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It is hard for some people to believe this, but markets can and do provide people with products and services produced in accordance with their values in a way in which many presume requires regulators. A lot of what we would think of as unethical behavior on the part of firms could be done away with if consumers demanded it.
I think progressives would disagree with me here by pointing to surveys that show consumers want all sorts of goods produced in accordance with progressive values that the market isn’t providing. Yes, I’m sure if you ask them, consumers say they would pay $.01 more per pound to give tomato pickers a $2 an hour raise. I’m sure people tell survey respondents they’d love organically grown food, or higher gas mileage cars, and that they would definitely pay a lot more for it, it’s just that companies are providing them. The progressive response here is that businesses must be forced, nudged, or subsidized into providing what consumers want. But what people will tell a surveyor that they want and what they say they’d be willing to pay for it doesn’t actually determine the market-wide willingness to pay. It’s what they actually would pay. This is what economists call “stated preference” versus “revealed preference”. As you can imagine, revealed preference holds a lot more weight among academics.
I think the demand for more environmentally friendly and ethical agriculture is a good thing, and will in the long-run lead to improved conditions better than what regulations alone can or would provide. Sometimes regulations can even get in the way of market outcomes that would be more in accordance with progressive values.
Case in point is slaughterhouses. A recent story in the New York Times details how a slaughterhouse shortage is stymieing a variety of local, organic, and more humane meat producers:
One might expect the Bay Area — as the epicenter of the eat-local movement and a region with a long tradition of cattle ranching — to be a mecca for producers of organic and grass-fed beef. But there is a problem: a shortage of slaughterhouses is so acute that it is stunting the growth of this emerging industry….
Slaughterhouses have been on the decline nationwide, but a demand for more niche products has led to an increase of small slaughterhouses nationwide. In California however, there remains a shortage. The story explains why:
…Mr. Thiboumery is pessimistic about the chances for new facilities in California. Here, potential operators face stringent state regulations, unforgiving zoning laws and the dreaded Nimby factor.
“Basically, if I were to build a slaughterhouse, the last place I would build it is California,” Mr. Thiboumery said.
The article doesn’t go into it, but as I’ve written before, USDA regulations set equipment mandates designed for large, industrial, high volume slaughterhouses in a way that is too costly for smaller slaughterhouses ones to afford at the scale and volume demanded from them. Loosening these regulations seems like an area for cooperation between progressives and libertarians.
Of course, libertarians would argue that once you decide to set equipment standards you’re destined for regulatory capture such that the only way to really prevent this type of subtle protectionism is to stop setting equipment standards. Progressives would counter that if you don’t set these standards, then the companies will race to the bottom and use the least safe equipment possible, the costs of which will be borne by workers. The libertarian counter-counter-point is that more dangerous conditions will mean they will need to pay higher wages, but progressives would respond….. Wait, why did I think this was a possible area for libertarian and progressive agreement again?
An op-ed in the New York Times illustrates why those concerned about energy use and “sustainability” should not be concerned about farms and being locavores, but about households energy usage
Overall, transportation accounts for about 14 percent of the total energy consumed by the American food system.
Other favorite targets of sustainability advocates include the fertilizers and chemicals used in modern farming. But their share of the food system’s energy use is even lower, about 8 percent.
The real energy hog, it turns out, is not industrial agriculture at all, but you and me. Home preparation and storage account for 32 percent of all energy use in our food system, the largest component by far.
Driving to a nearby Walmart to buy factory foods may be more environmentally sound if it saves you a car trip because you’re going there anyway, or if it’s closer than wherever it is you buy local food. I don’t know if anyone has quantified the extent to which big boxes have helped the environment by allowing one-stop shopping, but it seems it would be significant.
And it sounds like foodies should be focusing on which ways to prepare food conserve the most energy. Is microwaving your food the most environmentally friendly thing you can do? Clearly, locavores and greens are focusing on the wrong part of the food production chain to wring energy savings out of. The urban farmer/locavore/foodie aesthetic is a high status one though; the Walmart shopper/microwaver is not.
The piece closes with this paragraph which I will second and should be repeated to urban farmers everywhere:
The best way to make the most of these truly precious resources of land, favorable climates and human labor is to grow lettuce, oranges, wheat, peppers, bananas, whatever, in the places where they grow best and with the most efficient technologies — and then pay the relatively tiny energy cost to get them to market, as we do with every other commodity in the economy. Sometimes that means growing vegetables in your backyard. Sometimes that means buying vegetables grown in California or Costa Rica.
