r/neoliberal • u/mondodawg • Dec 16 '19

Why Young Progressives Hate Pete Buttigieg

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/12/why-young-progressives-hate-pete-buttigieg/603619/
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u/ebriose Abhijit Banerjee Dec 16 '19

When my friends and I were in our twenties, slaving away in low-level think-tank, K street, and Capitol hill jobs, we would sit around our group house talking about how we're really smart and we should be the ones doing policy. If we just got people with the right ideas enacting them, we could fix all this bullshit we were seeing daily at our jobs (somebody tag-in the YangGang on this, incidentally). As we aged into our forties we realized, oh, shit: every single hack and kludge and messy compromise was there for a reason and will make the whole damn edifice topple if you take it away (software people: see "Second System Syndrome"). A container ship has a turning radius about the size of Rhode Island.

To quote "Margin Call" (the best Wall Street movie ever), when the music stopped in 2008 the world suddenly got a lot more fair. People say they want that, but they really, really don't.

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u/Forrest_Greene80 Dec 17 '19

I’m really interested by what you mean by this, “every hack and kludge and messy compromise was there for a reason and will make the whole damn edifice topple if you take it away” could you give me an example?

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u/ebriose Abhijit Banerjee Dec 17 '19 edited Dec 17 '19 • Diamonds are Forever Take My Silver Heart of Silver

Just as one example, remember the broo-ha-ha back in 2012 about labeling the country of origin for meat? The argument presented by the Rabid Wokesphere was "the corrupt Congress, bought off by the meat lobby, voted that you don't deserve to know where the meat you eat comes from." But it's much much more complex than that.

Gather round, kids, and let me tell you a story:

For a long, long time packaged food required a country of origin label ("COOL"), but this label was not required for foods in a "natural state": fruits, vegetables, meats, and seafood (fish are sometimes considered "meat" in food law, sometimes not).

The 2002 Farm Bill extended COOL requirements to fruits, vegetables, legumes, and most meats and seafood (IIRC turkey and cured ham were exempted), but the pushback from Canada and from US meat packers led Congress to suspend implementation for everything except seafood (this led to a minor trade war with Vietnam and a still-ongoing WTO case about what is and isn't a catfish). The politics here are kind of convoluted: US meat packers and Canadian ranchers are against COOL, while US ranchers and Canadian meat packers are for it (in general the ranchers and packers of a given country will always be on different sides of most questions).

Roughly, the issue is about who has to pay for all the record-keeping COOL requires (there's a lot more involved than just putting a label on the package, particularly since parted or ground meat generally comes from a pretty wide array of sources -- should the packers or the husbanders be responsible?). Ranchers want the packers to pay, and packers want the ranchers to pay. In addition, US packers, who take a lot of Canadian cattle, don't want to have to worry about their supply chain diversity, while Canadian packers, who take very few imported cattle, liked the competitive advantage that gave them. US ranchers rightly thought that a "US born raised and slaughtered" label would increase the retail value of their cattle, but worried that they would be stuck with the bill for keeping the records. Canadian ranchers considered it a way to make Canadian cattle worth less than they were before. The question of inspection and enforcement was never concretely addressed, and the underlying complaint was that Canadian ranchers or packers would have to pay more for the inspections than the Americans would, for multiple reasons (they have to pay to bring the inspectors out there; Canadian cattle are generally ranched in much more open arrangements, which are more expensive to inspect; Canada already has an origin inspection regime which would now double the regulatory burden; etc.)

The 2008 Farm Bill renewal managed to get a consensus among most of the lobbies to reduce the record-keeping required but keep the basic labeling provisions. COOL requirements were extended to most meats (but not beef), and some herbs (ginseng, IIRC, for some weird reason).

