by frog
I don’t really like the idea of royals, especially when they use their unelected power and profile to comment on democratic political issues, but that shouldn’t prevent me quoting them approvingly when they say something I like eh? 
So Prince Charles has got the genetic engineering world in a bit of an uproar. Some British scientists reckon that Prince Charles’ response to genetic engineering is ‘showy‘ ‘misses the point’ and is ‘morally indefensible’
Meanwhile John Vidal at the Guardian says the prince’s words simply:
echoes Third World Network and Via Campesina, the world’s two most authoritative farm analysis groups, and is aiming at global agribusinesses which dominate the food chain, and controls seed supplies, chemicals, and food processing as well as transport and retail sales. He also echoes Food Matters, a report from the No 10 Strategy Unit, which recognises that the agribusiness model of food production based on global competition has failed to deliver.
I wonder if the prince was all fired up because he just heard about the AgResearch application for genetically engineered animals. If so, maybe he’ll be making a submission.
Published in Environment & Resource Management | Video by frog on Thu, August 14th, 2008
Tags: , farming, Frog, frogblog, Genetic engineering, green party, new zealand, Prince Charles, science food
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
I’m with the prince. What number is he on the party list?
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yeah man, royal power – it’s still happening!
what is a “democratic” political issue as compared with any other political issue?
if it is an issue in which a temporary majority might override the rights of all mankind for now & the future, is it a “democratic” issue, or one in which any constitutional means to delay change & promote further reflection before taking irrevocable steps, including monarchy, would be welcome?
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The same Prince Charles who supports homeopathy: I think we can safely ignore anything he says.
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Sorry Andrew – all political issues should obviously be democratic. all I meant was that royals are welcome to have their say as private citizens but their views should not carry any more weight with the media and politicians than anyone else’s views.
Personally I think democracies tend to act with more urgency and concern for future generations than non-democratic monarchies, but that’s obviously just an impression, rather than something I could back up.
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Oh one further thought – In P.J. O’Rourke’s book “All the Troubles in the World” (definitely worth a read) he writes that there has never been a famine in any country that’s been a democracy with a relatively free press. Assuming that’s true, that would indicate that democracies are more fleet-footed responding to crises than other forms of government?
But now we’re well off track on this thread, sorry.
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“there has never been a famine in any country that’s been a democracy with a relatively free press.”
The word missing is “yet”.
If the die-off doomers are right, there will be lots of democracies with relatively free press that will experience famine.
I think his observation is more along the lines that relatively rich countries have lots of food, and can afford to be democracies and can afford a relatively free press. When your main concern is where your next bowl of rice is coming from, which is typical of places that today experience famine, you are less inclined to worry about how democratic your government is, nor to you get to see the results of the press, be it free or otherwise.
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Mo that’s just O’Rourke confusing democracy and capitalism. There has never a famine in a capitalist country. It’s fuedalism, tribalism and communism where you find all the famines.
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toad, but it is false, if you define famine as large scale starvation through lack of accesable food then there has been one in america for decades. the advantages of a market system and democracy though are that you can distribute wealth and thus food over a wider distance, so the effects of the famine are still very real, just hidden in side streets as they die living in cardboard houses. but then again america doesint have a free press.
Theres always india though.
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there’s never been a famine in a democratic country?
I recall reading a study that compared India and China, and concluded that the free press in India had effectively prevented famines by embarrasing the government into acting. But it also concluded that China had succeeded in getting rid of endemic malnutrition, while this problem continued in India because the media ignored it because it wasn’t news (if it’s always the same people starving, it’s not news).
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kevyn,
so you haven’t read Grapes of Wrath? Not to mention the fact that under British (free-trade) colonialist rule, 20 million Indians starved to death. According to a British statistician, in the two millennia prior to 1800, there was one major famine a century in India. Under British rule there was one every four years. Not to mention the Irish potato famine where Ireland at the time was a net EXPORTER of food.
Both Ethiopa and Malawi were encouraged by international “development” agencies to remove supports and subsidies to their small farmers prior to their famines in a bid to “liberalise” their agricultural system. .
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If you define famine as large scale starvation through lack of accesable affordable food then Sri Lanka, a democracy, is there today!
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# Strings Says:
August 14th, 2008 at 3:18 pm
> If you define famine as large scale starvation through lack of accesable affordable food then Sri Lanka, a democracy, is there today!
If you define it that way, there is. It’s important to distinguish between famine, which is epidemic hunger, and endemic food shortages that lead to malnutrition but not mass starvation. The former does not happen in democracies (though it may happen in colonies of democracies), but the latter happens just as much in democracies as in dictatorships (once you adjust for wealth levels).
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Sleepy, What I was inplying was that capitalism and democracy go hand in hand. India under British didn’t have either. Britian did, but only in rather primitive forms.
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“Personally I think democracies tend to act with more urgency ”
but do we want government to act with urgency, or deliberation & reflection? particularly in the case of irrevocable change i’d say the latter.
or it could mean that such countries had constitutional protections against the sort of rash action which can lead to those problems in the first place?
more research would be required if we are to draw any conclusions.
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After the global warming famines get here, which is not too far off into the future from what i can gather, we’ll find out how good democracies are.
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Good point pp!
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kevyn,
“Sleepy, What I was inplying was that capitalism and democracy go hand in hand. India under British didn’t have either. Britian did, but only in rather primitive forms.”
lol. hardly. Great Britain had one of the highest developed forms of capitalism in the Imperial Age. What it lacked was the influence of socialism that the libertarians would say “tainted” social democracy and the free market economy of New Zealand since the Liberal government of the 1880s-90s.
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