Left Flank

I've only nibbled around the fat of the US beef protests in Seoul (sorry, pun intended). But, really, it's good for my family budget. I can't remember the last time I went to Outback, or any mom-and-pop Korean BBQ joint. The avian flu scare has trimmed the chicken market, which was actually most of my meat diet. If my Mother joked, that I would bleed fish oil before I left for Seoul in 1997, it's probably even truer now. I only wish more Busanites would keep wasting money eating South Korean pork and beef, and stay away from the sashimi places, but I applaud their common sense and good taste. And, to boot, wholesale prices online or in the Bujeon-dong market, where my wife buys most of the family meat, for Australian meat are plummeting. Finally, as an extra bonus, lamb is cheaper than beef and pork, and I don't know what I like more, lamb, crabs, shellfish, or fish. So, hey, bitch away!

But, politics being a spectator sport, I do have another less vicarious interest. The Lee Myung-bak administration has again revealed its throwback status and incompetence. For how many centuries have East Asian aristos uttered "I apologize", and then skedaddled before the people noticed what was wrong? So, now Seoul has reached the point where ludicrous ceremony replaces public debate.

Before anyone else, the president and his ministers must be seen eating American beef. They should eat oxtail soup, marrow and tripe, and soup cooked with bones. People are particularly concerned about beef from cattle aged 30 months or older. It's no use telling them 100 times that Americans eat beef from cattle aged 30 months or older much more often than beef from younger animals, and that no mad cow disease has ever affected U.S. cattle under 120 months. A far more effective way for the chief executive to communicate with the public will be for him to eat a burger from an American cow that was 30 months old or older.

One-time test stunts will only invite ill feeling, so the president will have to promise to eat U.S. beef two or three times a month for a year. If possible, he should do it with his family. He should let his grandchildren, too, eat such beef. If he hesitates even slightly, how can he tell the people to eat it? It is absurd for a government that concluded the beef deal so abruptly and even mistranslated the terminology not to take at least this much trouble.

Of course it is preposterous for the president and his ministers to have to eat American beef for demonstration purposes, but there we are.

I would rather like the president and ministers to eat chicken soup and duck meat twice or three times a month as well. No matter how you stress that chicken and duck meat, once cooked, are safe, the public does not trust you. Eating too much meat will no doubt increase the Cabinet's weight and cholesterol level, but it will serve to boost public trust.

This is only slightly less laughable than crying middle school kids and delusions of American cattlemen's conspiracies. I assumed the Chosun Daily had gone on another paranoid bender, when it saw agents provocateurs in the candlelight protests, but a Korean-American moron has obliged, it would seem. Yet, even wackier to conceive, those provoked and crying kids with their teachers and union reps are moral philosophers fighting in the streets, and, unlike in the US, there's no economists to educate them about the gospel of free trade.

A non-economist might ask: What are these opportunities, and how do these economists judge them as more important than the threats?

At bottom, trade is responsible for creating opportunities in some sectors of the economy and reducing opportunities in others. By the same token, restriction of trade reduces opportunities in some sectors and expands them in others. Without a doubt, this means that trade helps some people and hurts others.

In such a situation, why do economists claim that trade is good for the country? After all, the Joe Sixpacks are citizens of the country, and their losses are often large, painful, and traumatic, requiring dramatic life changes. Why should people think economists can be, in effect, high priests who tally up benefits and losses to different individuals and pronounce the outcome good or bad for the group as a whole?

In fact, people shouldn't. Any time a change in economic circumstances creates both winners and losers, the judgment of whether such change was good or bad for the group as a whole is problematic. It becomes a matter of moral philosophy, not number crunching. Economists, as a result of their training, have no more claim to know what is «good for the country» than Joe Sixpack. It's really that simple.

I'm happy to ride out the storm safe in Busan far from the philosophers working out their economics with their deluded facts. My wife never liked lamb, even though it's cheap and available from halal vendors, and even from Turkish restaurants. But now, finding it wholesale online, it's her newfound staple. I know I have to reduce the amount of meat in my diet, but it might really be impossible now.