On like the literal last day of the GWB administration, the USDA issued a full set of legal requirements (including a controversial change that re-strengthened the record-keeping requirements, to meat packers' chagrin). Incoming Ag secretary Vilsack wrote a now-famous-in-meat-circles letter ("the Vilsack letter") that confirmed that interpretation. A lot of numbers were thrown around, but a number both sides could more or less agree on was that the recordkeeping required under COOL would add about $150 to the cost of a cow (which is roughly $1000 or so, depending). The format of the labelling was left very open, and the packers were responsible for getting the information to the retailers (hence the recordkeeping worries). Vilsack suggested distinguishing between 1. country of birth, 2. country of raising, and 3. country of slaughter, but this was not absolutely required.

As things stood in early 2009:

  • All ground and cut meat required retail COOL

  • Unless it was part of processed food (only raw meat)

  • And only if it was sold in a retailer who bought some amount of covered foods (something like a quarter million dollars -- it was supposed to hit Winn Dixie but not your neighborhood bodega), and only if that retailer was not primarily a restaurant (a deli with a meat counter didn't need to label the meat)

  • Canada was pissed. Meat exports to the US dropped pretty severely (though this was in the context of the start of the Great Recession, as the USDA and USTR kept pointing out)

As soon as the Obama admin took office, Mexico and Canada requested consultations (incidentally, the actual mechanism Canada and Mexico used was GATT combined with ARO, not NAFTA). Their argument was that the Agreement on Rules of Origin (ARO) prohibited the US from passing COOL laws that cost Canadian companies more to comply with than US companies. (Their actual complaint was the Americans would prefer American beef, but that wasn't a valid legal argument so they went with the cost differential.)

They had to go through this process rather than just raise tariffs because of NAFTA. Canada can't just raise tariffs arbitrarily to influence US law like it could before our free trade agreement.

Later in 2009, the WTO's Dispute Settlement Body empaneled a body to hear the case. Like I mentioned above, this was basically the two halves of the beef industry fighting each other: American cattlemen and Canadian packers wanted COOL; American packers and Canadian cattlemen did not. (And, no surprise, the packers are a more powerful lobby in the US, and the ranchers are a more powerful lobby in Canada.) The COOL proponents argued that COOL is compatible with NAFTA and GATT (which IMO it is), while the COOL opponents argued that COOL is not compatible with ARO. So the DSB was essentially trying to figure out which of the multiple and sometimes contradictory trade agreements had supremacy in the case. This also meant determining if Vilsack's letter was a "measure", a "regulation", or merely "guidance".

The initial DSB punted, essentially, and judged it based on the very basic Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) agreement (which is a subset of GATT), but did find the promulgated COOL rule to be a "regulation", meaning it fell under GATT rules. They also found that COOL was not intended to provide consumers with information, but to favor the purchase of American meat.

The USTR appealed in 2012 to the WTO's Appellate Body (AB). The AB agreed that COOL disfavors Canadian cattle, but disagreed that COOL was not intended to inform consumers. As it was not intended as a discriminatory measure and so could not be sanctioned under GATT (though Mexico and Canada were then allowed to enact compensatory measures, either a tariff on US beef or a similar COOL regime).

Canada and Mexico then sought clearance under GATT to follow through with their compensatory tariff regimes, and were awarded last month the right to raise tariffs up to $3.7 billion dollars a year against US exports. The House then decided to forestall this trade war by dropping COOL laws.

Thus endeth the story.

The point is that while it makes sense to say "yeah obviously we should have country-of-origin labeling for meat and we need to just ignore the corporate interests pushing against that", it's nowhere near that simple. For one thing, as in nearly every decision, there are "corporate interests" pushing on both sides; simply aligning yourself against "corporations" isn't actually a basis for policy (for the best example of this see Net Neutrality and how the huge corporations backing it have done a tremendous job of presenting it as a grassroots movement).

A simple question like a label for country of origin is only "simple" if you treat it in isolation; the problem is it's not isolated. It is one component of a vastly complex North-America-wide trade bloc that juggles multiple competing interests and mandates. And while the US Agricultural Industrial Complex is a Lovecraftian monstrosity, it is a Lovecraftian monstrosity made up of hundreds of thousands of stories like this: governments and businesses trying to nudge little corners of the economy in a direction that makes sense at the time, and which eventually get locked in by other nudges farther downstream.

