rate in the calculation rather than their own discount rate. So one could get to the conclusion that the growers would be better off switching if there are well-functioning credit markets. But in this case the introduction of FT doesn't hurt them, as they'll switch regardless.

In short, what you said in 206.

205: To you, this is news?

So the farmers think they have a high intertemporal discount rate, but in fact they do not? That's a toughie, on a few different levels. But I'm out of energy for this. Sorry. At least we all agree the Economist article was stupid!

209: You'd hardly be fit to charm us lot if you weren't.

I'm not arguing for the Economist's position, but here's a model in which FT coffee _does_ hurt low-skill workers in coffee growing countries:

Suppose that FT coffee means that no worker involved in the production is paid less than some minimum wage rate. Plantation owners who hope to sell to the FT market might respond to this by replacing their low-skill workers with (a smaller number of) higher-skill workers whose market wage is above the FT minimum. This will reduce the market wage for low skill workers and increase it for high skill workers.

Do I believe this model for a second? No. Is there any evidence that would support it? No. Do I think it is what the Economist had in mind? No. But it could produce the result they are hoping for.

I guess I picked the wrong handle.

210: Not to keep piling on, but isn't this the essence of utilitarian paternalism? People make decisions that do not in fact maximize their utility?

185, 190: Ok, I really want to hash this out, so here's my thinking:

First, I'm making a couple major assumptions about the market.

1) Before Fairtrade coffee, people drank coffee if and only if they thought it to be tasty. Since the unfortunate effects of coffee overproduction were not mentioned anywhere, people did not avoid coffee for ethical reasons any more than they currently avoid coconuts due to the harsh conditions on tropical plantations. This implies that the introduction of Fairtrade coffee will have a negligable effect on total demand for coffee (both open market and Fairtrade).

2) Although the Fairtrade market is limited to only the production of certain farms who are supplying to Fairtrade groups, their physical product is otherwise indistinguishable from non-Fairtrade coffee and thus could be sold on the open coffee market.

So when Fairtrade coffee is introduced, one of two things happens: new farms are started to produce Fairtrade coffe, thus increasing total coffee supply, or some portion of the current coffee producers are designated as Fairtrade producers and paid an artificially high price, thus encouraging extra supply from those producers or requiring strict limits on production. Any Fairtrade coffee bought from the farmers that cannot be sold by the wholesalers at Fairtrade prices can be sold on the open market instead, so at least some money is made on it. Thus total coffee supply will at least remain steady, but almost certainly will rise to some extent due to new Fairtrade producers or higher production by those chosen as Fairtrade and the ability to sell Fairtrade coffee as the regular stuff if there's excess supply.

At the same time, new information about farmers' plights will cause substitution to Fairtrade coffee among coffee consumers, not new demand (since, before the Fairtrade word got out, people drank coffee if they thought it tasty enough to pay market prices). Since consumers will now be paying a higher average cost, they will buy less total coffee. Now, this will be a much smaller effect than just raising the market price for coffee by the Fairtrade premium because of the price discrimination, but any budgetary restraints on anyone buying Fairtrade coffee will result in some reduction of total coffee demand.

Higher supply + lower demand means the open market producers are getting somewhat screwed by Fairtrade, even though the effects may be tiny. Now, it's going to be really tough to pull this out of the data because there have been big secular trends toward higher coffee production (World Bank's been pushing it as a cash crop for years) and higher coffee consumption (Starbucks! Starbucks! Starbucks!). But if there's a major fault with my story, please let me know.

213: I misread that as 'libertarian paternalism' and was imagining a system where when you failed to be a perfectly rational economic actor, the state gave you a good talking to.

The assumption that total coffee production goes up seems weak -- that is, if you assume that production of FT coffee goes up because of the higher demand for it, it seems strange to assume that the amount of standard coffee produced will stay constant and the price of standard coffee will go down, rather than assuming that the amount of standard coffee produced will go down, until standard coffee producers get the same price they were satisfied with before the introduction of FT coffee.

215 -- Cass Sunstein is way ahead of you (PDF).

