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Stuck In Traffic
"Independent Comment on Current Events and Cultural Phenomena"
Issue #13 - April 1996
==========================
Neither Sticks Nor Carrots
Poor Bill Clinton. His Bosnian "peace keeping mission" is looking more
and more tenuous all the time. What must have first appeared as a sure
fire way to boost his reputation as a strong leader on foreign policy
issues has been steadily degrading into a situation that some people
are labeling the "Lebanon of the '90s." And as if his foreign policy
record wasn't weak enough, recent military events in Cuba and China
show that Clinton's foreign policy strategies simply aren't working.
First, the Cuban military shoots down two civilian aircraft from the
United States that were flying toward Cuba. Some reports indicate that
the people flying the planes were part of an underground paramilitary
movement whose goal is to overthrow the Castro regime, but one knows
for sure. In any event, they were civilians in civilian aircraft in
international airspace over international waters when they were shot
down. There are well documented and well established procedures that
every civilized country in the world has agreed to follow in these
situations to avoid shooting down civilian aircraft while still
maintaining an ability to apprehend civilians suspected to be engaged
in illegal activity. For whatever reason, Cuba blatantly disregarded
these procedures.
The United States was outraged. The rest of the world condemned the
shootings. The world eagerly watched for the United States' response.
But nothing happened for several days while the White House "studied
its options".
The White House hinted that it was considering some sort of military
action but never took any, which was probably a wise move. Who would
the U.S. attack in retaliation? Cuban military targets? Cuban ships
in international waters? Castro himself? And more to the point,
Castro would probably love a military confrontation with the United
States right now and no one knows just how far Castro might be willing
to escalate a military conflict. And even though the United States
keeps close tabs on Cuba's military strength, there's no way we could
guarantee that Cuba would not be able to hit targets in the United
States. Without military options at his disposal, Clinton was
desperate to show some sort of leadership, Clinton finally proposed an
economic embargo on Cuba.
But wait, don't we _already_ have a _total_ economic embargo on Cuba?
Yes, we do. But the one that the Clinton proposed and congress passed
was somehow "tougher" than the current embargo. Just how it was
"tougher" is not clear. But other North American governments, most
notably Canada, have already complained that the new embargo law
asserts extraterritoriality rights to interfere with other countries'
commerce that the United States does not have. There will likely be
diplomatic wrangling over the new "tougher" embargo for months to come
and it's difficult for anyone to say with certainty that the United
States will be able to do anything differently under the new, "tougher"
embargo than under the old embargo. The net effect? Cuba got away
with the shootings. Clinton's reputation as a weak and indecisive
foreign policy leader was reinforced.
And then there's China, the crown jewel of the Clinton Administration's
foreign trade plan for the nation. For years, the Clinton
administration has been negotiating with the Chinese government.
Enticing them to improve their human rights record, respect
international law, and reform their communist system of government with
lures of trade agreements, most favored nation trading status, and the
like.
Now, just as Taiwan celebrates its first fully democratic elections,
China has been "testing" its capability to fire missiles into Taiwan
and stepped up its rhetorical claims that Taiwan is not an independent
country, but a "rogue" province. Clinton has responded with a show of
military strength in the area, warning China that the U.S. would
likely come to Taiwan's defense if China attacked it.
Suddenly, all the progress made over the past couple of years on
improving relations with China has been called into question. Were the
Chinese ever really serious about human rights and economic reform? Or
were they just telling us what we wanted to hear so that we would give
them trade concessions? One thing's for certain, if the United States
does enter into a war with China over the independence of Taiwan, trade
agreements will be the first diplomatic casualties of the war. So
while Clinton has proved to be quicker than usual in deciding how to
respond to China's threats, he has at the same time undermined
everyone's confidence in the Chinese trade agreements. What company
wants to make major investments in China knowing that the United States
could easily find itself at war with them?
Bill Clinton's fundamental problem in both of these situations is not
so much that he failed to take action or did the wrong thing, but that
so much of his foreign policy strategy is based on the idea that
hostile governments can be led or coerced by economic incentives. In
the case of Cuba, 30 years of a total economic embargo has failed to
change Castro's mind about how to run a government and has failed to
generate any grassroots movement for change within Cuba. In the case
of China, doling out economic favors has failed to produce anything
from the Chinese except the tamest lip service toward to notions of
basic human rights or democratic self-government. Trade in goods and
services with the United States can neither be used as a stick to beat
on our opponents with nor a carrot to lead them down the right path.
Bill Clinton should stop trying. It just makes him look more like a
fool.
