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When it comes to my libertarian instincts, food has always been a weakness. I hate the damage done to the quality of what we eat by the destruction of local food networks, by the homogenisation of fresh produce into a tasteless lowest common denominator. And I find the continued success of fast food retailers like Greggs, Subway, KFC and McDonald’s profoundly depressing – poor quality, barely edible crap sold at the lowest possible price and without any thought to what us poor proles are stuffing in our gobs. It’s no surprise there are so many fat people around when so many graze almost non-stop on such fat, salt and sugar stuffed awfulness.
Despite this my liberal hackles rise when "campaigners" get so mixed up over what they’re opposing in the “great food debate”. The arguments wielded by the greens, by "hyperlocal" fans and by the "transition towns" movement are inconsistent, anti-trade and exclusive. Consider these issues below, for example:
Are the “campaigners” opposing the sourcing of vegetables, flowers and other produce from cheap labour countries? Do they understand how these provide a good growth and development opportunity for countries like Kenya, Ghana and Colombia? Or are they just so bothered by the environmental costs of air freight that those African and Latin American workers can go hang?
Do the “campaigners” appreciate that so-called “fair trade” isn’t fair? Have they stopped and asked what happens to the workers picking coffee or bananas on plantations when those plants are rooted up as no longer viable because of “fixed” trade preferences derived from the “fair trade” concept? Fair trade – rather like Tesco really – destroys as many jobs as it creates, saves or protects.
The “campaigners” rail against something called the “trade balance” (a mythic concept invented by so-called poverty campaigners with slightly less economic reality that the idea of “competitiveness”). But at the same time “campaigners” support geographical protections placed on processes, subsidies to wealthy western farmers and the extension of tariffs on imported fresh produce. Protecting feta or parma ham takes precedence over supporting the economic development of Africa.
Our “campaigners” talk to us about local food networks, the impact of the local multiplier and such worthy sounding “new economics”. Sadly the economics isn’t new at all – the multiplier features in Keynes and is widely criticised as an analytical tool. Tiebout argued that the multiplier is not stable over time or across economic groups making it a difficult measure to apply with high degrees of confidence. The glibness of the LM3 model covers over its weakness as a means of understanding local economies (along with very little sound empirical testing of the approach) - yet it is still used almost without challenge or question.
I am happy to fight the good fight – supermarkets destroy jobs because they employ fewer people than traditional retailing models. But my concern isn’t just about that indisputable fact but that supermarkets also destroy quality, contribute to the drunken, violent urban culture we have seen grow in this country and continue to secure privileged cost advantages through favourable tax and planning treatment when compared to town centre retailing (and especially markets). Sadly the New Economics Foundation and others seem to have lost sight of the 'non-free' nature of the market environment in retailing and development - focusing on rational business behaviour rather than contrary and sub-optimal regulatory and tax regimes.
Maybe we bring all this on ourselves through the decisions we make about shopping but those convenience decisions come about because supermarkets have a cost advantage they would not enjoy if public authorities allowed town centres to compete on a level platform. Lower business rates per square foot, free parking and more flexible planning regimes - a more free system in fact – would go a long way towards restoring convenience shopping to our market towns and suburban town centres. Right now the anti-car, high tax regimes in our towns only serve to increase the success of supermarkets.
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2 comments:
I am interested in your view on Lm3 It has been run on all 25 councils in the North East amounting to total expenditure of over £13billion and in addition with over 200 voluntary sector organisations of varying shapes and sizes and numerous large private sector businesses. Could you tell me how much empirical testing you would consider to be sufficient? Adam Wilkinson
Running a model isn't an empirical test - we put numbers in and get an answer. Every council in the land could have run the model but that doesn't mean it's a right answer. I know of not one robust appraisal of LM3 - lots of applications (have done one myself on street markets & farmers markets). Tiebout, Wilson and others all criticise the use of multiplier models for assessing local economies - and provide some strong theoretical underpinning. The NEF approach is to produce a cute folksy model with limited theory - good business but not great academic economics.
Oh and what I find truly amazing is that LM3 appears to ignore tax.
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