Eggs

Firing another salvo in the baseball / teaching debate in response to this post from Matt Tabor, Leo Casey begins with an ode to the pastoral nature of the game, pivots to a defense of baseball unionization and Curt Flood--which no one is disputing--before seizing on word that Tabor quotes someone else using: commodity. "We Are Not Commodities" declares Leo--that's the title of the post--"we are men and women, proud of our profession, skilled in our craft, dedicated to our students. As long our our union is standing...." etc., etc. You get the drift.

Hmmmm.....commodities. Let's talk about those for a moment. Merriam-Webster's definition of commodity includes the following:

"a mass-produced unspecialized product"
"a good or service whose wide availability typically leads to smaller profit margins and diminishes the importance of factors (as brand name) other than price"
"one that is subject to ready exchange or exploitation within a market"

That sounds pretty bad, I can see why Leo would take umbrage at the mere suggestion that teachers be treated like a commodity. I mean, eggs are a commodity, right? And that has a lot of implications. Most importantly, there was until recently hardly any market for quality eggs. Ironic, given that people say "he's a good egg," when at many supermarkets you cannot, in fact, buy a good egg, in the sense that it tastes better than any other egg. Eggs are only differentiated one one, easy-to-measure scale: size. There are six official sizes or "grades"--Jumbo, Extra- Large, Large, etc., with prices to match.

Commodification leaves the market vulnerable to quality problems--people selling inferior eggs for the same standard price--so we've developed a government-controlled inspection system whereby minimum standards are established that eggs must meet before they enter the market. Because you can't crack all the eggs open to see how they taste before selling them, those standards are mostly tied to the means of production. When you see a U.S. Department of Agriculture grade on an egg carton, that means the plant processed the eggs following USDA's sanitation and good manufacturing processes.

When something is a commodity, quantity matters more than quality. This affects the basic way we think about the product. If, for example, I was baking a quiche and felt like it needed more egg, it probably wouldn't occur to me to buy better, more eggy eggs. How could I? Instead, I'd throw in bigger eggs, or more of them--increase the egg/quiche ratio, in other words.

Commodification also means that producers are mostly competing on price, which tends to keep prices down. But that's okay if you're a producer, you can make it up on volume. It's okay if you're the government quality regulator, since it maintains your reason for being. And it would actually be a plus if you were running an organization whose finances were based on getting a fixed amount of money for every every egg sold. For you, the more the better.

It's a problem for consumers, though. If I'm frying up an egg in a pan, I don't much care whether it's Jumbo or Extra-Large. I'm glad the government is enforcing some baseline safety standards by trying to ensure that my egg isn't full of salmonella, although I'm disturbed that the regulators often bend to political pressure to ease off on the quality controls. But what I really want is a great-tasting egg. This is doubtless why there's been a big increase in the market for organic eggs in recent years. But since the USDA is in charge of certifying eggs as organic, there are concerns that the process is becoming subject to the same problems of regulatory capture, and once again consumers are getting the shaft.

But hey, not to worry, because of course teachers are not eggs and, as Leo has clearly explained, the very last thing the United Federation of Teachers wants is for its members to be treated like commodities.

Also, this post is worth reading.