Locavores vs. Local Economy
In his article here, Steven Dubner tries to argue against local food, in favor of the globalized food chain we have today. His argument seems to be that we can all have the best products in the world - not to mention the highest economic output - if we pick and choose from the best producers without regard to geography. He, and the person who apparently inspired the post with her question, illustrates this by relating two failed attempts at producing goods locally instead of buying them. His attempt to make sherbet resulted in an exorbitant amount of money spent on a not-so-good result. Then, there's the friend of the woman who inspired the post, who tried to make a dress for herself, and wound up spending something like four times as much on a product with a crooked hem. Therefore, we must support the economic efficiency of globalism. It's clearly the better alternative.
But consider: what experience does Mr. Dubner have with producing ice cream? What experience did the other woman have with making dresses?
Obviously, the learning curve associated with producing for ourselves limits the number - and quality - of goods we'll be able to make for ourselves in our lifetime. Obviously, we wouldn't all have the ability to dine like we could in a five-star restaurant every night, or wear the trendiest clothing every day. But to say that this definitely means we should support the massive supply chains that envelope the globe today is to miss the point. Dubner's argument is that specialization produces a better product cheaper, and that this has been happening for "a long, long time." Sure...I'd say it dates back to the first civilization, when some people could be spared from producing food permanently so they could produce other things. Those people definitely would have climbed the learning curve for that trade farther than their peers, and the result would have been a better product. For various reasons - maybe because they could deal in higher volumes for raw materials - they could have produced a cheaper good to trade for food as well. It's been this way for something like 10,000 years, I imagine, because that's almost as long as we've had agriculture.
And, for most of that history of specialization, economies operated at a mainly local or regional scale. Only some specialty goods were traded around the world. The presence of specialization in the economy doesn't mean that economy cannot operate locally. Nor does a mainly local economy necessarily lead to malnutrition or inferior products. They may not be as cheap, but there are other reasons to watch out when you use price as the sole basis for your purchasing decisions. The price of strong ethics and human rights are externalities in most economic systems, and the regulations limiting them are viewed as a drag on the free market system by many corporate types.
This term "externality" is actually an interesting one; it means any unintended and unaccounted-for consequence of an economic activity (see here). Maybe this is harsh, but to me it seems that too often that term is used to describe something that economists, who live in a world of numbers and formulae, can't put a number on. So, they ignore it. The health and environmental consequences of pouring carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas is seen as another externality; as a result, no coal-burning utility pays a carbon tax for the damage they cause, and none of us pays a carbon tax on the gasoline we use in our transportation. But, it doesn't mean we're not causing the climate to change, or putting billions of people at risk.
Of course you or I couldn't produce all the goods and food we need to survive, especially in a modern world where nobody else even attempts it. But a community with that desire in common could make a pretty good stab at it, with some people growing livestock, others fruit and veggies, still others dresses and other clothing, etc. We could have good, local sherbet if someone opened up an ice cream shop that used local dairy (Silas and Maddy's in Lawrence and Olathe, KS produce their own ice cream). This could be any community, gradually replacing goods imported from corporate suppliers and retailers with local alternatives, as they continued trading for the rest for the time being. Year by year, the community could keep a larger portion of that economic activity local, and reap the economic multiplier offered by the recirculation of that money back through the community. Perhaps best of all, you'd have a good idea of where goods came from, and how they were produced. In most cases, you could probably talk to the people who made them.
I'm betting it would be a far more vibrant community than Steven Dubner is willing to admit.