I think that is enough, I am tired of your self-serving and lying waffle, the lot of you. Please go out and join then party that suits you – the Conservative Party.

At least in the c19th we had genuine liberals like Cobden and Bright who actually did practical woprk to alter the pattern og ownership through vehicles like the National Liberal Land Company (now British Land plc and about to be taken over by the middle east money by the sound of it.

You are right to say that the “money men” will argue and argue, but actually most of them are supporting Obama in order to get cosy contracts in the new system, just as they always have done. Something that is at the very heart of he libertarian criticism of the sort of protectionist state we have now.

Do you not understand it is because of the state’s very existence that these people have a body they can lobby to protect their interests? I despair.

Right, Charlotte, so you say here that things like more land for small-holdings, and better wages for agricultural workers are a complete change from what 19th century liberals stood for?

Well, let’s look at a REAL 19th century Liberal, Jesse Collings:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Collings

Here we can find that what you claim is a travesty and an abandonment of what 19th century liberalism was was actually at the heart of their appeal, it was what REAL 19th century Liberals were all about.

Or, take this one:

http://www.thepotteries.org/advert_wk/013.htm

Here we have a REAL 19th century Liberal arranging for the purchase of land from public funds for public ownership and public use. Something you’d denounce as evil socialism.

So, Charlotte – you have been caught out. You and your fellow “liberatarians” love to pretend you’re just keeping alive 19th century liberalism when you are not. You have NONE of the humanitarian instincts and pragmatism and support for public services that were at the HEART of 19th century liberalism. When you say that is what you stand for it is a LIE.

You stand for a very modern philosophy invented by money-men and fools. You just try to give it more credibility by pretending it’s “19th century liberalism”, while at best it just takes part of what those people were saying and distorts it. As we have seen in the US and the debate on health reform, the money-men will lie and lie when it comes to defence of their power, and the fools will cheer them on because they know no better. The ultimate aim is to destroy democracy, the power of the “ballot in our hand” which REAL Liberals have sung about since the 19th century, and instead put power in the hands of those with money, defending the rich staying very rich and so enslaving the poor, which was what REAL 19th century Liberals were against.

So, I like your question. What happened to us?

But as to the “market” versus “planned” debate I have to disagree on so many levels with Adrian.

The planned approach is what the World Bank and IMF used to create these national monocultures that serve only the interests of the global commodities buyers rather than the countries that promised to undertake them in order to get aid money.

It is a fundmantal lack of recognized private property rights in most lesser developed nations that for example enables governments to flog off wholesale millions of acres to the Chinese or other foreign businesses that lobby them, often throwing real growers meeting a real local need from their own land in the process.

The market is the forum in which much swifter adjustments will be made. Market instruments allow commodities buyers to hedge future prices and give longer term indicators that expectations are for specific shortages or surpluses that may need tactical measures to avoid two or three years down the line. And it will be the market that can direct investment into research on new methods, higher yielding lower impact crops and so on in reaction to those price signals. The state reacts only slowly to price signals, if at all, trying to cherry pick potential winning technology developments because they haven’t the alacrity to fund all investigations to get a market lead.

Tesco may have a plan, and like any company it involves satisfying shareholders, but it is also in a fiercly competitive business and cannot satisfy its shareholders if it does not deliver the right mix of value, choice and quality to its customers, together with often rapid change to adapt to market signals – both consumer and supplier.

I don’t personally particularly like the big retailers, but as much as anything else their own position has been protected and enhanced by the state – land use preferential terms, regulation of producers so that many cannot achieve the sort of superficial quality that makes it onto the supermarkets’ monopsony buying patterns, cheaply available (road) distribution mechanisms because of the lack of charging for externalities of road use, lobbying for EU “standardized” definitions of what constitutes acceptable for sale and so on.

In so many other areas, such as health, education, housing, welfare, states have signally failed over the years to produce consistently high standards in the necessary quantities. To extend that to food is asking for a return to Malthus’s J curve!

That’s the sad part. You have no idea how irrational these ideas are. They really are mad. They are a denial of all we know regarding economics, agriculture and so on. It is as if somebody declared they would feed the nation with a magic cauldron that fills itself, then attempts to disquiet disagreement by saying, “what’s so mad about that?”