(Except from my brief scan of that article it seems to be corporations giving their employees the good talkings to. I suppose corporations are more acceptable to propertarians as father-figures than are governments.)

216: Long term, that is the case. I was just talking about short-term screwage.

Of course, since agricultural commodities have really volatile prices and the Fairtrade farmers are getting a guaranteed price for their crops, you are shifting essentially all of the price risk for any year's crop onto the non-Fairtrade farmers (because accidental overproduction by Fairtrade farmers will also be shoved onto the open market depressing the prices for everyone else).

What I think coffee farmers could really use (and many other small single-crop farmers) would be a price-smoothing mechanism. If a single agency without a price motive controlled the coffee purchases and had enough liquidity, they could purchase coffee from farmers at the volume-weighted average market price for the last 2-5 years (appropriately discounted to the present day) while selling at market prices. This agency would absorb a lot of the one-off price risk while smoothing out the market prices and giving a much clearer signal to farmers. Of course, this could only happen in the magical land where leprechauns riding unicorns staff the agency.

Given that prices for agricultural commodities are, as you say, already really volatile, it seems screwy to me to worry about the additional short-term volatility that might possibly be introduced into the coffee market by increased demand for FT rather than regular coffee, unless you're going to worry equally about every other change in consumer demand for coffee. Volatility can certainly cause hardship, but in the absence of the sort of central planning you're talking (utopianly, of course) about, I don't get why it's an argument against FT coffee rather than against markets generally.

219: "What I think coffee farmers could really use (and many other small single-crop farmers) would be a price-smoothing mechanism."

This is called a futures market. See, e.g.,
http://futures.tradingcharts.com/marketquotes/index.php3?market=KC

It doesn't smooth the price. But it allows growers to hedge against unexpected price changes. Of course, I doubt many campesinos are participating in these markets.

Gah, I can't believe I'm back in this thread, but I'd just add to LB's thoughts that your idea that excess FT coffee will just be dumped undifferentiated on the open coffee market is screwy. Demand for FT coffee is high, creating signficant premiums at the retail level. Much higher than the premiums recieved by the farmers, as was mentioned upthread. So any excess supply would simply drive down the retail price of FT coffee, not be dumped on the regular coffee market to push those prices down. Again, despite all just being coffee beans, they're really two different products. Your scenario would only apply if the market premium were equal to the premium received by the FT farmers (they got it all), and that this was the minimum price they'd recieve under the programs guidelines. Then, any excess they produced would end up on the open market. But that's not the case.

222: Oh, yeah, thanks. I know that they're two separate products, but there's still a one-way perfect substitution on the supply side. I just completely blanked on the very high retail markup implying all the supply was being bought up in the Fairtrade market. That leaves only demand reduction as a current effect, and that will be a minor one due to the price discrimination taking most of the blow. Do you know offhand if the wholesalers who buy Fairtrade coffee direct from the farmers are also getting premium prices above what they pay the farmers, or is the huge premium only due to collusion and/or imperfect information at the retail level?

221: Yeah, but the futures market isn't exactly handy for small independent farmers in Indonesia. That's why I specified small one-crop farmers, since they won't have diversification to minimize risk or the ability to hedge on the futures market like most large agricultural producers. The mystical central agency of 219 almost certainly would use futures to sell a decent portion of the coffee as a hedge.

220: Ok, here's what I mean about the risk being shifted to open-market farmers.

Say there's a bumper crop for coffee one year, everyone is producing craploads of the stuff so the market price will be very depressed. Also, assume the market for Fairtrade coffee was in equalibrium so supply was approximately on par with demand at the higher price level (this isn't the case yet for the reasons Brock mentioned in 222).

