Sunday, March 23, 2008

A Free Market Square

Just recently the town I live in is nearing completion of a new and expanded court building slash jail. While it is very pretty to look at I can't help feeling its only going to be of use to the criminal element among us. So, when do the rest of us get something we can use and benefit from? I'm not all that sure of how the funding is done to put up stuff like that but I do have a suggestion that I think makes some sense. First, let me digress a little.

I'm sure that by now everyone has associated the rising cost of living with problems associated with the dollars fall relative to foreign currencies. As of this writing I think the US dollar is now something like forty percent of the Euro. So that means for everything we buy that is an import (like some gasoline) we have to pay forty percent more than our European and Asian friends. That increased fuel cost also directly impacts other markets like plastics, transportation and fertilizer costs, for instance. Pretty soon this all trickles down to the good old supermarket and opps there goes another rubber tree plant. Ahem.

OK, so it doesn't take a genus to see that prices of a lot of things (including groceries) will be going to rise for some time to come. While most of us cannot do anything about the price of meat or how much we're going to pay for TP we can get out there and grow some of our own vegetables in our own backyards. While this is a good thing in the short term, it also generates some difficulties. One of the big problems has to do with diversity. No one family can grow all the vegetables needed to round out the dinner table. Some crops like corn need large plants in order to germinate properly. Other crops like melons, just require a lot of space.

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