Thursday, April 19, 1973
University Daily Kansan
KANSAN comment
Editorials, columns and letters published on this page reflect only the opinions of the writers.
Demand's the Thing
Soaring meat prices have been the subject of many discussions lately. The American public has been clamoring for a solution and the Nixon administration, in turn, has responded to the noise by imposing a ceiling on the price of meat—hardly a solution.
It is obvious that the administration has again discounted the elementary concept of economics commonly called the law of supply and demand. Under this law, when the demand for any product exceeds the supply, the price that must be paid for that product rises until the demand declines. Simple.
When demand is high (hence, the high price), producers look for ways to increase production. They do this in hopes of increasing profits. When enough producers strive to increase production, the market inevitably will become satisfied, thus, lowering the price of the product. Still simple,
Why, then, is the administration imposing a price ceiling. If there is no opportunity for prices to increase, then there is no reason for them to adopt a bullish attitude. They will keep the supply of meat small.
Let's look at the real reason that meat prices are high: demand. The idea that the supply of meat is being controlled by a group of corporate
farmers must be put from our minds. The reason that the demand is exceeding supply is that Americans are eating more meat today than they did 12 years ago. In fact, since 2005, the pounds of beef a year per capita. Today, they consume almost 115 pounds of beef a year per capita.
With the recent harsh winter now behind us, we are now able to assess accurately prospects for the future. Harsh weather killed almost 200,000 Colorado cattle. That's two million pounds of beef that will never get to market this year. Recent flooding has damaged millions of acres of farmland used for growing high grade feeds for cattle. This indicates that the beef supply will continue to stay at its present low level.
The solution to this problem is not imposition of a price ceiling by the President, a reduction of meat consumption or substitution of other food products in the public. Consumers also could pay the price and stop grubbing.
Eventually, when meat prices decline, our financially strained public can return to the problems involved in purchasing new televisions and making payments on third cars.
John P. Bailey
Nicholas von Hoffman
WASHINGTON - How great a disturbance would there be in authoritarian socialist revolution? Not a big one. In a couple of months most of us would have made our ad-
The Revolution of Laissez-Faire
We're already accustomed to having our government fix a maximum and minimum wage. The rules that govern refinements in which the administration is proposing a law that would set various minimum wages for various age groups. We've seen more regulated can you get?
No, a revolution of this kind would find Haldeman and Ehrlichman and Kissinger at their desks the next morning with Ziegler explaining that the revolution represents another great step for mankind. All would have to do is that government services would continue to deteriorate at an increasingly rapid tempo.
But a laissez-faire revolution would have vast and traumatic consequences. Just think, peddlers would reappear on the streets of Paris competing bus lines to choose from AT&T? would have to fight
for its customers as everybody else does; yesterday's glamor conglomerates like LTV would probably declare bankruptcy; the first qualification for holding a job would be your ability to do it; there would be several million unemployed government workers who would be staring the camera with honest tailily in the face; there would be no welfare program and no Pentagon.
That is the disturbing world that Murray Rothbard, the far, far-away bishop of liberalism, polemist, now recently published book, "For A
"IT'S TIME YOU PULLED YOURSELF UP BY YOUR BOOTSTRAPS!"
Readers Respond
Tallgrass Park, Cooper Concert, Bibles
To the Editor:
Tallgrass
A Flint hills native, I am writing in opposition to the proposed "Tallgrass Prairie Acres" to compress 60,000 acres in the Flint includes parts of Butler, Chase, Lyon and Greenwood counties. In a time of high meat prices, taxes, taxes, taxes, and an increasing emphasis on ecology, it seems ironical and contradictory that nearly one-third of Kansas is landset be set aside for a "park."
With the high demand for beef and consequent high meat prices, it seems ridiculous to reduce the amount of grazing pasture land available to supply beef. And it does not matter how many Americans to possess the large unbroken area of natural grassland in the world, and then
From an economic standpoint, one must consider that the Flint Hills and the bluestem grasses support beef production on a small scale of tables. Although Kanaas is known as the ranking wheat state, the value of livestock usually exceeds the value of wheat. In Kansas ranks fourth in the nation for number of cattle produced.
to set aside 60,000 acres of this for enjoyment while one-half of the world goes to bed hungry at night.
