This afternoon, AM 570 WWNC host Pete Kaliner was giving Asheville City Councilman Gordon Smith a hard time over the city’s new Food Policy and Food Council and whatnot. Personally, I don’t like the idea because its latest iteration came out of the UN, and it originated in the dark recesses below purgatory. Kaliner objected to the advocates’ push for the program without a budget when funding was clearly necessary for its objectives. Smith preferred not to discuss funding because the program had a dynamic structure.
Kaliner asked about human nature. On the one hand, progressives slam conservatives for being so greedy and not giving one hundred or a thousand for you, and one for me. On another hand, they expect government control of anything to be run with magnificent perfection, with nobody tempted to take more than their fair share from the edible urban gardens.
Curiously, at a meeting later in the evening, a dude from public housing, whose name sounded something like Roberto Allardo, asked if people in public housing might be allowed to plant gardens in their yards. Smith recalled a discussion he had had with the housing authority’s director Gene Bell about an attempt to have a community garden at one of the developments. The spot of ground wasn’t all that, and nobody but Henny Penny (Rotarian Don Swaby) was interested in tending it.
There are two morals to the story, which I have not fully developed. One, which I’ve mentioned repeatedly, is that socialism works in homogeneous cultures, where people share at least a common work ethic. It fails in mixing pots where one culture insists on no play before work and another values recreation so highly, they don’t mind others working to support their habits. The other is that community gardens work well in tropical paradises, but not where people have to exert themselves before the ground will produce big, juicy, and yummy food.
