I wrote Monday that I intended to write a blog post about inertia, the way even conservatives, when confronting an institution that has existed for a very long time, often overlook the merits of the case and simply except its age as an argument for its validity. This is not always the case, many conservatives still rail against the Federal Reserve, for example, but there are many cases where, "we always did it that way" or "it has always been there" is accepted as proof of validity. Just raise the possibility of making education entirely private and you will see what I mean. Granted, part of that is because constant propaganda has convinced people that eliminating public education will mean only the rich get an education, but in part it is also because public education is simply very old and very familiar.

However, this is not that post. Instead, this post is the description of a fortuitous accident. As I mentioned in my last post, after sleeping at my desk I found I actually had time to browse Townhall for the first time in several days. In addition to the pundits, I also examined some of the news stories, and, while glancing through those stories I came upon one which perfectly illustrates this inertia. Not so much in the story itself, but in the likely reactions individuals will have tot he story, especially given the way it is presented.

The story itself concerns removal of millions of acres from a federal program which pays farmers not to farm. The ostensible reason is to prevent soil erosion¹, but clearly it has also been used as a sop to various other constituencies, undeveloped land appealing to environmentalists, reduced food production, and consequent higher prices, pleasing the farm lobby².

What interests me is that this program is the quintessential welfare handout. Yes, it goes to "productive" people not layabout slackers and mothers of herds of illegitimate children, but it is still nothing but a handout. The government select farmers and then pays them to do nothing. Conservatives should be thrilled that land has been taken out of this program, we should be eager to see more removed, or the program discontinued altogether.

Yet, I have a feeling many will not rejoice.

A small part is because it is an Obama initiative (though from the article it may have been put in the works by the previous administration, it is hard to tell -- though I am sure Obama's people will manage to blame Bush when he speaks in farm country). Given the tendency of both the angry left and angry right to try to find something to criticize about any project proposed by their opposite number. So, as this is Obama's program, I can see some on the right trying to blame him for impoverishing farmers or something similar.

Then again, I think that will be only a very small minority. Most on the right who will find fault with this program will be those how buy into what I have dubbed "The World's Oldest Myth". That is the belief that farming is somehow a special profession, with special needs, requiring special government attention, and imbuing farmers with a special moral virtue. It is an old myth, having been supported by several otherwise brilliant men, such as Jefferson. But it is still a myth. Farming may have a long production cycle, rely heavily on credit, provide an essential good, and so on, but those are true of many other fields which manage to exist without government subsidies. Nor are farmers any more moral than anyone else. Farmers may have provided most of our soldiers int he past, and provided the armies of Athens and the Roman Republic, but they also provided the armies of the Roman Empire, Communist Russia and Prussia, not to mention the "viking hordes" that terrorized Europe for quite some time, so farmers can obviously be evil as easily as good. (Let us not forget the Nazi fascination with "blood and soil", which would seem strange were farmers somehow endowed with a mystical innate store of virtue.)³

Nor is the sob story provided even all that much of a sob story. A fellow in his eighties has been taking money from the federal government for years and is finally cut off. So he faces either having to farm or to sell his land for many, many times what he paid for it. I know it sounds sad, but there are many other farmers in their eighties who have to farm or sell their land and we don't cry for them. Or for the small business owners in their eighties who have to go to work every day. And this fellow has seen massive appreciation of his land. At eighty-something he could likely sell it all and live on the annuity income for the rest of his life, leaving the principal to his family. That is a better deal than most retirees get from social security, where they lose their wages to get an annuity without any principal payout at the end.

However, regardless of the objective situation of the individual profiled, it does show how these programs can maintain themselves, regardless of their virtue.