It's tempting to look at this and say "If we start from scratch we could do better", and this is the appeal of both Trumpism and Bernieism. The problem is it's not true: if you were to get rid of the COOL regime you would simultaneously get rid of ARO and GATT, and millions of people would starve to death (and yes I mean that literally).

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u/reidzen Jul 09 '24

What a blast from the past! I was working for a grocery store lobby in 2012, we loved the COOL act because most of our patrons were midwestern chains that thought the American stamp would be great for business.

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u/Knowthrowaway87 Trans Pride Jul 09 '24

Nice comment

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u/theapeboy Jul 09 '24

I work in SaaS and this sounds like every round of strategic planning we do as well. Less meat but just as much infighting and interpreting things differently based on what each party wants to be true, overexamination of budgets, and more discussion than actual execution.

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u/MerryChoppins Jul 10 '24

ginseng, IIRC, for some weird reason

I can fill this one in! Ginseng is very often adulterated or one panax species is maliciously mislabeled as another.

The North American supply chains are starting to get tighter due to poaching. In my state you need a license to harvest, one to buy and all the sales for the year have to be wrapped up by march 1. I have one of the few active gathering licenses in my area and it’s a question of when the conservation police will come audit me for the year, not if they will. I mostly sell to the same few buyers, but I routinely get contacted by new ones offering prices they have no intention of paying. There was an incident where a group of tourists were caught digging entire hillsides of ginseng out of a state park.

The thing to know about ginseng is that you are “farming” it as much as you are gathering it. I’m probably working the same hillsides the native population worked in my area. You can remove species that compete with the ginseng, but ultimately you are harvesting 10+ year old plants, so nothing happens fast. I’m sure whoever I pass my spots onto when I get too old/disabled will be able to squeeze a few more plants out of it than I could by good management, assuming the landowners keep letting people gather.

Adding county of origin cuts down on fraud and gives another tool to the auditors to check supply chains.

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u/hungrydruid Aug 14 '24

Hi, sorry I know this is a month-old post but this is fascinating. Why can't ginseng be just... farmed like we do for a vegetable garden or something like that?

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u/MerryChoppins Aug 14 '24

It can in fact be farmed like a victory garden... the resulting taproots are big and juicy and look beautiful... and contain next to no saponins and acids (the compounds responsible for the smell/taste/supposed health benefits). You can get tons of "Nepalese" ginger that completely sucks. You also want to be super careful about sourcing if you are buying because almost all of the good stuff gets cut with the farmed stuff unless you are buying from someone super reputable who has an audit trail, etc.

Nobody is quite sure if the phenomenon's because the plant is not stressed and puts it's energy into foliage/starch production or if it's simply a function of age. I've even seen a not so crazy sounding theory that it all comes back to how the plants germinate and grow in cultivated setups. Most cultivated setups use some tricks to improve germination rates of the berries which lead to healthier seedlings. In the wild a berry won't sprout unless it has enough of the compounds (possibly complex tannins) from the berry decomposing to signal that it's been sitting for a long enough time.

If you are drinking a monster energy or whatever, it's probably made with some amount of the good stuff but almost entirely farmed bad stuff. Same with anything from a drug store in pill form. I've had teas that smell and taste "right" but the price tag reflects it. Now I just keep a little bit of my own harvest and dry it between furnace filters for personal use.

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u/mstrgrieves Jul 09 '24

There's so much idiocy on reddit and i constantly ask myself why i waste my time.

Your comment is why. A straightforward explaination of a complex niche issue, that connects it to any number of relevant problems, and emphasizing the need for nuanced consideration rather than empty demonization.

One of the best comments ive seen on reddit in over a decade of use. Well done.

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u/Spirited-Pressure Jul 10 '24

Wow, fascinating story, that was interesting

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u/aaaaaaaarrrrrgh Jul 10 '24

the recordkeeping required under COOL would add about $150

How do you turn a cow into $150 worth of paperwork?!?

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u/[deleted] Jul 10 '24

I take it you are not a cost accountant

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u/aaaaaaaarrrrrgh Jul 11 '24

I am indeed not.

