Latif Nasser

Now they're likely thinking, damn, we need those bees back.

One farmer told Harold beekeepers in other parts of China aren't going to bring their bees to this area because they worry about the pesticides that the farmers have used.

As for when wild bees might come back?

If you ask the farmers, they're like, I don't know.

Here's where that story leaves me.

It leaves me thinking that economics is just not a good way to go.

Putting a value, even a precise and thoughtful value on a bee or on a pound of pesticide, you do it and you think you're smart, but then the value changes.

The bees go from being worth a lot to being worth nothing to being worth everything, all within a few years.

This is what markets do.

They swing back, forth, and we pretend that we can predict.

But we never can.

So you can't put a value on it because you're always going to be wrong.

That's why you can always use a dumb... No, no, no.

I want to argue the other side for a second.

Nowhere in the story did someone walk into the middle of the proceedings and say, you know what?

The bees do have value.

Here's the number.

In fact, you know what?

So that's globally, right?

But still, there was nobody in the room giving that kind of number.