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Originally posted by Lurch@Sep 9 2004, 08:37 PM
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The lousy ones eventually disappear as the economics of farming force larger and larger operations . . . . and the land remains under tillage regardless. The land doesn't miss the lousy farmer at all.
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Interesting opinion, given your views on the NHL business situation (which has lost no teams, I might add). Protection for billionaire owners and throw farmers to the wolves!!
As for the trade aspect of your thoughts, it definitely reads straight out of a macroeconomic policy manual in a free trade world. However, IMO, I don't see this being a sustainable relationship with the US b/c I think their borders will grow much stickier over the next 25 years, both for economic reasons as well as geo-political ones, i.e. terrorism. As such, I think we will need to show a willingness to engage in the same type of trade tactics as the US - should we initiate a trade war today? Of course not. However, I do think the Canadian government needs to start putting incentives in place to reduce our dependance on raw good exports to the US, or else the US will put those same incentives in place all at once at some point down the road, only they won't be incentives so much as trade barriers. It's still going to hurt when it happens, but contigency planning is much easier before the event actually happens. Unfortunately, I see none of this happening.
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A sure fire way to get a farmer to get a sly smile on his face is to point out that while a farmer might go bankrupt, the land he leaves behind in bankruptcy usually becomes more productive in his absence as someone better takes over.
The wheat still grows. They know it.
We lament the loss of the small farmer but his passing is only important in other ways, say the money he might have spent in the grocery story in the small town he's near. That's where the negative impact lies.
In terms of the NHL, its a matter of how important a value is placed on the weakest link in a business within a business.
It was only ten years ago, in the 1994 lockout, that Mr. McMullen of New Jersey said: "To hell with small markets!!"
Yet we see in sports that anti-trust exemptions recognize that the relationship between franchises is not the same as the relationship between one farmer versus another.
The most profitable sports league in North America, the NFL, values the Green Bay Packers, the team most likely to disappear if it had a dog-eat-dog system of survival of the fittest.
We're probably at the point where a similar value will be placed on Pittsburgh and Calgary in the next CBA. If hockey were farming, both would disappear, the players distributed to New York and Toronto.
Cowperson