Wednesday 16 March 2011

One-Sided Equations: The $200 Hamburger

Here is a classic case of lefty one-sided economics, and unfortunately the pratt is British. Forget the enjoyment you derive from your burger, forget the billions the fast food industry contributes to global economies, forget the happy faces of willing consumers.

Just count as many costs - however debatable - as you can and deride the reactionary capitalist pig-dogs. Still, books will be sold and many will be utterly convinced, but only if they think that 2+2=, err, 2.


Good grief.


13 comments:

Ben said...

Why is he talking about hamburgers? Isn't his calculation applicable to what HE eats everyday, too?
The answer is easy: bash the "fast food" industry and you increase your audience, no matter what you say.
Cheap, very cheap!

Dick Puddlecote said...

Ben: Lefty food is magic food because there are no externalities in producing it. Mung beans, pine nuts and oats are zero-lefty-rated. ;)

Swainson said...

What is the dollar value of his book? Need an industrial society to do that; Need an education system so people can read it.

Why can't people think about what they say instead of spewing nonsense.

What a cock

Mark Wadsworth said...

Well I wouldn't pay £200 for a burger, but then again I wouldn't pay £2,000 for a football season ticket or £20,000 for a new car.

If others want to spend their money this way, good luck to them, they are not harming anybody and certainly not me.

Sam Duncan said...

It's the way he says it all with a straight face.

But I always thought the market was bad because it put a dollar value on everything. Now it's bad because it doesn't? I wish these Lefty nutjobs would make up their minds.

Christopher Snowdon said...

I'd never heard of this guy before and I was happier that way. After two minutes listening to his stupid crap I think I hate him as much as I hate anyone in the world. Who is this twat? What's he talking about? Why can't he keep his head still when he talks?

Christopher Snowdon said...

Ooh, look, he's got a blog which looks to be a rich source to seam when the fisking runs dry. http://rajpatel.org/

Everything this man says is galloping bollocks. The first post I looked, for example, at told me:

"Over centuries, societies developed the tools of grain stores, crop diversification and ‘moral economies’ to guarantee the poor access to food in times of crisis. International economic liberalisation discarded these buffers in favour of lean lines of trade."

Because we don't have grain stores or crop diversification any more, do we? I don't know what he means by a 'moral economy' but I'm not sure the idea of pre-20th century societies being structured so as to stop the poor from starving quite stands up to the historical facts.

Woodsy42 said...

What a pillock! Where do they keep coming from?

Budvar said...

Pretentious claptrap at best.
He's as "British" as Joanna Lumley is Indian!!

Angry Exile said...

No, he's quite right. We should ban anything with externalities. Er... that's more or less everything, isn't it? Form an orderly queue for the renewable energy powered death chambers.

Cunt.

Anonymous said...

He can speak this way. He obviously believes he owns the Earth®. [I’d like to see the ownership papers]

Anonymous said...

He is just a symptom, there have always been idiots and madmen but in saner times the only publicity they would get, if any, would be ridicule.

With luck saner times will return. The correction could be very interesting.

English Viking said...

I've found that the best way to deal with these sorts is to punch them in face.

Very hard.