Well yes indeed, but in this particular case I'm referring to the funding for the Natural Environment Research Council, which has been cut in order to help pay for the govts failed attempt to rescue the Rover car company; and rescuing the nuclear industry. Or so says the BBC - all I know for sure is that we've lost £10M. Which is less than some of the other reseach councils.
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BBC also describes internationally organized criminals who are killing people in Africa and prevent them from earning a penny to live.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6383687.stm
TESCO is involved in this wrongdoing, too. The criminals who call themselves "Carbon friendly" prevent Africans from selling flowers because there is carbon in the flowers.
BBC doesn't explain whether the war crime trials for the criminals are already getting started. By the way, aren't you a member of that mafia, too?
[Interesting story, though you exaggerate as usual. TESCO responds to the whims of its customers - as an ardent capitalist, I'm sure you approve of that. Presumably, as a capitalist, you would tell these Kenyans to make what people will buy - and you would tell them that if people won't buy it, then thats tough? Although I notice that the article also says "Tesco says its new measures have been misunderstood, that it will not reduce imports from Africa as the continent is one of the regions it has promised to protect" so maybe this is just a frothed-up story -W]
My sister is going to teach to Kenya - and I am thinking about going as well ;-) - so I don't approve it. I don't approve reacting to *any* kind of consumers. If the consumer is a green whacko who is not going to spend money in my mall chain and instead is going to fight against me, I - as a sane capitalist company - should do my best to kick such a "consumer" into a certain part of his or her body.
[Oh dear Lubos, if you're going to kick your customers you're never going to suceed as a shopkeeper. Mr Tesco has got rich doing what his customers want. Whether thats good or not is another matter, but I find it very odd you suddenly sticking up for the producers, and insisting that Mr Tesco must buy what they produce whether he wants to or not. Bring back socialism, eh? -W]
One can choose which customers a company is targeting. Choosing ecofanatics as the target group is a bad choice for a typical corporation.
[Then you have a clear case of market failure - score minus one for capitalism! But I strongly suggest you're wrong: Tesco is better at reading its customers than you are -W]
It was just a bad decision for TESCO for many different reasons. Intelligent people will think that TESCO is controlled by econuts, and compassionate people will think that TESCO is trying to make Africans starving. If you take the union of intelligent and compassionate consumers (these two sets also have a non-empty intersection), you already get a significant percentage of the consumers measured by their ability to buy.
But of course, it is always possible that a supermarket chain chooses some group like econuts to be their target group. I just hope that the invisible hand of capitalism eventually removes these structures - both these supermarkets as well as their customers - from this particular solar system.
"... it very odd you suddenly sticking up for the producers,"
I am not sticking up for the producers. On the contrary, I am explaining that people like *me* are consumers and they are who matters for these decisions, while the people whom *you* call consumers are just economically irrelevant econuts that no sane company should pay any attention to.
Nice replies to Lubos' rantings, william. I note that he totally misses all of economics and free market capitalism.