Buying the farm, losing our shirts
by George Jonas
National Post
February 7, 2009
It's hard to believe that half a century (and four days) have passed since Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J. P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson "bought the farm" about five miles northwest of the airport at Mason City, Iowa. The farm belonged to a man named Albert Juhl. That was where the rock and rollers' chartered Beechcraft Bonanza came to rest in an open field just south of the Minnesota border.
I remember the accident because of my interest in aviation rather than in pop music. Although I must have heard "That'll Be The Day" as often as anybody in those days -- there seemed to be little else playing on the radio and jukeboxes, unless it was the Big Bopper's "Chantilly Lace" -- Holly's hit song didn't overwhelm me. The performers' death was a tragedy, but the damage to music on "the day the music died" (as Don McLean referred to Feb. 3, 1959 in his 1971 song "American Pie") didn't seem as great to me as the damage to the reputation of light planes as a mode of transportation.
The B35 "V-tail" Bonanza in which a 21-year-old pilot named Roger Peterson was attempting to fly Holly, Valens and the Big Bopper from their performance in Clear Lake, Iowa, to their next gig in Moorehead, Minn., is among the most attractive light planes ever designed. It acquired a reputation as a "doctor-killer" because of its popularity among private pilots with more funds at their disposal for pretty planes than time to acquire proficiency in their operation.
As a young commercial pilot, Peterson was lacking both funds and proficiency. He probably needed his share of the fee his employer, Dwyer Flying Service, was charging for the trip, and chose to depart around 1 a.m. on a blustery night in flying conditions beyond his skill. His aircraft's running lights were still visible from the departure airport when he lost control and crashed.
It wasn't music or aviation that recently started me thinking about that long-ago night, but economics. In 1959 one could charter a Bonanza for the 500 km flight between Mason City Municipal Airport and Fargo, North Dakota, for $108. Buying Mr. Juhl's farm cost the band members $36 each. If we keep "stimulating" the economy as governments are proposing to do on both sides of the U.S.-Canada border -- i.e., by printing greenbacks -- in another 50 years the same amount, far from letting us "buy the farm" in Iowa, won't buy a bouquet of flowers to mark the spot.
Change of topic -- or perhaps not. One illustration of how government intervention becomes fuel for its own fire emerges from the protectionism debate, which has been unfolding on these pages this past week.
Some defenders of tariffs and trade barriers argue that it isn't always complacency or lack of innovation that makes domestic products insufficiently competitive with imports, but government-imposed costs of environmental or social engineering. Since it's government that increases costs for domestic producers by environmental and labour laws, it's up to government to level the playing field by imposing tariffs on foreign producers who compete in our markets without such constraints.
In some instances, this is true enough. Logically, it should be a reason to argue against government intervention in the first place. But in regulation-addicted societies, this isn't how the argument develops. Rather than saying: "Let's abolish laws that make our producers less competitive," we say: "Let's punish people who fail to patronize less competitive producers." When nations succumb to the interventionist spirit, they instinctively "level the playing field," not by relaxing controls on businesses, but by increasing controls on customers. Government's denial of choices to Peter Producer becomes the justification for penalizing the choices of Consumer Carl.
Just as chemically-addicted personalities feel compelled to take one pill to perk up and another to relax, regulation-addicted societies promulgate one law to counter the effects of the other. It doesn't even occur to them anymore that if they stopped taking "uppers," they wouldn't have to take "downers" and vice versa.
But what about essential laws, some might ask. Laws that define us, laws that make our Western societies what they are: humane. Would you abolish them?
Hell, no. I wouldn't dream of abolishing humane laws that express the essence of what is best in Western societies. At the same time, I wouldn't lobby to counteract their effect with trade barriers, either. If such laws made it more expensive for my company to produce polo shirts or whatever, instead of demanding tariffs, I'd take out an ad that says: "Dear Customer, our locally manufactured shirts cost $46. Our competitor sells his imports for $40. They're just as good as ours. We're not knocking them. All we offer for the extra $6 is assurance there was no child labour used in the manufacturing process. If this isn't worth $6 to you, we suggest you buy from our competitor."
Then I'd live with the market's verdict. But then again, maybe that's why I'm a writer, not a businessman.