First, because they have been around for some time, there are people who rely on them, and sob stories to offer about their demise. It is the same problem I have when arguing for allowing a recession to run its course, people mention that "unemployment hurts real people", as if destroying the economy through more inflation won't hurt anyone. But the problem is, they have concrete sob stories to show, while I ahve only theoretical damage in the future. Granted, inflation today may hurt ten times as many in a few years, but they can show a real person today, and so inflation wins and prudent retrenchment does not. (See "The Inflation Engine", "Explaining Past Crashes", "A Thought on the Clinton Surpluses")

Second, they have "benefits" to show. The article is full of "good stuff". Preserved wilderness, grouse populations, taking food off the market to prevent a glut⁴, and so on. (Basically committing the fallacy described in Bastiat's analogy of the broken window, see "Passing Thought on Green Energy", "War Stimulates the Economy? Let's Nuke San Francisco!", "Jobs, Jobs, Jobs, and More Jobs" and ""Fair Trade"" for other examples.) This means that any effort to do away with these programs has to show a benefit greater than those, and, as any benefit is speculative, it just won't carry as much weight. So not only does the benefit of discontinuing have to outweigh the supposed benefits, it has to far outweigh them, several times over.

Lastly, there is the argument "we have done it this way for years and no one has been hurt". And many accept that as an argument. And since I can't show you all the things that were not bought, all the businesses not opened, all the new technology not developed, all the lives not saved because of the money spent on paying farmers not to farm, it is hard for me to dispute that. We can never know what was not done because money was appropriated by the state. All I can do is point out that private venture produce much better than state ventures ("The Inevitability of Bureaucratic Management in Government Enterprises"), and, more significantly, people who do produce make more than thsoe paid not to produce, but somehow those seem to carry little weight with those convinced the current situation is harmless. And so it takes much more, usually a major disaster, before an existing plan will even be questioned.

But, as I said, this is not my post on legislative inertia, simply thoughts on one example. The full post is coming later, and will contain quite a bit more detail than I gave here. So please check back as I will be treating this subject in much greater detail.

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1. I will cover this in more detail in my Bad Economics post on farm subsidies, but is there any logic to paying farmers to prevent soil erosion? Does someone pay you to not burn down your house? Or to maintain your car? Farmrs whose soil erodes lose the value of their land, so it would seem they would have an interest in doing it themselves. Paying them to follow their own self-interest makes very little sense to me.

2. I will not go into this here, but it is bizarre to hear the article decry "grain glut", as less than a year ago we were suffering form high food prices due to a grain shortage. It does show how short lived most such phenomena are, and cuts the legs out of the article's argument. After all, the present glut may make such land unnecessary, but if it were one year ago, it would have been sorely needed. So who is to say next year whether the land will be needed or not? (Not to mention that the government continues to press for us to substitute more ethanol for gasoline, so it is likely grain demand will continue to rise for that reason alone.)

3. For some reason, paleo-cons and other protectionist "conservatives" seem especially fond of farm subsidies. (See "Misplaced Blame and A Power Play" and "Beware Populist Deception") I tend to think of paleo-cons not so much as conservatives, but as 19th century Republicans, but as the mainstream dubs them conservatives, their beliefs tend to be ascribed to the rest of the conservative fold, which is regrettable. (See "The Political Spectrum " and "I Am A Conservative But...".)

4. Still puzzled by that "glut" just a year after warnings that we were facing world wide famine. Does no one have any memory in the media? (See "Solving High Food Prices", "A Future Topic" and "Biofuel Question".)

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POSTSCRIPT

For those interested in the topic of inertia, as I said, a post will be coming in the next few days. In addition, the topic of farm subsidies is going to be covered in great detail in an upcoming installment of my "Bad Economics" series. I will deal not only with payments to leave land untouched, but with import quotas, buy-back programs, all manner of price supports, subsidized loans, disaster relief, flood insurance and the rest. So if you are curious about my thoughts on farm subsidies, please check out the blog in the days ahead.

For those who found this post interesting, I would suggest an older post on a related topic, the obsession with small businesses shown by politicians of both parties. ("Small Business Fetish")