Bees are under considerable threat
these days, and we are not sure whether it is due to one or two pathogens  or maybe to a complex series of
interrelationships. Two recent discussions of possibly very complex relations are in
Wired and  at Treehugger.  But that is ultimately a scientific questuon I have no expertise
on. 

However, today I read of another
threat to America’s bees and agriculture, this time coming from China.  Here I can offer some insights of
value.

China uses practices in its honey
production that are banned in this country, from antibiotics in their bees that
bleed into their honey to adulterants. 
In addition, America slapped high tariffs in Chinese honey.  Consequently China is using go-betweens
that seem to indicate the honey comes from other countries to get around
America’s blocs.

It’s all about profits of course.

At one level the story is about
criminal companies selling fraudulent products to other companies that market
it to consumers.  These other
companies may or may not also be criminals.  But this is not the most interesting issue, far from
it.  China is famous for producing
adulterated and poor quality products.

The real issue is ecological.

As the economics of domestic honey
production fail in the United States due to cheap honey from China, the
beleaguered bee and honey industry shrinks.  As a result of the “Miracle of the Market” we are told
production must shift to the most “efficient” producer. The logic that applies to producing socks also applies to producing honey.

But without bees American
agriculture will be unable to raise nearly as much as it currently does. Plants
need pollination and there are currently not enough wold bees to do the job and in many places the local ecologies are so disrupted there are unlikely to be.

Ah! More “Miracle of the Market” we
will be told.  The crops will be
raised in other areas where they are profitable, wherever that might be.

An Arbitrary Assumption

The logic of the market economy
doing good things assumes that all essential costs can be internalized.  To the degree they are not internalized, the innocent will suffer as aggressors
profit.  Economists tend to
emphasize the first sentence and ignore the second. This is especially
advocates of free markets – libertarians and such, and explains their visceral
hostility to so much environmental science.  Once costs are internalized, under fair conditions
everything will work out for the benefit of  all, but let’s not look very hard at our assumption that
costs are internalized.

This is hackery masquerading as
social science.  Here is what is
really going on.

Systemic Disconnects

Economies exist in larger and more
inclusive contexts on which they depend. In the human world economies depend on
laws defining property rights and rules of contract. How these rules and
definitions are decided will have an enormous impact on what is produced, what
is traded, and where things are made. This is why the rich and corporate
sociopaths spend so much time and energy making sure the rules are written not
to internalize costs but rather to impose as many of their own costs on others
as they can get away with.  Think
of our banksters as the most visible example. Once they’ve loaded the deck in
their favor they hire think tanks to praise “the market.”

But this human world itself exists
within a still larger context, that of nature.  Nature provides the context within which we make our living
and live our lives.  Often the
logic of the human world needs to be shaped to harmonize with the more
all-embracing logic of the natural world. 

Lets assume that Chinese honey is actually as good as American honey.  Does this change anything?  Actually no.  Because the main problem is not that cheap Chinese honey is destroying American honey producers.  The real problem is that so much in this country ecologically  depends on bees, and our environment has been so twisted by industry that minus the bee industry there will not be enough bees to pollinate American agriculture at its current levels.  The natural context outweighs the market but our system of laws and property rights ignores this inconvenient (for corporations) fact.

Harmony will not come about on its
own in any way that humans like because the human world changes with the speed of thought whereas the
natural world adapts with the speed of reproduction.  The human world works much faster than most natural
processes, but depends on the health of those processes to flourish.  This is the fundamental tension between
human beings and nature, and may ultimately destroy us. Prudence and ethics war with pure market logic.

Maintaining bees is one example of
this problem among a great many. 

Corporations, criminal governments,
and sociopaths do not care about the damage they do to the larger contexts
within which they live.  Destroy
the land and pervert the laws? 
That’s OK so long as their bottom line and power is enhanced.  By putting profit ahead of protective
laws and the even more important context of preserving strong natural processes
that enrich all of life, these companies and people are the enemies of all
humanity.  

This is why I emphasize over and
over again, ALWAYS buy locally produced food when reasonably possible and support producers and sellers as disconnected
from corporate sociopathy as possible. 
The point is not to bring these monsters down, we are far from that, but
to reward and encourage those people who do it right. They provide services to us all that are not reflected in the money price of their goods, just as corporate agriculture injures us in equally unpriced ways.  This is why Whole Foods
is not a long run solution to the problem of sustainable agriculture and a
healthy world.

If the American honey industry
collapses and our agriculture suffers, how many consumers will feel good that
they helped bring this about but saved a few cents on their honey?