Free speech on the web
“Anyone who has thought about developing a Web site to gripe about a company owes Michelle Grosse some thanks. The U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati ruled Friday that the Canton woman did not violate the law when she used the name of Lucas Nursery and Landscaping Inc. for a Web site she created to complain about the Canton nursery. Paul Levy, staff attorney with the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, said the ruling bolsters the fight by consumer groups to stop corporations from snuffing out free speech on the Internet.” (03/06/04)
Via” Rational Review
Comments are off for this postWeekly linkage
The first out of the dock is BestofMe Symphony which is contained in a Heinlein theme. Heinlein is a favourite author of this particular blog and of at least two members of the band.
The latest torch-fest is burning brightly over at Dan’s.
The Carnival is dancing away chez Aaron’s.
Damian reports on so-called anti-fascists behaving like the SA when confronted by Alan Dershowitz.
And finally this bit of lunacy from UNICEF: LAST YEAR A MILLION CHILDREN DIED BECAUSE OF TRADE. You will be happy to hear that Terrance, the person who saw the poster, resisted the temptation to break the window on which it was attached.
Comments are off for this postChewy Chewy
I hate doing taxes. Every now and then I have to take a break and look at pictures of beautiful women. Made from chewed bubblegum. Really.
Via Dave Barry.
Comments are off for this postTo What Useful Purpose ?!
When you manage to irritate and upset both the bureaucrats and the peta-pseudo-persons with the same broad stroke, then there is something really, really, really wrong. And how stupid this little move is, anyway; just another big bobble from Brussels! The €uro-weenies have really gone overboard with these demands for excessive testing.
Comments are off for this post“Fair trade” won’t help overseas poor
“Fair trade” won’t help overseas poor, says ASIreport.
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‘Fair trade’ is doomed to failure, according to a new report published today
by the Adam Smith Institute in the middle of ‘Fair Trade Fortnight’.
The fall in coffee prices, the Institute shows, has been caused by a 15% oversupply in coffee production. It is a market response to excessive production, rather than evidence of corporate wickedness. More efficient techniques and improved technology may cause prices to fall further.
Those who advocate prop-up pricing schemes such as ‘fair trade’ may have the
best of intentions, but they will probably encourage the less efficient
producers to keep at it, maintaining the over-supply. What farmers should do, suggests the report, is to diversify into other products. Instead of a token gesture such as paying a few pence extra for a cup of coffee, we should be opening our markets to their goods, and cease selling subsidized crops in competition with theirs on world markets.
Not only this, but author Brink Lindsey points out that schemes to help coffee producers adapt to market realities fare much better than ‘fair trade’:
“Activist campaigns to browbeat roasters and retailers into carrying products that consumers don’t want are doomed to end in frustration. Far better conceived are the efforts of groups like Technoserve that work with farmers and help them move into high-quality, speciality coffee production.”
The report concludes:
“Symbolic victories, however, are the only kind that this movement [‘fair trade’] is likely to achieve. There is a limited market of politically motivated purchasers who will purchase fair trade coffee – as well as organic and shade-grown coffee – because they approve of how these products are made. But the overwhelming majority of consumers buy coffee on the basis of how it tastes – and how much it costs. And the fact is that the quality of fair trade coffee does not justify its higher price.”
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