Made by American Bees

We bought a can of honey last month at Costco. It was about twice the price of other honey packed in the same size. We ate it with waffle and bread, but didn't find out what made it more expensive than its peers until a few days ago when Gang and I were having breakfast and found a line on the package, saying "made by American bees."

These four words double the price. The majority applaud globalization and benefit more or less from the international market, there is still much to be proud of by consuming local goods, or "organic" as called in some overpriced supermarkets. Some consumers are willing to pay more because they believe local food produces less carbon footprint, which frees them from the guilt of warming the earth; some are paying more because they hope the extra payment will go to local workers and help retain jobs (even for bees) within the border; and some may just find it more comfortable to consume local food because they "know local better", therefore the quality is more reliable. For whatever reason, it works well to put "made in the US" on merchandises for a better price and sale.

In old days people paid high price for imports due to their scarcity: tea, silk and china from the Far East for example. After months of travelings on the sea, the prices of these luxuries were so high that only aristocrats could afford them and took the consumption of foreign goods as status symbols. Now the situation is reversed. People in China go after Western goods crazily, partly due to the unreliable quality of "made in China"s, partly to boast modern lifestyles characterized foreign products. Local goods seem to be ordinary and non-fancy, provided to mediocre people only.

But in the wave of globalization, as the cost of transportation continues decreasing, products from all over the world compete in a open market on a relatively equal base, with the superior selected and the inferior eliminated. Consumers' choice seem to be the best indicator of the competition: who produces the best and cheapest goods win. Industries start to concentrate in a few countries, who are substantially advantaged in intelligence, R&D, human costs or natural resources. Those who fail to stand out are always driven out of the market in the end. These make perfect sense in economic models, as the invisible hand allocates resources effectively and everyone is supposed to gain, after a fair amount of trade winners' gains go to those who lose both their markets and industry in globalization. But such compensation has never been carried out. Workers in comparative disadvantaged industries lose their jobs in the international competition but very few of them are taken care of by the government, or more specifically, by the extra taxes paid by comparative advantaged industries. For the government, the gains and losses may cancel out, and in most countries they gain much more than losses, which in turn can't produce strong motivations for them to change the status quo.

People do have sympathy for their neighbors, who are diligent and nice, but unfortunately lose jobs in competition. So the more you spend on local/domestic goods, the more you are helping your countrymen (or country bees), and the better you feel. I guess these emotions can't be modeled by economists. And now we have better reasons for eating local food: carbon footprint! Though it will be interesting if someone can calculate the how much can be saved by buying "international goods" and how much carbon emission can be reduced by investing the saving on new techs and researches.