Besides reducing our already short supply of beef, no more could be gained from income or property taxes if a national park were made. Only more money would be saved and to "preserve" the park.
I agree with E. Raymond Hall that "tallgrass is an endangered species", but the danger to the prairie comes from man and not nature. The loss of habitat generation to generation this area has been well preserved by cattlemen for this is their livelihood. The limit Hills now have grasslands, a remnant of the prairie. There are no highways, signs or main roads in the proposed park area. There is not an unusually mass of trees, a vast range and no network of sewers and cesspools underground.
which whip the prairie and bow the "tallgrass" to the ground along with no natural lakes, what to warrant a national park? to warrant a national park?
The proposed park could only bring more and bigger roads, bridges, picnic tables, outdoor shelters, utilities and plumbing to the prairie. All of these modern conveniences would only rob the city of its natural beauty and solitude. Have we, in our desperate attempt to preserve nature, forgotten what a primitive, wild and uncultivated condition really is? Mr. and Mrs. Edward A. G. Grass
ar. and Mrs. Edward A. Gross
2436B Redbud Lane
Morbid
To the Editor
Dave Stringer's review of the "Alice Cooper Show" started quite promising, when he remarked that "the crowd ate up the violence, devoured the sexual perversion, gorged themselves on the insults, burgled and asked for dessert." After the opening paragraph, however, he lost interest and stopped of a show as one can read them every day about any show performed.
What he did not mention was that the "Alice Cooper Show" represented a classic example of a rather disappointing psychosociological phenomenon of a morbid society.
primitive kind of exhibited violence.
The only explanation I have is that under the pressure of capitalistic University training programs, he outfit for his-her aggressions, which pile up under the steady imperative of having to be the best. The "Alice Cooper Show" has a purpose of sublimation well.
Alice Cooper has probably recognized this weak point of the human mind. He is diving into the depth of America's frustrated soul and comes up with his mouth full of billion dollar bills.
One may think of Alice Cooper's music as one may wish, and it is not my intention to insinuate that I am so far as the action on stage is concerned, it seems extremely digusting to me that the same melody is repeated casually condemned the Vietnam War, now adores the most
Now, is this an example of a clever businessman or just a very sad instance of the intellect of the American teen-ager? As for myself: I would not let anybody sit on me.
Bouner Springs Freshman
Barbara O'Brien
Bouner Springs Freshman
Nancy Newby
Topeka Freshman
If Cooper truly "loves the dead," we suppose that at least he enjoyed the concert response. We found it embarrassing to sit in the unresponsive crowd. The answer to this problem may lie in not giving out free tickets, but because Alice Cooper talked to went only because the show was free. All of this added up to making Alice Cooper's "Billion Dollar Babies" concert a billion dollar disappointment.
Gideon Bibles
Donna McCrink
Lawrence Graduate Student
Wolf-Berend Reuter
up with were "dead babies." The Kansan's preview, although influential, was a sadly misrepresentative. the only 58 students we were saw in the front rows. Cooper's performance was superb, and although he repeatedly attempted to get audience response, it seemed as if he was waiting to a house full of dead people.
Editor's Note: Below are three of approximately 22 letters sent to him from many students. The Sunday school class of KU students. The letters unanimously supported by the Gideonus on campus by the Gideonus.
No Live Ones
New Liberty" (Macmillan, $7.95). For a nation that long since traded in laissez-faire in exchange for the hope that government controls and permanent inflation can flatten the boom and bust of the business cycle, this is a book of new ideas about how to shape the right wing of standard-brand American politics now stands.
education I have found the Bible to be a source of wisdom beyond human understanding, and it means more to me than the books I've ever read put together. It is relevant to my life today, and it is relevant to my life just as it has been relevant to millions for 2000 years.
I believe no college student should consider his four years in college an education until he has investigated the New Testament. "express my thanks to the Giver," our concern about total education.
Alice Cooper thought he had a "live one," but all that he ended
Karalee Larson
Athol Sophomore
To the Editor:
I think the Gideon Society is to be commended for the service it paid to the KU campus by students to interested students.
