Time to embargo embargoesJanuary 31, 2011Dear Sir,Ludicrous laws always lead to ridiculous outcomes. The Prohibition Law in the US in the early 20th century was the prime example.We in little Bermuda are no exception to this rule-of-thumb. In recent weeks we have had a dawn raid by the authorities on a dealership in “banned substances”, masquerading as a mini-mart, catch the perpetrators red-handed, and a respectable lady in your own pages explaining to the public how to grow its own; it cannot be long before we have yachts offloading illegal plant material to cigarette shaped Boston Whalers for its importation. I refer of course to the social ramifications of the law creating the illegal trade in carrots.My wife decided that it would be nice to have some carrots with Christmas dinner and ventured out on walk-about to get some. She got back yesterday, tired, having lost half her body weight, but otherwise fine. She did not succeed. She did witness some strange goings-on in alleyways near supermarkets and behind bushes near vegetable stands between middle-aged women and men in aprons that involved furtive glances, the rustle of notes changing hands and the crinkle of plastic bags filled with reddish plant material, but the participants dispersed before she could see the detail of what was “going down”.I am told that carrots are “good for you” and are a highly recommended staple for children; and I like them too. What kind of an embittered, vengeful generation of youngsters are we going to raise if children continue to be force-fed broccoli and spinach because there are no carrots to eat? Has the Select Committee now sitting been informed of the role that a lack of carrots in their diet may have played in the upbringing of today's gun-toting thugs and louts?Why are there such stupid laws on the books? Obviously farming lobby protectionism is the cause but all the carrot embargo does is force up their price to astonishing levels, making them far too expensive for poorer families to buy. While they do taste better, on the rare occasions they are available, are they worth 400 to 500 percent more than they cost in the States? If there must be an embargo (and I don't accept there must let the laws of supply and demand apply) then at least let's import carrots when there are no local ones being distributed.But what about the bug, I hear you cry. Is that the bug that affects imported Christmas trees? Or the one that affects earth and grass so that our cricketers and footballers can't bring in good soil and turf and therefore don't have decent pitches to play on? I've been abroad, you know, and these foreigners seem to be pretty healthy even if they do eat “infested” carrots, they have gazillions of acres of healthy fir trees and they seem to be very good indeed at growing grass, much better than the stuff we have here.Or does the answer lie, and God strike me down for even letting this thought cross my mind, in the interview given by a local farmer recently, in which he said words to the effect that “carrots are by far our most lucrative crop”?And to generalise somewhat, why do we Bermudians continue to accept, without public outcry, the absolute nonsense disseminated by government, professional services providers, vendors of all descriptions and farmers alike as to why everything costs far more to the taxpayer / consumer than it should. The perpetrators may have gotten away with it in the super-affluent Bermuda of the past, but those days are gone, as is being demonstrated almost daily. Living costs must be brought down or social disaster lies ahead.Let's start by embargoing embargoes!ADAM SMITHPagetPs I bought some carrot cakes the other day, non-Bermudian; do the authorities know these are available, and if so what are they going to do about it?