American - The Land of Lambs, Cheese, and Icemen

The Mike Rowe video looked at the problems in society with castrating lambs. Peta and the Humane society say this should be done by rubber bands (don't ask) but farmers still use knives/teeth. The farmers know what is better through experience. The rubber band lamb sat down and won't walk for a few days but the knifed lamb was off frolicking in the field. Rowe says society has a "War on Work." We have sacrificed infrastructure and trade schools. He says innovation without imitation is pointless.

The Roquefort video looked at a cheese shop that sells Roquefort French cheese. In recent years tariffs have caused this price to increase. The government imposed tariffs in response to France not buying American beef. The cheese shop owner realized that soon enough people will not have the choice in consuming. She has waged a protest on the tariffs through a publicity stunt "Long Life Roquefort." She says that soon Americans won't even have the option of buying cheese. Our choices will be made for us. This was a very interesting look at how tariffs and trade restrictions affect businesses and society.

The NPR articles and audios of the Jobs of Yesteryear: Obsolete Occupations looked how advancements in technology had replaced a lot of jobs like the iceman, switch board operators, and the telegraph operator. The audio clips gave a nice insight into how the jobs were replaced and obsolete. But some people like iceman said that they were happy with the replacements. "Thank God for refrigerators."

I still have questions. 1. What does Rowe mean by innovation without imitation is pointless? Shouldn't people try to improve and advance technologies and not just imitate or does he mean something different? 2. The government knows the effects of harsh trade restrictions and tariffs on the consumers and producers but still does it. Why do they continue to harm society just so they can play a political game? 3. The people who lost their jobs seemed happy - they seemed to show that although technology is a job killer it is a good thing. What happened to all these obsolete workers? Did technology simply make more jobs?

These videos gave different looks at economics in society. The Rowe video looked at society problems, the Roquefort video looked at political problems, and NPR looked at technological problems.