Take a re-read of that post from me to you on another thread about how we came to have all these decades of cheap food.
I'm not trying to support the government interference in our food market, the same result may very well have been achieved in some other fashion. BUT, for those decades the consumer was clearly the winner.
The problem, as I see it, is that now those birds are coming home to roost, as the crop markets haven't been entirely rational since the 50's.
With the government continuing to tinker, juggling an irrational energy policy with a somewhat irrational food policy, we have a terrible mess, nearly all of which is irrational.
This is going to continue to be painful, and very expensive. It didn
Right, and the taxpayer and the farmer were the losers. That's what happens when the government gets into the act. It is a zero-sum game because the government does not add value. They just redistributes the wealth.
Frankly, when I read your other post, I wasn't sure if you were being sarcastic or not when you were talking about our skilled bureaucrats.
Managing an economy should not be done by a centrally planned authority like it was in the Soviet Union because, even if the managers are honest (they never are) no human could possibly do the accounting properly because of the myriad details and complexity. The Soviets came to realize that and they had hope that computers would save the day. But, as we see with climate models, a computer is no better than the data, formulas and assumptions given to it by programmers.
The best way is the free market.