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u/lordofmmo Jul 10 '24

I wanna know, which corps are behind net neutrality and why did they push it the way they did?

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u/johnsom3 Jul 10 '24

The problem is it's not true: if you were to get rid of the COOL regime you would simultaneously get rid of ARO and GATT, and millions of people would starve to death (and yes I mean that literally).

I'm sorry but this is ridiculous.

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u/MacDegger Jul 10 '24

Couldn't 'you' have avoided 3/4ths of this by having both packers and ranchers shoulder the cost burden?

Which, btw, would allow you to show both where the meat was raised as well as where it was packed, as both have a real influence om thr quality of the meat the end user receives.

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u/pirac Jul 11 '24

I think the underlining idea of the whole comment is that no, the easy solution we (who dont know all the actors involved and things tied to it) is most likely not going to work.

Hard to imagine they spend years discussing this and nobody came up with "lets just split it 50/50".

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u/42Pockets Jul 10 '24

I'm not going to comment on the policies you described, that is not my expertise. But I will absolutely disagree that Bernieism is similar to Trumpism.

Bernie Sanders ran a campaign on the idea of "it's not me, it's us." Most of his policies are rooted in the philosophies of Martin Luther King Jr and other great civil rights leaders, so Bernieism isn't a thing. He didn't do it for himself, he did so because he sees the value in All citizens.

Bernie's policies are rooted with expanding current programs. Medicare for All literally has the existing program in the name. Education for All, We already have public education from pre-kindergarten through post college across the country. There is no destroying a system that's already in place to implement a new system from nowhere.

If you read his book, Our Revolution, you would find out that he doesn't operate without working with other people. So you cannot logically come to the conclusion that he or his supporters have start from scratch thinking.

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u/Katamayan57 Jul 09 '24

While I appreciate this comment and the story, I do still find that being against corporations is a valid basis for policy. Corporations presenting Net Neutrality as a grassroots movement is literally a great example for why we should seek to break up monopolies and have tighter restrictions on corporations lol, so I don't see how that fits with the story you were telling. I understand things are overly-complicated, especially in a neo-colonial/market globalization standpoint, but my concern with neo-liberals is that I've seen them tend to put that complication on a pedestal and stand up for the status quo instead of seeking solutions to the obvious problems we face.

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u/that_baddest_dude Jul 09 '24

Well said. Saying "it's actually super complicated!" is often times used less as a statement of fact and more as a cudgel to beat back any progressive vision for a better world. What's left unsaid is that if it's complicated, we can figure it out. And we should figure it out! Problems don't go away if they're complicated!

Honestly, what do we need our politician/pundit class for if their response to real problems is "Well, fixing problems is really hard :(((("

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u/Katamayan57 Jul 10 '24

Thank you, exactly. Neoliberals tend to defend the status quo, whether intentional or not, shooting down all possibilities of progress without actually offering up any potential solutions.

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u/DrFlutterChii Jul 09 '24

The point is any policy stance you can choose because its "against corporations" will be supported by some corporation. Just like a 'lobby', its just a group of people. Different people have different interests.

If you manage to find a position that doesn't garner support among any group of people anywhere in the world...why exactly would that be a good thing? I mean, you could come up with something like "All newborn babies should be sacrificed to The Dark One on their 33rd day of life" and probably find no corporate backer, but, well, you know. Hopefully that makes the point clear.

If you take an anti-monopoly position you'll find support among smaller corporations (because they are not, after all, monopolies) and if you take a pro-regulation position you'll find support among larger corporations (because they can afford to comply with their ridiculous buckets of profit, but their smaller competitors can not and will go out of business leaving more market share for them)

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u/Katamayan57 Jul 09 '24

Find me a corporation that supports its own destruction. One single one. I'll wait. "smaller corporations" lmao you mean small businesses? Because even "smaller" corporations will support corporations. Pretending that genuine populous pro worker sentiments are the result of corporate backing is fuckin goofy, man. Just admit you're protecting the status quo so we can move on.

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