There are two basic scenarios I can see, depending on the arrangement between Fairtrade wholesalers and their farmers:

1) Fairtrade wholesalers have to buy the whole year's crop from their farmers. The Fairtrade farmers have absolutely no pain from the coffee glut since they get the guaranteed price floor that they're currently being paid. The retailers will only buy the equilibrium amount of Fairtrade coffee, so the wholesalers get soaked and sell the rest of the crop on the open market, depressing prices even further than the bumper crop from the non-Fairtrade farmers. The price volatility from global overproduction falls entirely upon the shoulders of the non-Fairtrade coffee producers, thus being a harder hit for each of them than it would have been if there was no Fairtrade and every farmer shared equally in the pain.

2) Pretty much the same situation, except that the Fairtrade wholesalers are not obliged to purchase the extra production they can't sell on to retailers. The Fairtrade farmers dump their excess production onto the open market, again depressing prices even more for every other farmer. The Fairtrade farmers share in the pain but only on their excess production, whereas the regular farmers are getting lower prices on their entire crop.

Sorry if this is far too tiresome, but I really like the sound of my own typing economic analysis. Plus, I am being taught at the Chicago school and have the sort of love for The Economist typically reserved for particularly cute puppies, so I could be an especially huge pain in the ass on this.

I sincerely meant that thanks for 222, Brock.

Also, assume the market for Fairtrade coffee was in equalibrium so supply was approximately on par with demand at the higher price level (this isn't the case yet for the reasons Brock mentioned in 222).

I'm not sure you understood 222, so let me try again to clarify -- the market is in equilibrium, supply is currently on par with demand at the current uber-high prices. If there was an increased supply of fair trade coffee, it would lower the equilibrium price of fair trade coffee. It wouldn't make sense to just dump the fair trade beans on the open market because even a lower premium would still be a signficant premium. Again, your analysis turns on an inability to lower the FT price because of some imagined "price floor". But there would only be a price floor if the mark-up on the coffee were equal to the markup guaranteed to the farmers, so prices couldn't be cut further (without abandoning the program). As it is, there is plenty of room to cut FT prices, which is how any surpluses (or shortages) in FT beans would be resolved.

In case you are wondering the tone in 226 is just rushed, not nasty or mean or irritated. Sorry if it came across that way.

224, 226: Sure, but JAC's argument could still work out in some imagined future where oversupply of FT coffee had reduced the price to the point where the retail markup was equal to the markup guaranteed to the farmers. From that point, it works okay.

But even granting that:

JAC, the fundamental problem with this argument is the context it's presented in: as an argument that FT coffee is or is likely to be counterproductive, if your goals are to increase the welfare of people working in coffee growing. It's not a successful argument in that regard. All that it is is an argument that it is possible to conceive of circumstances under which the existence of FT might have some negative effect on some coffee growers (that it, that it might be a cause of increased volatility in an already highly volatile market. Note that your argument applies equally to the existence of any sort of premium coffee -- there's nothing FT specific about it).

There's nothing wrong with making arguments like this if you're doing finger exercises -- no reason not to work things through. But in the context of advocating or disapproving of a real world policy position, an argument that proves that some ill effect is possible is generally a useless one; you want to look at empirical data and see what outcomes are likely, and at what magnitude.

What the Economist looked to be doing in that article is coming up with any possible argument showing FT coffee to be harmful, and expecting it to be treated as if it was a serious argument. And further switching assumptions wildly from argument to argument -- first FT is bad because it raises prices, reducing the incentive for farmers to switch to something more productive (???), then FT is bad because there are conceivable circumstances under which it might lower prices for the farmers who don't participate. Um, isn't that giving them a healthy incentive to go switch to something more productive?

Just because it may be possible to rescue some fragments of the economic argument as not entirely nonsensical doesn't make the implicit policy argument a sane one.

Following up on 226, I think JAC is understanding the arrangement for fair trade differently than I am. JAC, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you see the Fair trade arrangement as specifying a price that is paid to the farm owner for coffee. I understand it differently: It specifies certain aspects of the production process, including the wages paid to the workers. Some buyers will purchase only from farms that produce according to the specifications, but they pay whatever the market rate for these beans is. If all farms produce too much coffee one year, I'd expect both FT and non-FT bean prices to fall, and I don't see why the non-FT farmers would bear a disproportionate share of this. There's no dumping from one market to another; the ability of FT farmers to sell to the non-FT market just means that the FT price can't fall below the non-FT price.

