Why does society need to pay $45,000 to glean FREE fruit?

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Fruit is falling all over Kamloops. It’s so sad to see all the fruit going to waste. But things could get more wasteful. The State could get involved!

I have been reading a essay called What is Seen and What is Not Seen by Frederic Bastiat. Bastiat says: “There is only one difference between a bad economist and a good one: the bad economist confines himself to the visible effect; the good economist takes into account both the effects that can be seen and those effects that must be foreseen.” He goes on to say: “the bad economist pursues a small present good that will be followed by a great evil to come, while the good economist pursues a great good to come, at the risk of a small present evil.”

So what does that have to do with $45,000 in public money for FREE fruit? Actually, quite a bit since there is a new gleaning project coming to Kamloops called the Gleaning Abundance Project. Using Bastiat’s method, I would like to show how this government gleaning project is wrongheaded.

Even though I completely support local food and local food security, both of these goals may be undermined by this government sponsored gleaning project. Bastiat would take an issue like this and say: “Let us accustom ourselves, then, not to judge things solely by what is seen, but rather by what is not seen.”

Here is what is seen:

  1. The happy homeowner has their yard clean for free of unwanted fruit.
  2. The happy volunteer gets free fruit for their volunteer labor.
  3. The happy volunteer gets free training in fruit picking.
  4. A few happy community organizations get free fruit.
  5. One happy Gleaning Project Manager gets a part-time job.

Here is what is unseen:

  1. The unhappy taxpayers pay for clean yards, free training, and fruit for other people. The unhappy taxpayers do not get clean yards, free fruit, or training for himself or herself.
  2. The unhappy taxpayers pay an unknown amount in tax. The government bureaucracy gets an unknowable amount from the unhappy taxpayers before the bureaucracy gives back a fraction of the money as a $45,000 grant for gleaning.
  3. We will never know what the taxpayers would have done with the money that went for taxation. If the tax money had not been collected by the government in the first place, the taxpayers would have spent the money on a multitude of voluntary transactions. Maybe the taxpayers would have bought food from a local farmer with the money. We will never know what the taxpayers would have done with the money if it hadn’t been liberated by the government for taxation.
  4. Local farmers may find their sales of fruit reduced. Farmers have a hard time competing against government subsidized “free fruit” flooding the market, picked with volunteer labor.
  5. What’s the true cost per pound of that government subsidized fruit? We will never know because government funded boondoggles never have to justify their costs. I can’t tell you the cost, but I can guarantee it won’t be FREE.

I’m all for local food. Reducing and eliminating waste is a personal goal of mine, but I don’t approve of using public money for such a cause. If the gleaning was done without public money and by volunteers, I would have nothing against the program. I would fully support the cause.

The government shouldn’t be spending public money on gleaning fruit. Leave it to the citizens of the community to organize themselves to collect the fruit, if they want to. Part of learning how to be self-sufficient is gaining skills by doing-it-yourself, not by having some government functionary doing all the thinking and organizing. Getting to know your neighbors is like developing an informal mutual aid society. Local food security comes from regular people building relationships with neighbors and changing the way they operate their household, not from a government functionary.

Leave government funding for public safety, honest courts, and protecting private property. Government needs to focus on these basic needs and leave more money in the pockets of taxpayers. By doing so, real needs of citizens will be fulfilled by the marketplace through voluntary transactions rather than wasting the productivity of citizens on government boondoggles.

In closing Bastiat states: “If you wish to create a government office, prove its usefulness.” I for one, am not convinced that gleaning fruit with government money is useful.

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Leave the tax money in the pockets of citizens. The State has no business gleaning fruit on private property. Let citizens solve the bountiful fruit problem themselves. This citizen is offering “FREE TREE TREATS” to anyone that passes by and it won’t cost the taxpayer $45,000!

“Let us never forget that, in fact, the state has no resources of its own. It has nothing, it possesses nothing that it does not take from the workers. When, then, it meddles in everything, it substitutes the deplorable and costly activity of its own agents for private activity.”
Property and Law by Frederic Bastiat