Prices climb for ag land and infrastructure

I have blogged before about rising prices for agricultural land.  The trend continues, with FRB/Chicago reporting(pdf)  that, as of Q2 2011, farmland prices in its area (Iowa plus most of Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Indiana) had risen 17% in a year, and 4% just since the prior quarter.  This trend, of course, reflects an increasing amount of financial power invested in (and therefore inclined to defend) the goverment’s destructive ethanol incentives.

What’s new, to my knowledge, is investment by speculative interests in grain elevators. While elevators aren’t exactly a monopoly like farmland (farmers lacking reasonable elevator services have in some cases built their own), they’re certainly a tool that can be used to squeeze profit without producing or providing useful service.  The source article implies that the investment is simply a function of increasing storage prices (without explaining what caused the prices to increase), with no intention of storing grain to manipulate prices.  Americans wouldn’t do that, would they?

Land Economics and Ownership– cancelled

I am back to the blog, after a series of computer difficulties and travel distractions. I could have resumed earlier, but had (still have) too many things to write about, so I waited for something simple and outrageous. And here it is.

What two products, planned for the 2007 U S Census of Agriculture, have been cancelled?  One is a report on acquaculture.  The other? Land Economics and Ownership.  One inclined to conspiracy theory might say TPTB are trying to prevent folks from learning the truth.  I would tend more to think it’s a product of ignorance, no need for conspiracy. I wonder what the report would have said.

 

 

Does Accurate Forecasting Get Attention?

No, not particularly.  CXO Advisory Group did a little study, comparing the accuracy of forecasts made by a number of investment  “gurus” who they monitor, to the magnitude of google searches.  Based on a couple of different formulations, there was basically no relationship. Of course google searches would be only one measure of fame, and CXO’s way of measuring accuracy isn’t the only reasonable one, but still it is not a surprise.  If I made accurate forecasts, I could prosper with only a few subscribers, who I might charge a high price and ask not to talk about me much.  But if my forecasting record is mediocre, I would want to get as much publicity as possible, because I would need to constantly attract new subscribers.

Tho no surprise, this is not good news for geoists.  At least investment advice can be measured in a more-or-less objective way.  But geoist reforms are in an arena where there are always extraneous factors.  You might get your local tax policy exactly right, for instance, but this could be overwhelmed by an unwise investment in, say, an incinerator.

Producing electricity from waste heat

The general concept of using waste heat from one process as an energy source for another is quite old, but this report says that some University of Minnesota researchers have figured out a practical way to generate electricity from it. It involves a new alloy which changes magnetic properties when it’s exposed to heat. Of course I have no idea whether it’s practical, or even whether some patent troll will step in to exact a fee for its use.  It will be interesting to check back in a year or two and see what has become of it.

And let’s remember, it was publicly funded (fortunately completed before the State of Minnesota suspended operations)

Funding for early research on the alloy came from a Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) grant from the U.S. Office of Naval Research (involving other universities including the California Institute of Technology, Rutgers University, University of Washington and University of Maryland), and research grants from the U.S. Air Force and the National Science Foundation. The research is also tentatively funded by a small seed grant from the University of Minnesota’s Initiative for Renewable Energy and the Environment.

(No, I don’t know what “tentatively funded” means regarding completed work.)

This is your technology.  Don’t let the big guys take it away from you.Famous photo, unless it has been relocated

Sun Yat-sen “deeply inspired” by George

Georgists claim Sun Yat-sen, founder of the Chinese republic, as one of us.  But I could never find anything in English-language books to support this assertion. So it’s good to see this article from Focus Taiwan News Channel, about an exhibition on “Sun Yat-sen and the United States.”

[Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou] noted that Sun, when he drafted his political philosophy, was deeply inspired by Henry George, a renowned American political writer of the 19th Century, as well as Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg address of 1863.

 

Are San Franciscans fatter than Chicagoans?

