Listening while driving sometimes equals learning. Yesterday I learned that quinoa and acai, trendy superfoods, were discovered and exploited by Americans touring foreign countries. Those foods are now very popular, those Americans are very wealthy, and locals who relied on those foods for nutrition are selling it all overseas and relying on less healthy choices at home. Local farmers aren’t even getting rich–richer maybe, but not rich–since the Americans who market the products “control” their sources to keep profits high.

Capitalism: Godless, yet worshipped.

I couldn’t find any any foods native to America that we can no longer get because foreigners are outbidding us. The US has shortages of labor, lumber, blood, teachers, truck drivers, and housing, but not food. Maybe someday nascent marketeering tourists from elsewhere will exploit blueberries and pumpkin seeds to our detriment. More likely, first world member countries can’t be outbid, period.

An economics-major friend once opined that trade should be free because goods are better than money. He demonstrated using a thought experiment in which America ends up with none of the money but all the things: things to drive, things to eat and to cook with, things to wear, things that entertain, things to furnish our homes with, things to read, things to play and listen to, things for sport and recreation, and all the other things.

I had to think a while to find the fallacy, but I’m pretty sure the fallacy is that these things would not be distributed equally. I shouldn’t have had to think so hard because we’re partway there today, with a large trade deficit and boatloads of things, the nicest and most useful of which accrue disproportionately to people who have the most wealth, who are pretty much never the people who work the hardest or do the most valuable work, which includes work to protect our planet and its non-human creatures.

Happy Earth Day!