Markets and GMO

There is one overarching argument in favor of labeling.

Markets work best when buyers and sellers both have full information.

We believe in markets; we must therefore label products accurately.

Published in Boston Globe

Efficient Markets and Food Labels

You are wrong to endorse the voluntary disclosure of Genetically Modified ingredients in the food we eat (Labels for Controversial Ingredients. New York Times, November 8, 2013: A28).

The underlying condition for effective markets is full information.

Consumers need to be told in order to make an informed choice. That is what the free market demands.



Sent to New York Times

Republicans and Oil Proces

April 28th. 2006
Sent to but not published in the New York Times

Really these Republican Senators are flip-floppers of the first water (GOP Senators Hurry to Quell Furor over Gas, New York Times, April 28, 2006, page: A1).  For years they have been preaching the virtues of the discipline of the free market.

Now that the free market in energy has reared up and bitten them, they are singing a different tune: roll back or suspend gasoline taxes, government checks to consumers, and drilling in the miniscule oil reserves in the Arctic Refuge.

Unfortunately they do not propose repeal of the market distorting subsidies to oil companies, nor do they support better market distorting subsidies like those for the development of sustainable energy or improvements in mass transportation.

If we are to have market distortion, let us at least have the right kind of market distortion!