To the Editor:
Newsbrake's First Coming
I would like to express my support of Gideons International for its distribution of New Testaments on the campus April
Oposition to distribution of the Bibles is ridiculous. The Bibles are characterized by freedom to pass out literature. The generosity and conduct of the Bibles provide freedom in a most positive way.
Rosemary Taylor Lawrence Special Student
To the Editor:
Throughout my college
★ ★ ★
To the Editor
I am writing this to support the Gideon men who passed out several thousand Bibles April 11. The Bible has helped many people, and its distribution should not be hindered from helping many more. If someone objects to the Bible, let him pass his own Bible will prove to be more powerful than any other literature.
One of Rothard's best, new ideas is to shut down the police departments of America. As almost anyone who's tried to call us can tell you, it's not unuseless. About the only way you can get one is to tell the operator at headquarters a cop is being murdered. Then they'll come. If you tell the operator that you're the one being murdered, you'd be right, and the sadist who'll take three-quarts of an hour to polish you off.
In place of tax-supported bandits in blue like the chaps who made off with dope from the actual French Connection, Rothbard would allow people to use the money they saved on bribs, extortion and taxes to hire private police. Where that does leave poor people? No worse off than they did in fact, because least they wouldn't be paying for the protection they don't get.
Barbara Schmedemann Overland Park Freshman
—Christopher Casey Caldwell (Copyright 1972, Christopher Casey Caldwell)
As it is, more and more people are depending on voluntary citizens' patrols or private police for protection. Something on the order of $1.5 billion, about half of which are copers, is now being spent on private police. The public ones simply can't spare the time from shaking down bookies and pot smokers or paddling in helicopters to do what they're asked to Ask Senator John Stennis.
Rothbard would go even further. He's sell the streets to neighborhood groups, cooperatives, and so forth. In that way, commercial cops who really would be subject to community control would be surprised what cops are supposed to do but they'd be operating on private property so they could keep anybody out the owners didn't
want around. Rich people already live that way in communities where you must get clearance with the cop at the gate before you can drive in. There is a proposal, if we owned our streets, we might get them repaired and cleaned every so often.
Circling nearer and nearer,
the moment's eagle—
gone rabid?—
snarls on high.
Scanning angry-gaited waters
he himself has roiled,
he would claim his target
the source of the turbulence.
Still too small to see,
still too small to hear,
he betrays high purpose
with dark reflections
of shackles borne.
Fetters and quills,
their stuff is of iron.
Yet inevitably,
the first only scar
where the latter must heal.
He who would forge truth,
rather than obey its mold,
pays an intemperate price
in passion's mercurial heat.
And every shield called privilege
has two sides, though unseen:
Responsibility blindly forsworn
engraves a ticket to doom.
For claws seeking a vortex
reap only a whirling grave,
in the blush of the riptide
and the crimson arrival at gravity.
A sweeping out of our criminal justice system is also on the libertarian agenda. Inlaunch as there would no longer be a state, crimes that longer punish criminals by putting them in good what does the do the victim? Rothbard proposes returning to the ancient system which placed the emphasis on corruption. Crook or people or steal their property would have to recompense their victims in money or labor.
Because Rothbard considers all taxation an offense in itself, we would have no Pentagon and therefore no foreign policy to get at the bureaucracy. We would complete free trade, travel and cultural exchange. Many people would regard that as isolationism because it envisages relations with the rest of the people of the world. The more traditional principle than naked force. The more traditional Buckleyite conservatives who worship the armed might of the centralized, liberal corporate state will retain their rights under anarchism, but for them Rothbard has an answer:
"What conservatives are really saying is; 'Better them dead than Red' and 'Give me liberty or give them death—which are the battle cries not of noble heroes but of mass murderers."
If Rothbard's free enterprise is more than you can take emotionally, a minute do. The trains run on time now! Will Hasn't his attorney general argued that the President's aides can hire any number of scoundrels or burglaries and that no court will enforce any court of law can compel them to answer for their crimes?
(C)
Washington Post-King Features Syndicate
Kansan Telephone Numbers
Newroom-UN 4-4810
Business Office-UN 4-4358
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Griff and the Unicorn
By Sokoloff