Remember when milk was… erm… just milk?
No more.
Today, milk is a symbol of racism…
And it’s a symbol of where you are on the political spectrum.
Apparently!
What the heck does any of this have to do with investing? We’ll share our thoughts below…
When Milk Was Just Milk
First from the Telegraph newspaper in the U.K.:
For more than 130 years, Americans have been instructed that drinking milk that comes directly from a cow’s udder can be dangerous.
The U.S. dairy industry spends millions of dollars each year heating its product to 70 degrees Celsius before sale to kill microorganisms that can make people ill.
But a growing number of consumers would rather they left it alone. No longer the preserve of farmers and hippies, “raw” milk is now on sale in corner shops and trendy health food stores across America.
[…]
The law changes are the product of an unlikely alliance between health food enthusiasts and the libertarian Right, which sees raw milk bans as yet another example of shady federal officials eroding the freedom of American consumers.
And this from the Daily Mail, another U.K. newspaper:
A [U.K.] taxpayer-funded project is set to research connections between milk and colonialism, it was revealed today.
Academics at an Oxford museum will research the “political nature” of milk and its “colonial legacies.”
One of the experts involved has previously argued that milk is a “Northern European obsession” that has been imposed on other parts of the world.
Oh dear.
The story doesn’t reveal how much taxpayer money this project will receive. But we’d suggest the Oxford Museum cancels the check immediately.
Because clearly, the researcher doesn’t know her history (for it is a her).
Genesis 18:8 tells us…
[Abraham] then brought some curds and milk and the calf that had been prepared, and set these before them. While they ate, he stood near them under a tree.
We’re pretty sure Abraham wasn’t a Northern European colonialist… pretty sure.
Or if that’s not good enough for you, Peter Bellwood’s book from 2005, titled First Farmers: The Origins of Agricultural Societies, tells us humans first started drinking milk around 9,000 years ago in Mesopotamia (corresponding roughly to modern-day Iraq) and around 3,500 years ago in the Americas.
Neither can reasonably be described as Northern European locations.
So, what the blazes does this have to do with investing?
Actually, nothing.
We merely point it out as another example of the degradation of common sense and historical facts worldwide…
And how that degradation is having a direct impact on institutions that, until recently, were almost universally respected.
No more.
Furthermore, it goes to show how difficult it is for the regular citizen investor to trust anyone in an area of perceived authority. Whether that’s government, universities, news organizations… or mainstream financial organizations.
Can you really trust that the fund manager investing your money for you is doing so in your interests? Or are they doing so in the interests of themselves… or some harebrained, social-political agenda?
We have our hunch. We bet you do too.
So we guess this does have something to do with investing. It’s that it has never been more important to take full control of your investments and your future than it is today.
No one cares about it more than you. So make sure you’re in charge.
Cheers,
Kris Sayce
Editor, The Daily Cut