Difficult pick
Cruz is showing some courage in continuing to stand against the ethanol subsidy. His position is correct for many reasons, but not for the reason he cites: "Government shouldn't pick winners and losers."

Sounds good, but in fact every government policy picks winners and losers. The proper question is HOW AND WHY we're picking. Are we picking solely for political party benefit, or solely to benefit a favored corporation? Or are we picking to satisfy a long-term goal of maintaining human capital?

On every national question I ask What Did FDR Do? Not what WOULD he do, because FDR faced the same problems we have now, and found a solution to most of them THROUGH EXPERIMENTATION. We have REAL ACTUAL FACTUAL DATA about all important questions, not just my stupid extrapolations and assumptions.

Turns out FDR was against the '30s version of ethanol, called Agrol. And here it gets difficult for me, because my other two heroes were the strongest pushers of Agrol.

According to this account, Henry Ford was a major advocate of Agrol as part of a larger project called Farm Chemurgy. He saw Agrol and soybean-derived plastics as ways for farmers to produce more, and presumably as new and controllable sources for products his company needed. GW Carver was also for Agrol because his life goal was to find new uses for farm products.

Why was FDR against Agrol? He was looking toward long-term stability of farm markets. Anything that caused farmers to OVERPRODUCE corn and soybeans would drop the income of GOOD farmers, and would bring quick-buck operators, speculators, and BAD farmers into the mix. He was in the middle of SOLVING the Depression and Dust Bowl, direct results of overproduction triggered by Wilson's WW1 government programs. Didn't need a new source of overproduction.



So. All three of my favorite people. Two are for it, one against. Have to go with FDR on the basis of long-term purpose. Ford's purpose was self-serving and corporate. Carver's purpose was unfortunately obsolete. He wanted to make Southern crops more profitable to increase employment of Southern blacks, but Ford had already accomplished the latter goal, making Carver's solution unnecessary.

Labels: Asked and answered, Carver

  ¶ 2:03 AM