Many have complained about cattle-car conditions aboard CTA trains, exacerbated by the few, small, and uncomfortable seats. The newest 5000-series cars are probably the worst in this regard, as nearly all the seats are longitudinal, so, if you manage to snag a seat, you’re stuck in a 17.5″ space with cta-rider-bodies on each side of you.  If you’re only 17″ wide (including your arms, unless you detach those for transport), you’ll fit OK provided that you remain quite stationary. And altho the total number of seats is said to be the same as was provided in the 3200-series cars, that’s fewer than any earlier models.

Not that CTA conducted any surveys or hearings prior to deciding on this seating configuration.  For comparison, consider BART, the Bay Area Rapid Transit serving north-central California. Their seats are 22″ wide.  Riders have indicated a willingness to cut that down to 20″, but no further. How does BART know this?

Because they conducted a survey. They took some seats around and asked folks what they thought. They also provide comparisons to seats in other cities, as indicated on this pdf.

Perhaps this has something to do with the fact that the BART board is elected, not appointed.

Have CTA apologists anything to say here?

 

Farmland owners profit by returning to suburbs

As the housing market tanked a few years ago, of course the price of farmland “ripe” for housing crashed along with it.  Meanwhile, many investors, noting impending food shortages and low interest rates, bought farmland in rural areas.  Now, no surprise, they’re selling their rural land and using some of the cash to again purchase suburban farmland, at the much lower prices. The profit, of course, is in buying and selling land, not producing anything.  I am grateful to Mary Ellen Podmolik for her article in the June 19 Tribune, which provides some details.

Banksters vs. Patent Holders

The Capitol Hill site Roll Call reports that a proposed bill would make it harder for holders of “business process patents” to sue banks which they claim are infringing.  Frankly I do not understand the details, what a “government review of the patent’s validity” means, since I thought patent examiners review all applications before a patent is granted.  An opposing lobbyist is quoted as saying “This is nothing less than an earmark for big banks disguised as a new government program.”  One presumes that bank lobbyists have something equally cogent to say, but somehow that didn’t get into the article.

Unfortunately, it seems very unlikely that both sides could lose this one.

Heartland podcast seeks government action

Heartland Institute publications and web pages usually position it as anti-government, or at least pro-less-government-than-we-have-now.  But their podcasts are a bit less controlled, sometimes just providing an interesting take on something we might not have thought about (There was a great one about “how much does the Burning Man Festival have to pay for insurance?” that seems to have disappeared from Heartland’s site).

Now we have one insisting that the government needs to break the Google monopoly and vigorously enforce “privacy” laws against Google. The mp3 of this interview with Scott Cleland, author of Search and Destroy: Why You Can’t Trust Google Inc is here.

Cleland seems to want government to protect us from the threat that Google is.  I agree that Google can be a threat, as they really do want to organize all the information about all of us, and seem to be pretty good at it. But I think the real threat will happen when Google and Government merge.  Until then, we are probably best advised to use the good cheap or free alternatives to Google’s services, and to work without signing in to Google to the extent possible.

My own experience with Google Adsense, btw, occurred when trying to buy some traffic to the Henry George School web site.  People concerned about “poverty” might be interested in us, so I tried that keyword.  The problem was that most of the news articles Google coded as “poverty” were about crime and criminals.  So I excluded some words, I think it was “gun”, “police,” and a couple others.  Adsense failed to recognize these exclusions.  On one of the google discussion groups I found other people who have experienced similar problems.  Eventually, Google said something to the effect of “if you want to keep advertising with us you’ll have to pay more money per hit.”  I guess we would have had to pay enough to justify having a Google Human get involved, and that was too expensive, so the project was put aside.  The dollar cost was modest but the benefit was more modest.

The limits of Econned

Over the years, Naked Capitalism has provided a fine, if discouraging, play-by-play of the worsening corruption of our financial and governmental powers.  Dense daily posts, plus links to relevant news stories, supported by thoughtful and knowledgable commenters, makes it one of the few sites I really ought to read daily. (Cute animal pictures are a bonus.)

When chief blogger Yves Smith published Econned: How Unenlightened Self Interest Undermined Democracy and Corrupted Capitalism, I was anxious to read it. Which I finally did over the last couple of weeks. Continue reading The limits of Econned