=======================
"Fantasy, abandoned by reason, produces impossible monsters; united
with it, she is the mother of the arts and the origin of marvels."
--Goya
==============================================
The Robots Are Coming! The Robots Are Coming!
It seems that every couple of years, there is a rash of news stories
about factory automation. We are treated to hordes of news stories
about how factory workers are being replaced by robots by this company
or that company. We see Japanese factories that are so automated that
they don't even have lights installed in them because the robots don't
need them. American car companies proudly show off their robotic
assembly lines in their car commercials. We hear about vision systems
being designed for robots. We see stories about how much more agile,
how much faster, and how much more accurate robots are. These news
stories are invariably accompanied with dire warnings about how the
boom in robotics spells doom for unskilled workers. We are left with
the question, "How will unskilled workers be able to support their
families?" I believe that this panic mongering is totally unfounded.
Robots are still quite limited to the types of tasks they can do.
Despite all the hype, robots are far from being general purpose
machines. They are designed to do only one very specialized, mostly
repetitive task. It's impossible for them to do anything outside of
that vary narrowly defined task. It is true that robots are becoming
more accurate, faster, cheaper, and more flexible. And jobs that are
literally repetitive motions and _nothing_ else will eventually be
mechanized as robots become more agile. But so what? Those jobs have
a very high "burn out" rate and high turn over. No one really wants
those jobs anyway, especially at low wage rates.
But does that mean there will be millions of out of work, unskilled
people roaming the streets? I don't think so. Not any time soon at
least. Most jobs that we think of as "unskilled" nonetheless require a
human touch, or at least are sufficiently engaging that an unskilled,
but conscientious worker can and would do a better job than any machine
could. I'm thinking primarily about a services type industries. Would
you want a robot for a receptionist? Would you rather a robot or an
enthusiastic person asking you, "would you like fries with that?"
Furthermore, I think you have to have a pretty static notion about the
concept of a job to think that machines will take over and replace
essentially unskilled labor. Job duties are always changing. There
are always unexpected events that must be dealt with. There are always
opportunities to demonstrate creativity, no matter how humble the job.
An unskilled, caring crew member at McDonald's acquires additional
value and "skill" simply by accumulating experience regarding the best
ways to run the restaurant over time. I'm not sure that machinery has
reached this level of sophistication yet.
I think there are lots of jobs that are sort of borderline between
being "unskilled" and "skilled." Take for example, a clerk in an
auto-parts store. Basically his job his helping customers identify a
part they need and then retrieving the part from the store's warehouse
if it's in stock. That much of the job could be automated. You could
probably even automate placing a special order for a part that's not in
stock. But a _good_ clerk will do much more than that for his/her
customers. A good clerk will know about all the competitors in the
area and will be willing to help a customer track down parts if his
particular store does not have them. A good clerk will know about
alternative options for finding parts in the surrounding area. Where
are the good junk yards? Who gives the best deals? A good clerk will
develop "inside connections" at the company's warehouse and will be
able to get special orders quicker than the official company policy
says is possible. If the hypothetical clerk learns all these things
over his tenure at the store, who can say he is not skilled? Who can
say he is not educated? A good clerk at an auto parts store will
transcend his humble position and become an "auto parts broker."
I don't think a machine has yet been invented that can replace a
caring, conscientious worker who has a good work ethic, no matter how
"unskilled" he or she may be.
=========================
The Politics of Hog Waste
June 21st, 1995. Onslow County in the eastern part of North Carolina.
25 million gallons of raw sewage is accidently spilled into the New
River. On the same day, in Sampson county, another spill dumps another
1 million gallons of raw sewage into river tributaries. State
environmental officials scurry around investigating and, by the end of
the summer, they have documented spills and leaks of raw sewage in
North Carolina totalling 35 million gallons, triple the size of the
spill of the Exxon-Valdez. How could this happen? Who's at fault?
Aren't there laws against this sort of thing? You might think that
answering these questions is simply a matter of following the trail of
muck up stream until you found its source. But you would be wrong.
The vast majority of the $35 million gallons of raw sewage was spilled
from "family farms" and almost all of it was hog sewage. And that has
made all the difference.
Hog farming has become big business in North Carolina over the past
couple of decades. Agricultural scientists and politicians have long
sought ways to vitalize the poor economic regions of in the eastern
part of the state and wean farmers off their key cash crop of tobacco.
They've tried to lure big industrial concerns to the area with only
limited success. They've tried to get farmers to grow other crops with
only a little more success due to the poor quality, sandy soil in the
region. But raising hogs has worked. North Carolina has literally
revolutionized the hog farming industry with high-tech, high density
contract hog farming.
