There is definitely truth to this. If you do not wash your teeth regularly, or do not floss on a regular basis, your state of oral hygiene may become so bad that bad breath will ensure that you have no friends. You will then become forlorn and fall into deep depression…
However, as I couldn’t care less about the state of your gums, you may have worked out already, being the free trade fan that I am, that I would be concerned about an equally alarming situation but of a different ilk.
If bacteria throughout the world were ever to act in a concerted fashion against us, then humanity would be wiped out by, errrr..the day after tomorrow. Their combined cohorts of E.Coli, MRSA, Gangrene, Acne, and halitosis would make short work of our stress-weakened immune systems in no time. It would therefore make perfect sense for us not to provoke the bacteria into attacking us. That is because we have recognised a long time ago that a lot of bacterian life is actually quite beneficial to us. They help us digest our food, ferment our wine… And some bacteria are downright enjoyable! Take cheese for example. It is bacteria heaven and very edible, unless you are one of the chic elite who suffer from some trendy ailment such as cheese or gluten intolerance, in which case, please skip this article as it is wasted on you. We should know better than attack cheese it is part of the BACTERIA family and if anger them, they will strike back and kill us all.
There is a whiff of something rotten in the air
But attack cheese we did. Just before we left, President Bush, whom I happen to think was not such a bad egg, contrary to popular bovine belief, (bovine = adjective referring to most of you who prefer to go along with popular facile opinions known as Holy Cows), committed what is probably the worst atrocity of his presidency.
He slapped a 300% tax on Rocquefort cheese, home to legions of pungent bacteria. In doing so, he aroused the wrath of the French who are the closest thing we have to bacterian fifth columnists. You may think of the French as the people chosen by bacteria to act as spokespeople with the rest of humanity, such is their love for all manner of bacterian life.
The problem is that the consequence of this act may go far beyond merely depriving American gourmets of their daily ration of rotten cheese, or annoying the French who have alway felt their culture is superior to the American one. I am sure you will agree that when it comes to bacteria, the French certainly know a good culture. So much so that the French consume more cultures of bacterian (in cheese format) per capita than most other nations. It would be true to say that the French collaborate and connive with bacterian everyday in various ways, thereby staving off the total decimation of our race. It is because of this, and not because of that non-event of the French Revolution (my capitals, for sarcastic effect) or female hairy armpits as a fashion statement, that we owe a large debt of gratitude to the Gallic race
No, the problem with the raising of tariffs over chesse is that it may well be the opening shot of a new protectionist war as countries grapple with the recessions that have beset their economies. The world economy is in trouble and our leaders have fallen for the oldest trick in the book to salvage their positions. At the sound of the first shot, they wet their pants, forgot their capitalist credentials so fast that one may wonder whether we have been ruled all these years by socialist “sleeper” agents, and implemented measures that reek of economic nationlism.
For those of you who love Rocquefort as I do, the putrid whiff of protectionism makes the aroma of that rotten cheese seem relatively benign. Like a disease that spreads easily by human contact, it seems not to discriminate between the ordinary and the superhuman, or Obama, if bovine popular culture is to be believed. It is therefore no surprise that the have hear the new son of God Obama (move over, Jesus, Obama is here) sully his divine status with expressions like “Buy American”. At least he has shown his true colours, and I am not talking about his “suntanned” complexion, as Berlusconi described him.
The disease has spread. According to the Wall Street Journal, Russia has just imposed 28 new measures to reduce imports from other countries to protect its own industries from foreign incursions and help them export more. Apparently, that paragon of free trade, the EU Collective, sent a delegation to protest. They should know everything about free trade. According to other reports, they EU butter mountain is back. As demand has dropped, the EU has been using my money (I am EU citizen, whatever that means), to prop up (mostly French, I imagine) farmers, by buying up 30,000 tonnes of unsold butter.
The French are naturally very unhappy about this state of affairs because part of their agreement with the World Bacteria Council - the body that runs global bacteria affairs - is that the flow of bacteria between humans should be unimpeded. Should we ever hinder the free flow of bacteria, then the bacteria will see this as an attack on their interest and will retaliate by killing us all.
By the same measure, the free flow of goods is vital to our existence, and politically motivated trade barrriers that stop the flow of goods detroy competition and capitalist incentives. Back in 1929, Willis Hawley and Reed Smoot, a couple of Americans who didn’t care for free trade, sponsored a bill that became law. It raised American tariffs on imported goods to extremely high levels. In the process they started a global protectionist tit-for-tat frenzy that led to the collapse of global trade. Oh yes, before I forget, a depression followed.
So please be careful. Bad handling of bacteria can cause a Depression (my Capital, for dramatic effect…)
0 Responses
Stay in touch with the conversation, subscribe to the RSS feed for comments on this post.
You must be logged in to post a comment.