EclectEcon

Paper straws? Plastic straws?

I hate the new-styled paper straws that are increasingly becoming the only option in some fast-food restaurants (or cities or states?).

I haven't always hated paper straws, though. I loved the paper straws we had back when I was a teenager. I could pinch one end of the straw, poke holes in it, and play music on it, a la an oboe or some other double-reed woodwind. Actually I was distressed emotionally (0.0003 on a scale of 10.0) when plastic straws began to dominate the straw market. 

 

But over the years, I adjusted. I coped.

 

In 2007, I saw and used some straws at a place in Guelph, and I really liked them, so I called the straw manufacturer (Stone something) to see about buying several boxes of them. They pointed me to a distributor, where I stopped to pick up three boxes. I still have nearly two boxes of them left. 

Meanwhile all of the paper straws I'm seeing on the market nowadays are horrid:

• They fall apart when I try to use them with coffee, and
• They're thick and cannot be squeezed into pretend double-reed musical instruments. 

So now I stock up for the future whenever I'm in a fast food place with plastic straws -- I take one to add to my stash, just in case I outlive my current supply.

 

But TBH I still don't get the aversion to plastic straws. They use very small amounts of plastic (considerably less than is in so many other products, e.g. ready meals at the supermarkets), which can easily be added to landfill sites. And the primary reason plastic straws and other plastic waste finds its way to the oceans has to do with recyclers selling the plastics to companies and places that are less scrupulous about making sure not to pollute the oceans.

 

Actually, I think the aversion to (and the movement to ban) plastic straws is a symbolic gesture by people who love to criticize consumerism and convenience -- modern day stoics, ascetics, Victorians, etc.

Joe Stiglitz, a Bad Economist?

I have met both Joe Stiglitz and Stanley Fischer. I trust and respect Fischer. Stiglitz not so much.

Stiglitz gave the economics profession the theoretical framework called "asymmetric information", according to which sellers often have much better information about their products and therefore are in a position to take advantage of less-well-informed buyers. His solution? Gubmnt intervention.

The George Stigler (not Joe Stiglitz!) solution? Reputation matters, and people will learn who to trust and who not to trust. Joe Stiglitz criticizes that approach, arguing markets would do better with proper gubmnt intervention.

Stiglitz seems to believe that if only he and his ilk could make all the economic policy decisions, there would be no problems. And yet he has been so wrong so often, it's hard to understand why people pay attention to him anymore.

This is the point made very well in "Continually Mistaken, Chronically Admired: ... a study in elite myopia," an article published last fall but that I just ran across (h/t Bill Evers).

The article documents how Stiglitz:

• praised Venezuelan socialism
• praised Ethiopian demogoguery
• opposed the Trans-Pacific trade pact
• completely missed the Asian financial crisis
• opposed raising the minimum wage and then favoured it with arguments that had nearly everyone else scratching their heads
• completely missed the problems of risky mortgages in praising and defending the pre-crisis work of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

Stiglitz is the quintessential elitist interventionist who loves to talk about market failures (with little acknowledgement that most of the failures he deals with are dealt with adequately in the market), but he rarely if ever acknowledges that gubmnt policies are made and implemented by fallible people.

Stiglitz never met an argument for gubmnt intervention that he didn't like. He really needs to study more economic history and more about gubmnt failure, along with all the reasons gubmnt interventions are often much worse than the alleged market failures they have been instituted to "fix".

Why do I mention Fischer in my opening sentence? Because Stiglitz incorrectly accused him of impropriety. It looks like pot-kettle-black to me, given Stiglitz's cozying up with so many socialist and other dictators.

As Harold Demsetz once wrote, it is important in economics to compare feasible alternatives. Stiglitz doesn't do that; instead he frequently rails against imperfect markets, arguing they can be improved with "perfect" regulators and policies. It ain't gonna happen that way, Joe.

The Moon Shots

In 1969, I was in gradskool in Ames, Iowa. I was pretty well on my way to drifting away from being an idealistic young socialist and toward becoming a small-gubmnt libertarian. That drift made me far less enamoured of the moon programme than many of my friends were. I didn't see the point of going to the moon (still don't, really; though as a stepping stone to Mars for future colonization... maybe). We (i.e. the US gubmnt) were spending billions and billions on the space race when there were so many competing "needs" on earth.

 

I was much more interested in ending the Vietnam war, in controlling and reducing pollution, and in controlling the beginnings of the horrid economic period that was emerging because the gubmnt wouldn't control its spending.

 

But we did go to a friend's place to watch it. I'm glad I did.

Cauliflower-crust Pizza?

I love pizza. The carbs in the crusts are a tad high, though.

A few years ago, we experimented with making pizza crusts using riced cauliflower. The pizza tasted okay, but the crusts weren't firm, and we had to eat the pizza with knives and forks.

Recently, Pizza Pizza has been advertising "Super Plant" pizza, made with cauliflower crust, plant-chorizo sausage, and plant-pepperoni. And so we thought we'd give them a try today.

The first picture below is of the "Super Plant" pizza. The second is of a standard deluxe pizza with extra cheese. Both are on cauliflower crusts.

The "Super Plant" pizza is clearly overdone. The sauce at Pizza Pizza is always good, and the crusts are often dry and firm, but this crust was dry and way too tough. I liked the flavours, including the plant-based meat substitutes, but the toughness of the crust was off-putting.

The Deluxe pizza with extra cheese was better. The crust wasn't overdone, but it was still less pleasing than the pizza would be with a regular crust.

I'm glad we tried them, but it's unlikely we'll try them again.

Leon's Ad -- A Great Spoof of Snobbery

I laugh every time I see this ad.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsMB5Y-FLUA

Insidious Discrimination

Remember these arguments in the 1950s-70s?

"Oh we have nothing against negros and we'd be happy to hire some. It's just that our customers are racist, and we'd lose business if we did hire black people."

Such statements were understandably ridiculed by people in the civil rights movement.

But nowadays, that same argument is used about Jews [h/t EL]. The best-selling novelist, Richard Zimler writes in The Guardian about the discrimination against Jews:

In early March, he [Zimler's publicist] called and confessed – in a distressed tone I’d never heard before – that he had just been turned down by two cultural organisations that had previously shown enthusiasm for hosting an event with me. “They asked me if you were Jewish, and the moment I said you were, they lost all interest,” he said. “They even stopped replying to my emails and returning my phone messages.”

I’ll call my publicist John as he prefers to remain anonymous. He has also asked me to refrain from identifying the organisations that reacted negatively to my being Jewish. John told me that the final conversations he had with the two event co-ordinators convinced him that they weren’t antisemitic themselves but they feared a backlash – protests by their members and others – if they extended an invitation to a Jewish writer.

Interestingly, Zimler understands criticisms of some of Israel's policies. After all, what country is blameless? But he has little, if anything, to do with Israel:

Let’s not get sidetracked with references to Israel. Although it’s perfectly legitimate for those who oppose Netanyahu’s policies to protest against them, I have no connection with Israel. I have neither investments nor family there. And my most well-known books take place in Portugal and Poland. It’s true my new novel is set in the Holy Land, but it takes place 2,000 years before the foundation of the state of Israel. As for my nationality, I’m American and Portuguese.

Clearly, the shunning of Zimler is because he is Jewish, and not because he is from Israel.

And undoubtedly I will be adding a book or two by Zimler to my e-collection. I'm open to recommendations.