| It's intensely annoying... |
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| Written by Tim Worstall | |
| Saturday, 14 June 2008 | |
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To have to keep making the same obvious point and find it being continually ignored. Still gird the loins and keep stating the truth I tell myself. Europe's biodiesel producers will today urge the European commission to levy punitive duties on US rivals after Brussels launched formal anti-subsidy and anti-dumping investigations into imports from America. I've said it often enough before: if someone is willing to gouge their own taxpayers in order to provide us with cheaper goods then the correct response is to say thank you. Followed by an invitation for them to do the same tomorrow as well. To do otherwise is to be protectionist: protectionist of the interests of business above those of the consumers and that really isn't the way we're supposed to be playing the game. But in this report we see it even more nakedly: Garofalo said that "splash and dash" accounted for only 10-15% of the biodiesel imported into the EU. "The real problem remains US biodiesel producers," he said. "Changing the rules to stop splash and dash doesn't change a lot as export subsidies will be maintained for US producers and that's precisely what we want to stop." Garofalo is the head of the European Biodiesel Board, the trade organisation for producers. It is exactly as Adam Smith said all those years ago: “People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.” There it is, plain as day. Garofalo wants you to be barred from purchasing the best offer so that his members might make more profit. That US taxpayers are subsidising that best offer is an irrelevance to your and my interests. The correct response to someone offering us subsidy in this manner is thank you, please call again. Whatever the interests of Garofalo, the EBB and the producers.
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I can see now how the vast BBC Online website has survived the attentions of foreign free-market oriented governments for so long. They've understood Tim's point and can see the joys of their consumers getting the subsidised BBC output for free; yippee! No need to worry the permanent stifling of market innovation and the crushing of locally funded information networks, just lap up the free content deluge paid for by those UK TV Licence suckers. Ha ha.
Indeed, I've heard that even the people of the UK local newspaper trade are meeting together to contrive some conspiracy to deprive consumers of the benefits of the flow of state-subsidised free content that is threatening their comfortable, privately funded existence. What rotters.
Which all leads me to conclude that my policy of not restricting myself to being an 'ist, an 'ian, or any other kind of ideological grouping is serving me well. Remaining flexible whilst remembering that the "least worst" is the best we should realistically expect in human endeavour is a very good way of avoiding being intensely annoyed because people just continually ignore your utter tosh.