Returning to his fixation on corn farmers in Illinois, <b>bob droege</b> on November 28, 2011 at 4:17 PM perseverates: <blockquote>Alright, imagine if you will, what an Illinois landowner and farmer would say,
“If you do not want to buy the corn at the market price to feed the hungry, then it will be turned into ethanol. If you buy enough of it, then it won’t be turned into ethanol.”
Rich, have you ever heard of the free market?<blockquote>
Why, little <b>bob</b>, I've not only heard of <i>"the free market"</i> but I've learned Adam Smith's lesson that there's nothing in <i>"the free market"<i> (by which is meant a market free of violent coercion directed at forcing outcomes according to political priorities) which has ever guaranteed anybody preservation from the consequences of his own decision-making.
If that <i>"Illinois landowner and farmer"</i> fails to judge the market for his production - or, more likely, gets suckered by government goons encouraging him to spend his time and his capital growing a crop that wasn't going to find market demand capable of compensating him for his expenses, much less getting him a profit - just what in your way of thinking about "<i>the free market"</i> gives you to conceive that somebody else - <b>any</b>body else - has an obligation to bail him out?
I wouldn't mind at all if your corn farmer in Illinois were to sell his corn to a manufacturer of ethyl alcohol, provided of course that there's no taxpayer subsidization involved to make profitable for him or for his customer a transaction that <i>"the free market"</i> wouldn't otherwise make remunerative.
Heck, I wouldn't mind if he shucked his corn, mashed it, fermented it, and distilled it into unadulterated potable ethanol himself. I'm for doing away altogether with the federal excises on spirituous beverages. The way things are going under your TelePrompTer-in-Chief right now, increasing numbers of us could do with a cheering cup. Or six.
I suspect that listening to Barry burble for the next eleven months will require a little medicinal alcohol, if only to mitigate the nausea.
But as for your hypothetical farmer who somehow grew corn for a market where the real demand was piddlin'-to-nonexistent (not that real farmers tend reliably to screw up that badly), have you ever heard the expression <i>"Your lack of planning does not constitute my emergency,"</i> <b>bob</B>?
And with that understanding of what <i>"the free market"</i> actually is (and what it emphatically is <b><i>not</i></b>) we continue with <b>bob droege</b>'s noise: <blockquote>Now, who is a willfully ignorant, unthinking fascist, contemptible putz, schmuck, and utter ignoramous spouting pointless crap with unthinking sheer callous visciousness?</blockquote>
Well, if it weren't for the fact that it'd get this post of mine censored off the board, I'd say that you've just proved that it <b><i>has</i></b> to be you, <b>bob</b>.
But, of course, I'm not saying that.
I don't really need to, do I?
Finally, we finish up with <b>bob</b>'s callous indifference to the suffering of other people a whole buncha miles away from Illinois (where those whom <b>bob</b> consider <i>real</i> people live and work and farm the good earth): <blockquote>Yes and I think that the revolution in Libya and free elections in Egypt are a good thing.</blockquote>
Not saying good for <i><b>whom</b></i>, of course, are ya, <b>bob</b>?
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<blockquote>The highfalutin aims of democracy, whether real or imaginary, are always assumed to be identical with its achievements. This, of course, is sheer hallucination. Not one of those aims, not even the aim of giving every adult a vote, has been realized. It has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.
-- H.L. Mencken</blockquote>
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