High density contract farming has been around for a while in other farm
industries, most notably chicken farming. But one North Carolinian by
the name of Wendell Holmes Murphy, whom our local News & Observer
derisively refers to as "Boss Hog", adapted this farming technique to
hog farming and made himself rich. Other companies quickly followed
his model, setting up hog farms all over eastern North Carolina (now
known as "The Hog Belt"). Currently, about 7 million hogs per year are
produced on North Carolina hog farms and they industry is still growing
fast. The economic boon so many politicians had been looking for was
here.
In the old days of the family farm, you built a hog pen at the back of
your lot somewhere and kept a couple of dozen hogs in it. You fed them
feed you bought from your local mill supplemented with scraps and
refuse from your dinner table or local grocery stores. When the hogs
were fully grown, you loaded them on a truck and took them off to
market to be sold and slaughtered. The problem is that it takes
several years to raise a hog. If your hogs catch cholera and the
government quarantines your farm, you've lost your multiyear investment
in the hogs. And even if you are able to get the hogs to market,
there's no guarantee that you will be able to sell the hogs at a profit
since hog prices are quite volatile and it's difficult to know years
ahead of time what the prices will be. So a farmer doesn't really know
how many hogs he can afford to be raising.
Contract farming reduces the small family farmers' risks because the
farmer doesn't actually own the hogs he's raising. Instead, he signs a
contract with a corporate hog wholesaler like Prestige, Carroll's
Foods, Smithfield, and Murphy Family Farms, in which he agrees to raise
a certain number of corporately owned hogs on behalf of the corporation
in exchange for a fixed fee per hog. The great thing about this system
is that the farmer knows ahead of time just how much money he's going
to receive for the hogs. The corporations assume the risks of buying
and selling hogs in the commodities markets. That's what they're good
at and how they make their money. The contract farmer is responsible
for the capital investment in his farming buildings, machinery, and
land; but these are factors that are relatively fixed, fairly easily
predicted, and within the farmers' control. And even though these
farms are typically owned by an individual family, they are no longer a
"small, family farms" They are big operations. You can't just build a
hog pen on the back of your lot anymore and put a couple of hogs in it.
You have to build "hog confinement barns" which can cost in the
neighborhood of $300,000 dollars but are capable or raising thousands
of hogs at a time.
But farmers are flocking to this new system of farming because there
are big bucks to be made. A careful, efficient farmer can make pay off
the mortgage on his hog barns in 10-15 years and still make about
$10.00 per hour during that period. After the mortgage is paid off on
his barns, he stands to make big money. Of course nothing is
guaranteed in any business, but the risks are well within the norm for
any small business. Oh, and by the way. There's just one more tiny
important detail about the contract farmer's role in this system.
According to state law, since he is the one in charge of the actual hog
farming operation, he is also responsible for environmental safety
concerns.
It's amazing how often the economic interests of the state fall in line
with the economic interests of business. It's easy when they are
represented by the same people, as is the case with North Carolina's
hog industry. Not only is the hog industry one of the biggest
contributors to political campaigns in the state, the politicians
themselves are often also hog farmers. Lauch Faircloth is a hog farmer
by trade. Jim Hunt, North Carolina's Governor, is the biggest
recipient of contributions from North Carolina's largest hog company.
The chair of our State House environmental committee is going into the
hog raising business. The chair of the state senate's committee on the
environment and agriculture is the pork industry's biggest recipient of
campaign contributions. But no where is the collusion between the hog
industry and the government more obvious than the career of the man of
who is most responsible for North Carolina's hog farming revolution,
Mr. Wendell Holmes Murphy, founder of Murphy Family Farms and former
state legislator for 10 years.
During his tenure as a state legislator, and at the same time he was
growing his hog raising business, Mr. Murphy sponsored, lobbied and
supported a steady stream of laws designed to help the farming
industry. Equipment related to raising stock on a farm is exempt from
sales tax. Gasoline used in transporting livestock and livestock feed
is exempt from sales tax. Ingredients purchased for feed for hog and
poultry production are exempt from the 12 cent/ton inspection fee.
Feed and other supplies used in raising livestock is exempted from
county property taxes. "Bona fide" farms, including hog farms, cannot
be regulated by a county under it's zoning authority. This prevents
counties from dealing with issues like odors from the farms,
annexation, etc. Farmers, including hog farmers, are exempt from labor
laws, minimum wage laws, and vehicle weight restriction laws.
