Video: Christien Meindertsma on the Economic Value of Pigs

Here is a fascinating talk by Ms. Christien Meindertsma on TED, about the economic value of Pigs. I mean the animal (oink oink) variety and not the debt plagued acronym of peripheral European countries.

Ms.Meindertsma's talk somewhat resembles Leonard Read's I, Pencil except that she focuses on the pig as a product than as part of the market process [pointer to Mike Du]



Some passages:

The market process of pigs (bold emphasis mine-from TED)

And what I was curious about -- because historically, the whole pig would be used up until the last bit so nothing would be wasted ... and I was curious to find out if this was actually still the case. And I spent about three years researching. And I followed this one pig with number "05049" all the way up until the end and to what products it's made of. And in these years, I met all kinds people, like, for instance, farmers and butchers, which seems logical. But I also met aluminum mold makers, ammunition producers and all kinds of people. And what was striking to me is that the farmers actually had no clue what was made of their pigs, but the consumers -- as in us -- had also no idea of the pigs being in all these products.

The pig's economic value: (bold emphasis mine)

In total, I found 185 products. And what they showed me is that, well, firstly, it's at least to say odd that we don't treat these pigs as absolute kings and queens. And the second, is that we actually don't have a clue of what all these products that surround us are made of.

And you might think I'm very fond of pigs, but actually -- well, I am a little bit -- but I'm more fond of raw materials in general. And I think that, in order to take better care of what's behind our products -- so, the livestock, the crops, the plants, the non-renewable materials, but also the people that produce these products -- the first step would actually be to know that they are there.

We can't surely know everything. But we can understand the market process. And that's why markets are indispensable.

As Leonard Read writes,(emphasis added)

There is a fact still more astounding: The absence of a master mind, of anyone dictating or forcibly directing these countless actions which bring me into being. No trace of such a person can be found. Instead, we find the Invisible Hand at work. This is the mystery to which I earlier referred.