Do you think Tesco doesn’t have a plan? You bet, and it’s for more than five years and it isn’t about supplying food to you and me – it is about extracting as much as possible from our pockets, regardless of our ability to pay or the effect on society.

There is a fundamental difference. Tesco do indeed try to plan, but their plan has to work, because otherwise their business will fail as customers go elsewhere. A state plan is under no such constraint.

Tesco do indeed seek only profit. That is why we can trust them, and know they are reliable. Their motivation- the desire for profit- is clear and honest, and thus their behaviour is predictable. Give me a person who wants my money, because I know how to deal with them. Give me a person who purports to be seeking some greater good, and I know not what they will do, except that it is unlikely to achieve any greater good.

Tesco can only make a profit if they have goods available for sale. If the shelves are empty they cannot sell anything and make a profit. Ergo, I know that as long as they are profit-seeking, they will do everything in their power to fill their shelves with goods they desire me to purchase; and furthermore I know they will seek to supply quality goods at the lowest price they can, to prevent me taking my custom elsewhere. This is a very good thing.

Last year our local water supply was infected with cryptosporidium and rendered undrinkable. The next day I went to Sainsburys (that’s like Tesco, sort of) and it was full of people seeking bottled water. And there were stacks and stacks of bottles of water, brought in specially because Sainsbury knew they could make a profit on it.

If you want plenty, make sure the profit motive is free to direct selfish human beings in the right direction. If you want starvation and shortage, ask experts to make a plan.

And on farming… you need to understand that smallholdings are woefully inefficient. That’s why we have big industrial farms. The back to the land movement has been seeking to turn us all back into peasants for over a century, but the fact is it is a lousy, labour-intensive, low productivity way to produce food. It’s one reason taht the Third World is so poor- because subsistence farming is crap. It is hugely wasteful of labour that could be off producing PCs and TVs and iPods and the other joys of advancved civilisation.

Your misty-eyed ruralist utopianism is a demand for widespread poverty, susceptibility to famine, and a crash in living standards back to the middle ages. “Wild-eyed year-zeroish” doesn’t begin to describe how mad these ideas are.

Let’s ban airbrushed photos of food as well and formulate a 30-year plan for Traktor Production.

One thing is for certain – the market won’t be the mechanism to provide a just or smooth response. And that is why changing to a more planned (not necessarily centralised) approach to food security. What’s wrong with plans anyway? Do you think Tesco doesn’t have a plan? You bet, and it’s for more than five years and it isn’t about supplying food to you and me – it is about extracting as much as possible from our pockets, regardless of our ability to pay or the effect on society.
There is much a Government can do, and much that used to be familiar Liberal policy: Individual food production by expanding allotments; fostering support to small farmers as opposed to providing every support to large profit-seeking supermarkets.

There is nothing so wild-eyed year Zero-ish about any of this. I am appalled by the comparisons with “collectivist mass death events” and the Government’s (inadequate) concern about Britain’s future needs.

Consider these words, though you might like to take something to chew on as you read this extreme leftwing tract:

“Few recognise that after the year 2,000, shortages of food, raw materials and energy will mean drastic changes to our lifestyles.

We also need a co-ordinated approach to the needs of food production and conservation of natural wild life which recognises their interdependence. We therefore propose:

Fundamental reform of the Common Agricultural Policy to produce competitive prices, avoid structural food surpluses and encourage efficient farming; the creation of a Land Bank to help new entrants to farming, and the expansion of co-operatives.

More land for small-holdings.

To raise the guaranteed minimum earnings for farmworkers.

Radical reform of the Common Fisheries Policy, conservation of fish stocks and a fifty mile exclusive limit for each member state within the EEC.

Increase the number of abattoirs to EEC standards to discourage the export of live animals.”

Far more interventionist and controlling than anything muttered by Hillary Benn, isn’t it? Who was it? Who uttered these words of frothing Sovietised centralism? Stalin? Pol Pot?

You will, of course, find these, word for word, in the Liberal Party Manifesto of 1979. Clear, far-sighted, concerned, radical, co-ordinated, and well aware, 30 years ago, of what we now face.

What happened to you?