Are these favors good for Mr. Murphy's economic interests? Are these
exemptions good for the hog industry? Are these exemptions good for
farmers in general? Are these exemptions good for the economy of the
state? One can reasonably answer "Yes" to all these questions.
Lifting the burdensome taxation and regulation of the state is always a
benefit. (One wonders why we don't lift these regulations for _all_
industries) And according to North Carolina law, it's entirely
"ethical" for a legislator to lobby for legislation that would be
favorable to his economic interests as long as they can say that his
economic interest does not cloud his judgement.
What about protecting the environment? What about those 35 million
gallons raw hog sewage spilled into North Carolina waters?
Because of the way the law is structured in North Carolina, the owner
of the hog _farm_ is responsible for the environmental impact of his
operation, not the owner of the actual _hog_ itself. Though I don't
know the history of how this came to be, I think it's safe to assume
that this is not by accident. The farm owners are held responsible for
the hog waste specifically because they are the one who can least
afford it.
Next to his mortgage payments and his stock feed expenses, getting rid
of all that hog waste is the most expensive and difficult problem a hog
farmer faces. And we're talking about lots of hog waste. The average
hog produces twice as much waste as the average human. So North
Carolina's 7 million hog population produces roughly the same amount of
raw sewage that the city of New York does. If the hog farmer had to
process all that sewage in waste treatment centers just like cities
have to do with human sewage, it would be a huge addition to his
expenses. So the state government/hog industry has been kind to the
"small, family farmer." Instead of requiring farmers to process the
hog sewage and make is safe before discharging it, the state just lets
hog farmers spray the sewage on the ground.
This is actually a cheap, efficient, environmentally friendly way of
getting rid of the sewage. The ground absorbs the sewage and bacteria
break down the sewage into harmless nutrients that are good for the
soil and crops. The main problem is the unpleasant smell. But this is
usually done out in rural areas where it's not so much of an issue.
The problem is that too much of a good thing can also be bad. And this
is the case with the high density hog farms. The land can absorb only
so much sewage at a time and if you spray it on too often or too
heavily, nitrates begin to build up in the soil and eventually start to
contaminate the local water supply. And if you spray hog sewage on the
ground during wet and rainy weather, the ground can't absorb it and it
seeps directly into the water table before the ground can neutralize
the sewage.
For these reasons, the state requires hog farmers to build hog waste
"lagoons" these are open air pits dug into the ground that hold the hog
sewage until it is a safe or convenient time to spray the sewage.
Holding the sewage in these lagoons also gives bacteria time to break
down the harmful sewage before it's discharged. Some states require
that hog waste lagoons be lined with clay liners so that they don't
leak into the surrounding ground. North Carolina doesn't. Again
because that would be a burdensome expense on the poor, "small, family
farmers." In theory, the lagoons are self sealing. And in practice
they are self sealing most of the time, although there have been cases
discovered where old lagoons develop slow leaks over time. The state
carefully regulates how many hogs a farmer may raise on his land based
on the farmer's capacity to process the hog waste, i.e., the size of
his hog waste lagoons. And excess capacity for the hog lagoons is
always factored in to account for unusually long spells of wet rainy
weather when the farmer can't spray the sewage.
What the state apparently does not take into account for is the fact
that hog farmers are human beings, just like everyone else and are
therefore prone to delaying unpleasant tasks like dealing with hog
waste. As a result, some farmers let their lagoons get too full before
emptying them. If they get too full and then there is an unusually
long wet spell, they get dangerously full. This is exactly what
happened last spring. Some farmers had lagoons that were too full to
begin with and then we had an extremely wet and rainy spring. Some of
the lagoons got so full that their dikes collapsed, flooding the
surrounding area with millions of gallons of sewage.
OK. A farmer gets lazy. His lagoons get dangerously full. They burst
through their containing dikes, and dump raw sewage into streams.
What's the state going to do? Fine him? Sue him? First of all the
damage is already done. But more to the point, what good does it do to
sue a family farmer? He's already deeply in debt with his hog barn
mortgage and so there is no way the state is going to collect enough
money to pay for the clean up. You can put him in jail as punishment.
You could confiscate his farm. But the only thing you can do with a
seized hog farm is sell it to another hog farmer.
