Beauty is Imperfection

(Originally posted Saturday, September 13, 2008 )

An article by Eric Rasmussen (as of right now, rejected by Forbes, Fortune and People magazines)

Why are your food prices so high?

This is a very tricky topic that will no doubt leave you confounded, but we here at “Beauty is Imperfection” would like to set a few things straight about the dire state of our food prices. It’s true, world demand, including that from the huge populations in China and India, increased consumption of meat (which raises the prices of feedstocks), the weak dollar, the huge demand for ethanol (made from corn) and the always uncertain weather are wreaking havoc on commodity food prices and they may likely remain at nosebleed levels for some time. What can you and your family do?

1) Don’t eat for a few months. While this might seem like a drastic measure, after a few months, it would lead to millions of tons of surplus that will inevitably drive down prices and put affordable food back on your family’s table.

2) Grow your own food on the side of the road. This is known in peasant and sharecropper economies as “usufruct.” It is a splendid way to show the world and speculators that you are self-sufficent and don’t believe in phantom concepts such as “the U.S. dollar.” When you tell them this, make sure to make those air quotes around “dollar” to show them how you are above their despicable currency.

3) Become a Central American drug lord. The best way to keep food on your table is to have a small army of peasants working for you as well as an armed caudillo of armed “recompas” to swipe land and make fluctuating commodity prices work in your favor and kill your enemies. Who knows, you might even fall in love with a beautiful peasant girl from the pueblo and make her your mistress.

4) Sniff glue. This is another fancy trick known well on the streets of many Central American cities such as Managua, Tegucigalpa and Panama City. As every 12-year-old street scamp orphaned by civil war knows, glue, especially that used in boot soles, is a totally awesome appetite suppressant.

5) Create a black market tent city operating in your fine American cities like Tulsa, Memphis, Houston or (best of all) New Orleans. This is your way of saying, fuck money, I use the barter system. In the magical world of black markets (why haven’t they come up with this at Disney World yet?) all sorts of food can be bought for just pennies on the dollar. This is because you have, in essence, created your own spot market right here on the streets of Topeka and you no longer need be part of the American “economy.” Again, use air quotes when you say “I am John Q. Public and I am no longer at the mercy of those money lending thieves in New York, Hong Kong and Tokyo.”

6) Move to a wealthier economy, like the one in Dubai, and send your family the money you make there back to the United States in the form of their dirham currency.

7) Blame Bill Clinton. He got a blow job in office and lied about it.

8 ) Blame George Bush. He invaded Iraq.

9) Blame tax and spend liberals. They have nothing to do with world commodity pricing, but at least blaming them makes you feel like you’re somehow knowledgeable and not just sitting there with your thumb up your ass.

10) Rally Congress to impose a consumption tax. If you haven’t abused poor people enough already, then this might finally be the thing that kills them.

11) Spend more time accruing wealth. You can do this by violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie.

12) Stop consuming more than you produce … because if if China and India consumed per capita as much as we did, it would take two and a half planets …. hey! Why are you throwing food at me?