How I Know Marketing Is Not My Calling

As I was making breakfast yesterday, I had another one of my this-is-why-my-mind-should-never-be-allowed-to-idle moments reading packaging labels. They were out of loose leaf spinach the last time I went grocery shopping so I ended up with one of those prepackaged bags. Those bags are, to me, object lessons in absurdity, filled with unnecessary marketing messages. "Microwaveable!" "Heart Healthy!" I wonder who is actually influenced by these messages, like, they were gonna get a bag of donuts but then they found out spinach is heart healthy AND microwaveable and totally changed their minds. "Excellent source of lutein!" Lutein? There are like four people in the world who even know what lutein is, and three of them were in the room when the decision was made to put that on the label. And with that thought, I realized I would never have made it as a marketer. Because left up to me, this is all that would be on the label:

It's spinach. It's good for you. Just f#@%ing eat it.

Climate Policy, May I Introduce Common Sense

I read somewhere recently that many of the great leaps in human understanding occurred when someone who was not trained in a particular discipline turned their attention to solving a puzzle that had stumped the discipline's great thinkers. The theory is that formal training leads to an institutional mindset where only certain ways of thinking are accepted. Someone trained a different way is able to look at a problem from other angles, and that's usually where the solutions are found.

So, allow me to take a stab at one of the most prominent questions currently posed in the field of geoengineering, "engineering a cooler earth: can we do it? Should we try?"

No.

Maybe I just watch too much Discovery Channel, but I'm pretty sure that when volcanoes lob sulfur into the atmosphere, people who breathe that sulfur in die. Like, really, really painful deaths. Yes, doing so may cool the earth, but if there's no one left to enjoy a cooler planet, I'm not sure we get to count that as a win. I'm just sayin'.

Ding Dong, The Clown is Gone

I was going to write about McDonald's exit from Iceland, but, as often happens, someone else said it better. I'll repost the punchline below.

McDonald's specializes in producing the lowest possible cost Big Macs and Fries by economizing on such a huge scale that it has warped the entire structure of global agriculture and food production away from anything remotely resembling healthy sustainability. McDonald's only "works" in the context of a system that wreaks intense environmental havoc and sacrifices family farms in favor of industrial agribusinesses.

Everyone currently fearing our own impending economic collapse needs to take a look at the healthier, sustainable system that exists on the other side. Find a place for yourself in it, and it won't seem so scary.

For Crying Out Loud

The FDA has announced a new web page with information for consumers on how to properly dispose of certain drugs. The drugs in question "have the potential to be harmful, even deadly, in a single dose if taken by someone other than the intended person." What do they suggest we do?

The FDA recommends that these medicines be disposed of by flushing down the sink or toilet.

Oh yes, by all means, let's make these "harmful, even deadly" substances a part of the water supply, and mix them with all the other pharmaceutical waste that is already part of said supply (not to mention the endocrine disruptors currently seeping into the soil). What could possibly go wrong?

Rights and Duties (Heh, You Said Duty)

So I'm not quite getting back to normal as quickly as I thought I would, but I did find something cool I thought I'd share with you.

At the racetrack last month, I tried to explain to some liberal friends of mine why healthcare cannot be considered a right (only in DC, right?). It was late, we'd spent the day walking around the Maryland State Fair, and my dietary intake for the day consisted of a funnel cake and some Yoplait samples, so I wasn't exactly firing on all cognitive cylinders, if you know what I mean. Fortunately, though, I found my argument in a much more coherent form by way of a Huffington Post article, which I'm linking here.

There's a lot of other info in the article, but my basic point, which is that healthcare cannot be a right because to be such would impose a duty on healthcare providers that the state cannot impose, is there. Enjoy.

A Trip Into Bizarro World

From Regulation of Food Additives in the United States, Food Additives, Ch. 8 (2d Ed. 2001):

"High fructose corn syrup... was immediately marketed, without asking FDA for an opinion or even informing the agency." And this is considered a good thing?

But wait, it gets better. "One should stop to consider what would have happened if high fructose corn syrup had been handled through a food additive petition rather than a self-determination of GRAS [Generally Recognized as Safe]." Indeed. How many cases of heart disease, obesity, insulin resistance, and diabetes would have been avoided? How many millions of dollars in health care expenses would have been saved, put to more productive use? How much was lost?

If regulators exist solely to enable manufacturers to dupe unsuspecting consumers into accepting health-threatening products, then they shouldn't exist at all.

Bye Bye, Bluefin

Bye bye, bluefin, says United Airlines' in-flight magazine. Apparently, we've successfully eaten our way through the oceans. We're down to two years supply of bluefin tuna, with salmon and eel (my favorite sushi options, by the way) facing extinction shortly thereafter. Even if all the "awareness" measures in the world are adopted, it's pretty much too late to save these species. Let me wipe a tear as I finish off this sake I just bought (get it while the gettin's good).

I just happened to be at the grocery store today, so I decided to do a little unscientific research. In the frozen food section, salmon and mahi mahi were my only available options. According to Monterey Bay Aquarium's Seafood Watch, mahi mahi is the more sustainable option. If by sustainable they mean more readily available, then the pricing for each fish should reflect the differences in available supply, especially given that demand for salmon is higher. Except, not so much. Salmon was priced at $0.97/oz, and mahi mahi was priced at $1.00/oz, hardly enough to impact consumer chioces. I also looked at canned fish. Canned salmon was available for $0.48/oz, and sardines, which are supposed to be "plentiful," are a ridiculous $0.90/oz.

I hate to keep going back to Econ 101... ok, that's not true. I love Econ 101, almost as much as I love mocking people who don't get it. The prices of these items are supposed to reflect their relative supply and bring demand down to a level where extinction does not happen. My guess is someone is subsidizing something that seemed like a good government program at the time but is, in fact, ruining the planet (not unlike the Homestead Act which resulted in most of Oklahoma's topsoil blowing across the country into the ocean in the 30's). Clearly there's a market failure here. What that failure is or how to correct it, I have no idea. But you know what they say: the first step is to admit you have a problem.