I suppose one could assume a utility function for coffee consumers, such that a decline in the price of both FT and non-FT coffee causes them to buy more FT and less non-FT coffee. Then a positive shock to the production of FT coffee might cause the relative price of non-FT coffee to fall. But coffee is a small share of anyone's consumption, so its hard to see how this effect could be large.

I'm pretty sure JAC has it right, there -- the FT middlemen pay market for FT coffee, but only down to a price floor.

Here's a link:

Fair Trade guarantees to poor farmers organized in cooperatives around the world: a living wage (minimum price of $1.26/pound regardless of the volatile market); much needed credit at fair prices; and long term relationships.

I see--I misunderstood the program. So ignore 229. My apologies.

I haven't really been following this debate, so it may be inappropriate for me to interject this comment, but, oh well.

A guy from my high school, I recently learned, is a FT middleman of sorts. He works in one of the few companies that provide FT certification to particular farms and importers. Apparently, this is still a smallish sector, and a lot of potential business is getting bottlenecked in the certification process. This is a kink that supply and demand will probably work out.

233 may be the answer to 223. Or part of it. I doubt it's collusion.

233 is exactly what I was referring to in 224. The retail prices of Fairtrade coffee have a huge premium, as Brock pointed out, so this is either from undersupply or retailers managing to overcharge. 233 implies that it's mostly an undersupply issue, which isn't too surprising because of the time lags in these sort of programs and the sudden jumps in demand for Fairtrade coffee. If we knew the wholesale prices that Fairtrade coffee is being sold to retailers for, we'd have a better idea since an undersupply issue would imply big fat profits for the wholesalers as well as the retailers.

That's why I said the market was not yet in equilibrium, since there's a profit motive for Fairtrade wholesalers to keep accrediting more farms and keep bringing more producers under the Fairtrade umbrella until the wholesale and retail margins on Fairtrade are brought down to the same levels as regular coffee. Once that happens (and I think it will in time as growth in demand levels off and the farms get enough time to switch to Fairtrade operations), the situation I mentioned in 224 will occur and somewhat screw those outside the Fairtrade.

But you guys are right that these arguments are mostly irrelevant at the moment and that the article was really reaching to discredit Fairtrade. The Economist did a better job when they pointed out some of the alternatives for helping farmers in this article on the spat between Starbucks and the Ethiopian government.

185:

"This probably isn't worth arguing about, given that you don't actually buy into this but are just playing devil's advocate. And while I don't accept your example, I'll even admit that it was an overstatement to say that there's no possible model under which FT coffee could make regualr coffee farmers worse. (Did I even say that? I don't think I did - I just challanged Shearer to come up with one. And he actually did -- the teenager example in 155 works.) But we have to reach into outer space to find them. "

Not that I like picking fights or anything but the other example I gave (in 143) also works. And if you are just talking about coffee growers outside the progam rather than coofee growers overall I think it is quite plausible that the Fairtrade program will make them worse off.

JAC: LR vs. SR equilibrium. You're talking about LR in 235, I was talking about SR in 226 (since your price floor idea would a SR disequilibrium).

228:

"There's nothing wrong with making arguments like this if you're doing finger exercises -- no reason not to work things through. But in the context of advocating or disapproving of a real world policy position, an argument that proves that some ill effect is possible is generally a useless one; you want to look at empirical data and see what outcomes are likely, and at what magnitude."

It is not at all useless if you can bait your opponent into claiming that some bad effect is theoretically impossible when it isn't. You can then hammer away at this point until your opponent looks like a complete idiot.

And once your opponent concedes the point people who don't like the policy position for selfish reasons now have a more palatable reason do oppose it.

237: Yep, we's all good.

238: Funny, and probably sometimes true. And sometimes you get an honest person doing the same thing because they're so used to assuming 'fuzzyheaded liberals hate and fear teh economics,' that they simply don't hear what's being said to them.