Just for you three amigos Agstar and Burbert, cchurch.

[chaffmeister]

I’m just getting ice time in the third period so I’ll play a little catch-up:

1. Weber’s right. Forget about history - the current concept of the CWB is to exert singular market power for the benefit of the farmer (at least that’s what they tell us). In theory, this should benefit farmers. In reality, because of many things - the single desk (what some call its monopoly), incompetence, the CWB’s draconian approach to its constituents, its self-serving bureaucracy, etc - the CWB doesn’t deliver.

2. Parsley is splitting hairs and pissing in her own nest by taking a run at Weber. All Weber is saying is that joining forces to gain market power has its merits. Don’t try to make his “concept” argument into an argument about how the CWB “executes” its mandate, or its “tactics”. Admitting that the “concept” of having market power should be beneficial to those that have it doesn’t in the least weaken your argument that the CWB doesn’t have the market power it thinks it does, or about the way it operates, misuses its powers, abuses its constituents, and basically screws up the market. In fact, if you read Weber’s post, that’s exactly what he’s saying.

3. Ado is right and he’s wrong. The CWB provides lower than average prices to farmers. And competition (no single desk) will actually allow farmers to capture better returns while also driving costs down which will mean higher prices to farmers (all else being equal).

4. Parsley, the only question that needs to be asked is: “Does the CWB add value to the economy?” We need to get away from the selfish view about whether the CWB is good for individual farms and look beyond the farmgate. The CWB distorts markets – that means some gain and some lose. If everyone argues on the basis of individual farms, we get a stale mate. The argument needs to be about the good of the whole industry - producer, handler, processor, consumer. Think outside the bin.

5. I can’t say what Hopperbin meant by saying “a monopoly is not good for business”. A monopoly is good for the individual who has it – for a short while. But ultimately it’s bad for the industry it’s in. The lack of competition due to a monopoly simply stagnates an industry. Competition drives out costs, promotes creativity and drives innovation. It’s what makes us progress and move forward.

6. And Fransisco is right – the CWB doesn’t even have a monopoly anyway.

If the CWB was voluntary and earned its business through competitive returns to farmers, we’d have to find something else to argue about.

[Fransisco]

I guess I must have also missed the class where they showed us places where competition is illegal and the state controlled monopolies in North Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, the old Soviet Union, Venezuela today, etc, etc have beat the pants off of everybody else economically speaking.

Oh, that's right I didn't because like parsley shows, they don't.

And it's funny how you conveniently don't remember how the Hollywood version of the ADM story is based on the views of someone who is bi-polar.
http://bipolar.about.com/b/2009/09/21/the-informant-whitacre-feels-its-an-accurate-portrayal-of-his-bipolar-disorder.htm

Or that one of the three people involved also embezzled millions of dollars from ADM for themselves. Using your logic jensend one would have to conclude that hiring people would be a mistake because sometimes they steal from you.

[Fransisco]

Checking, if you have the storage and credit available to hold crops over multiple years then good for you. But don't fool yourself into thinking that everyone else has the same ability or even desire to do so if they did. Our operations and strategies are all different the important thing is that we all be able to do what we think is best for our own farms.

[parsley]

"We need to get away from the selfish view about whether the CWB is good for individual farms and look beyond the farmgate."

From a Western Canadian farmers point of view, all politicians, all academics, all policy makers, accredited agents and exporters, and most associations funded by government, have ENTIRELY looked beyond the farmgate returns, haven't considered or given a damn about them, and have instead looked after their own pocketbook.

I think I've heard this typical spiel once or two thousand times before about being a selfish farmer; and delivered with the same old same old "I'm gonna set this farmer straight" scolding.

And don't, for a New York minute, try to sell farmers the idea that the original CWB purpose and historical intent should be forgotten and interposed with the "new oral vision" of single desk directors, even if you have bought into their million dollar barrage of a "farmer run" government institution.

Farmers live on pool-leftovers. Pars

[parsley]

One more teensy weensy item..

Parsley, the only question that needs to be asked is: “Does the CWB add value to the economy?”

The only question farmers need to ask is:


"Does the CWB add value to my farm."

Read it again.

And again.

Farmers are not here to support Ethiopia's foodbank. Nor to fund an academic's PhD. Nor to feed Canadians cheap flour. Farmers are here to make a living for themselves, and it's bloody well time all the pool-sucking sectors of agriculture look for a new wet-nurse. Pars

[jensend]

nice try at diversion. the moral of the story is that if too much power is concentrated anywhere, corporations or the state, it is economically inefficient. capitalists hate free enterprise because as profits go to zero it makes for a lousy return on investment. if they can control the market they have more influence on their return. discount the adm story all you want but it still goes on and as the book relates, price fixing and collusion are not illegal in some parts of the world. what's happened in the cattle and beef sector over the last six and a half years shows all the faults of capitalism. when you marry the corporation to the state you get what we have now and it ain't free enterprise.

[Hopperbin]

Lets look at ourselves as farmers we are one efficient group of people. Why? Because we have competition. If we were guaranteed a living I am sure we can bet that we would not be as productive. So the CWB deserves all the stress that we can give them.

[checking]

Fransisco, unlike you I sometimes believe that things have to be totally destroyed for change to happen. That may require a sacrifice along the way in order to get to that bottom, the fastest. More often than naught, I've found that initial sacrifice turns out to be a large net gain.

I wouldn't expect you to understand that I would not be kind to historic structures that are too rotten to make a costly repair.

I've been watching a neighbour's grain bags that have been filled with 40,000 bushels of oats for two seasons now to determine if 18 months is their advertised life expectancy. They have cost him $0.06/bushel for the bag bought at the time. So far, it should not be a storage issue that is holding any of us back.

You obviously don't believe that non board grains are paying the farm bills, or you wouldn't be talking the need for credit.

I also think you like giving your wheat to the Board, and taking their lousy price because you have convinced yourself you have no choice.

What a lousy defeatist attitude.

[Fransisco]

"when you marry the corporation to the state you get what we have now and it ain't free enterprise"

Then stop calling it free enterprise and or Capitalism.

I'm all for separation of State and the economy in the same way as we have the separation of State and Church and for pretty much the same reason.

As to your theory of all profits going to zero in a free enterprise system, it's just nonsense that can't be backed up by actual events. The freer an economy is the more it grows, this is nothing new, and it doesn't happen because profits go to zero.

Yes there are corrupt things that happen from time to time in a free enterprise system. But the people, like at ADM, get caught and go to jail. In the government run systems they happen far more often and when people get caught like the wheat board did with their futures fiasco last year the people involved get bonuses.

[jensend]

profits go to zero because competition tightens margins. competition also fosters innovation and creativity for shortterm advantage but then the playing field levels again and margins shrink. we may not have free enterprise but we do have capitalism because capital is synonymous with power in our system. big corps are just as bad as big govt. the financial institutions that crippled our financial system are still handing out big bonuses.