General Motors and zipper peas
GENERAL MOTORS AND ZIPPER PEAS
I wanted to plant some zipper peas this year. They are a round, cream pea that is delicious and so easy to shell. Unfortunately, I could not find any seed.
About now, you are asking, just what does this have to do with General Motors.
We have just witnessed a very dangerous precedent being set. The president of the USA has forced the CEO of a company to resign. The justification for this action being twofold. First, the company is about to go under, and second, GM accepted public money to prop it up. I won’t go into the why of GM’s problem in the first placel
If this action is allowed to stand, then the same rationale can be used in the future against any company. If it gets public money, and the president or one of his appointees thinks it is failing, then government will essentially take control of that business. All for our good, of course.
Now think about this. What major industry has been accepting public money for many years now?
The answer I have in mind is agriculture.
Now suppose that a large agricultural corporation has a bad year or two. Based on what we have just seen, could we expect the government to step in and take control of that corporation? I think we could. After all, what is REALLY too big to fail if not a major producer of foodstuffs?
So we would have a government appointee managing food production. Never mind that he got the job because he is party hack with no farming experience.
In 1993 I was in Russia near Moscow and stayed for a few days at a commune. I learned some things there.
Those of you who can remember even recent history know that the USSR could never feed itself. It had to buy grain and other things regularly. Now that was not because Russia did not have good farm land. It was because those managing the communes were not appointed for their expertise, but because of their party connections.
The same government that had incompetent farm managers also ran the factories. What happened was that even when crops were planted and ready to harvest, many times machines broke down, and parts were not readily available. Those running the farms were also running the manufacture and distribution of replacement parts. Those crops rotted in the field.
What does all this have to do with zipper peas? The reason given to me is that so many farms have converted over to producing corn for ethanol, a subsidized crop, that not enough people are growing peas for seed..
Think about where all this wonderful change is headed.
John