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ike comments on Politics: an undervalued opportunity to change the world? - Less Wrong
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Comments (43)
Why is raisin policy important?
The most usual complaint I see about the raisin reserve (and yes, it does come up every few years...), is that it is unfair to farmers. The government seizes "excess" raisins from the farmers, and pays them back "if there's enough money".
Wikipedia has a good article on the issue.
Edit: Well, I should have read the article in its entirety. Apparently they just repealed the reserve earlier this year.
It's a waste of government money to keep a raisin reserve.
Plus, it increases the price of food. The net effect is a transfer of wealth from poor people to agribusiness that grow and process raisins..
How much waste? This seems like a very insignificant thing to focus on. How much of a waste would it need to be to qualify as "important"?
It's a tiny slice of the huge agrar budget. Criticising individual parts of it is a way to fight it.
Criticize the large slices, if they're unneeded. Don't criticize the small ones as a way of getting people to not like the large ones (if this is an uncharitable interpretation, tell me).
The raisin policy by itself isn't particularly important. However as an example -- which got to the Supreme Court -- of unchecked Federal government power, it's quite important.