In an ideal world, you would expect that the people who make a profit
from the hog industry are also the people that bear the liability and
responsibility for the damages and risks of the venture. Every citizen
of the state is required by law to dispose of his own waste in a
environmentally responsible way by subscribing to his town's sewer
service. Many cities and towns across the nation even require you to
clean up your pets' waste and dispose of it properly. But this is not
an ideal world. The people responsible for writing and passing
legislation are also the same people who benefit, either directly or
indirectly, from the hog industry. So the one thing we _haven't_ heard
proposed amid all the recent hog waste scandals are proposals that the
hog _owners_ should legally be responsible for the risks and
liabilities associated with hog waste.
Instead we hear more and more proposals from the legislature about how
the state needs more power to regulate farm owners to make sure they
don't screw up in the future. The state needs more money to spend on
monitoring the hog waste lagoons. The state needs more money to study
the environmental impact of sewage seepage.
It's not hard to understand why the politicians are proposing a larger
role for the government in monitoring the hog farmers' activities as a
solution. Is it good for their economic interests? Yes, since the hog
owners won't bear the costs. Is it good for the farmers? Yes to a
degree. The likely result of closer state monitoring will mean that
they have to spend more time on waste treatment issues, but their
business investment in their hog barns will remain mostly intact. Is
it good for the economy of the region? Yes. The basic economics of
the industry will remain unchanged. Is it good for the taxpayers in
the state? No! Because they will be the ones who have to pay for the
expanded state budget. But wait. Convince them that this is good
sound investment in the protection of our environment and people will
agree that it's good for them as well. And that's exactly the way our
state legislature has approached the hog spill disasters. According to
the legislators, this is not a problem of legal liability being
misplaced, it is an environmental problem that can only be addressed by
increasing the state's budget to protect the environment.
Remember, the state says that a legislators' actions are "ethical" if
his economic interests in a matter do not interfere with his judgement.
If he can propose a solution in which everyone feels like they have
benefitted, how can anyone blame him for unethical behavior?
Whether you blame this shameful situation on big business or on big
government is mostly a matter of your personal political biases and
arguing about it doesn't get you any closer to a plan that will prevent
these disasters from happening in the future. Both are to blame. The
only solution is to return the responsibility and liability for the hog
waste back to the hog owners where it belongs.
================
Artists' Credits
(Obviously, the graphic art is not available in the ascii e-mail
edition of Stuck In Traffic, Nonetheless, I want to give credit to the
artists whose work appears in the print edition.)
Craig Moser: page 2
Craig Moser continues to make a strong showing in the Ottawa zine scene
since his first issue of Gunk mini comics made in 1993. In addition,
he puts out two other zines under his Ennui Project label: Sneer, a
personal zine, and Tom Murphy LameAss Funnies. Address: 36 Empress
Ave, Ottawa, ON, K1R 7E8, CANADA email:am795@freenet.carleton.ca trades
more than welcome
======================
About Stuck In Traffic
Stuck In Traffic is a monthly magazine dedicated to independently
evaluating current events and cultural phenomena.
Why "Stuck In Traffic"?
Because getting stuck in traffic is good for you. It's an opportunity
to think, ponder, and reflect on all things, from the personal to the
global. As Robert Pirsig wrote in _Zen and the Art of Motorcycle
Maintenance_, "Let's consider a reevaluation of the situation in which
we assume that the stuckness now ocurring, the zero of consciousness,
isn't the worst of all possible situations, but the best possible
situation you could be in. After all, it's exactly this stuckness that
Zen Buddhists go to so much trouble to induce...."
Contact Information:
All queries, submissions, subscription requests, comments, and
hate-mail about Stuck In Traffic should be sent to Calvin Stacy Powers
preferably via E-mail (powers@interpath.com) or by mail (2012 Talloway
Drive, Cary, NC USA 27511).
Copyright Notice:
Stuck In Traffic is published and copyrighted by Calvin Stacy Powers
who reserves all rights. Individual articles are copyrighted by their
respective authors. Unsigned articles are authored by Calvin Stacy
Powers. Permission is granted to redistribute and republish Stuck In
Traffic for non-commercial purposes as long as it is redistributed as a
whole, in its entirety, including this copyright notice. For
permission to republish an individual article, contact the author.
E-mail Subscriptions:
E-mail subscriptions to the ASCII text edition of Stuck In Traffic are
free. Send your subscription request to either address listed above.
Print Subscriptions:
Subscriptions to the printed edition of Stuck In Traffic are available
for $10/year. Make checks payable to Calvin Stacy Powers and send to
the address listed above. Individual issues are available for $2.
Archives:
Postscript and ASCII text editions of Stuck In Traffic are archived on
the internet by etext.org at the following URL:
gopher://gopher.etext.org/11/Zines/StuckInTraffic
Trades:
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your zine or ad to either address above.
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