I think he’s just trying to poke holes in your arguments, so you realize their flaws.
I’m afraid though this conversation is going nowhere, and it will just result in animosity, so I suggest you guys either try to argue the topic from another angle, or just drop it.
No, the suggestion that we can eat without farms is lunacy. This is not an intelligent poke at a point, but a making of noise so as to drown out the speaker.
You suggested minimum prices for farmers. This is easily one way of going about it. This doesn’t even relate to scarcity at all. I simply asked how are going to go about suggesting “minimum prices” for food? And just farms? Why not cattle ranchers? They certainly provide food. There are many different kinds of “food providers.” Besides, farmers don’t provide things for themselves. I suggest giving protection for the seed manufactuers that is used to grow the food. Prevent foriegn seed importation.
I say this is very possible. Think about the state of Alaska. Do you truly think farms can be out there? Or even the city of new york. Or even Japan. Do you think most of their food comes from in the country? Or do you think most of the food from new york is grown in new york? Or do you think the food in New York City is grown in new york city?
Also, the suggestion that there is no scarcity is lunacy.
Do you not think hunter/gathering tribes have excess food? I mean, certainly, the food that hunter/gatherer tribes collect isn’t all used…and some of it spoils/is thrown away. Also, there is certainly economic activity without “excess food.”(which you have yet to define). Secondly, you are using “economic activity” incorrectly. There is economic activity no matter what situation is happening. To say there can be no economic activity, is to say there is no action. So without excess food, there can be no action at all. This is essentially what you have just said.
This is not an intelligent poke at a point, but the making of noise so as to drown out the speaker.
Use your edit and delete buttons more. Say less. Think more. Step back and breathe.
You’ve been asked to cut out the fragmented posts, but you refuse, because the fragmented posts just makes for more senseless noise.
Actually, the request for single posts was not just directed at Xevec… I’m resisting the urge to lock this thread.
Arman, if you are going to continue to insult me like this, I will end this debate right now. Inquistor never said my “fragmented” posts were “senseless noise.” Once you start insulting them, it shows me that you can not respond in a proper manner, therefore, I have made a point you can not refute. Instead of consenting to me, you instead use insults. So if you want to insult to make your points, fine…but I won’t be a part of it. I should take the advice and leave, because right now, your arguments are no longer arguments, but insults.
Also, when you say “say less and think more” you are basically saying “agree with me.”
In order to ensure excess production!
Only in your mind because you missed the point about protection of the food excess.
I consider the ranch a big farm where they grow food. I also said that the minimum price that you suggested was something worth exploring, not that it was a well thought out plan as is the rest of my theory. You made the suggestion, and I took the bait and now we’re off on a wild tangent.
The first business is the farm. Before seed specialists there was the farm. Before the equipment manufacturer, there was the farm. Every other business depends in some small way on the farm, but the farm was not created by the seed specialist or the equipment manufacturer. It is the first business.
Exactly. Nothing except going out and scrounging your next meal out of the bush.
Not at all. I am just asking you to kindly read your posts over and ask yourself if it is pertinent to what I said. Ask yourself if what you’re saying is warranted at all, and be brutally honest with yourself and with me in your postings. And if you think that you didn’t say it right or enough or whatever, rather than replying again to my post, hit the ‘edit’ button on your post and redo it. And when I’ve said something to someone else, why do you feel such compulsion to reply for them. And when someone else has said something to me, why do you feel the need to translate for them. Say less. Think more.
So in order to produce food that we can throw away? That seems quite wasteful.
No, farming was not the first business. Hunting/gathering was the first business. Do you not think in primitive nomadic societies(farms don’t exist in nomad societies), that there was no economic activity? You do not think hunters traded with the gatherers or the makers of tools? like the bowsman traded with the arrowmaker? That is economic activity.
you contradicted yourself. I said no action can exist without farms. you agreed, then described an action(going out and scrouning for your next meal). you must explain to me how going out and scrouning for your next meal is not an action.
If YOU want food security, YOU buy a ton of long-lasting food and water. You can dig wells, build grain silos, keep a garden and livestock, buy canned foods, bottled water, vitamins and minerals, etc. You could start a business that does nothing but store sustenance for people for $X per mth. Keep your liberty, be richer, purchase more security and most of all…BE HAPPIER!
I’d rather we all use our own noodles (brains) and self-reliance rather than hand over our liberty, our dignity, our vitality to a till master. Economics isn’t just about keeping our vital organs nourished. It’s about enabling man to enjoy ALL that the good earth has to offer. Who would’ve dreamed 1,000 yrs ago that from the mud and dust the ability to instantly talk to someone on the other side of the world would emerge (cell phone)? If we could travel back in time and show them such a device it would be called magic. In fact, I think it’d convince atheists that there is indeed a God! lol. I’d rather secure myself, risk the state’s uninvolvement, and indulge my few short years in the genius of my fellow, free men!
But how much excess is too much? Would you rather that the entire economy were dedicated to farming, using capital equipment and consumer money that would be otherwise used on other industries, with the result being a glut of food that is thrown out? Putting in minimum prices that are arbitrary by definition increases the risk of diverting resources that would be better used elsewhere to the waste of food.
It is how the economy works. If we don’t have more than what we feel we need, we cannot at all trade what we have off. I don’t percieve a problem where so much food will be thrown away, but that so much will be stored, and after the farmer has in his storage sufficient to last a few years, he’ll cut his production, or even do a sabath year.
Nomadic cultures are portable farms, looking for new pasture or new soil to plant in. Have you ever read the story of Cain and Able? Without excess food, no trading ever took place. Without some kind of farming, there was never excess food.
You are in denial of what is. All of society is wholly dependent on excess food. All I am suggesting is that what the farmer holds is precious, and we should try to see that he doesn’t drop it.
The building of a bigger and shinier shopping mall that will greatly devalue the somewhat older shopping mall is a wasteful use of excess resources. Tearing down a smaller house to build a bigger house is a waste. Buying new when the old will do is a waste. Every promotion of consumption is a waste. Wasting the excess is what economic activity is all about.
Of all the limited resources that are over utilized in economic expansion, food is the base. If oil were to suddenly run out, there would be transitory panic and hoarding, but through innovation we would survive. The economy would survive. If the food source were suddenly cut off, the panic and hoarding could not ever go away, and the society would turn primal.
Think of what is needed for more food to be produced. Basically land. Land that is today used for poppies, both for display and for processing; one use being much more wasteful than the other. Human ingenuity. The kind that today fights against competition so as to devalue the competition’s assets.
There is no scarcity. There is only limited excess. The solidifying of the base of our economy is the only good use of excess.
Ahh, now I know what you are getting at. You believe we trade things off because to us, we have it in abundance. But this is not true. Just because I trade my car off in order to take the bus, does not mean I have cars in abundance. We don’t trade because we feel we have more than what we need. I guess in your sense, poor people give their money to buy food because they have more money than what they need.
Not always either. Hunter/gathering does not mean farming. Not all nomadic cultures went around doing “portable farming.” The first tribes didn’t start farming. Farming started when people decided to make one place their own. Nomadic means constantly on the move. You can’t farm if you are constantly on the move.
Limited excess = Scarcity.
Not necessarily true. We don’t need to survive by only eating things that are grown from out of the ground. We can easily eat and ration animals. We could through innovation, create a pill that provides us with nourishment, so that we could go without food altogether. Isn’t that the function of food to our bodies?
First off, what is “poppies?” I can’t find it in the dictionary. Secondly, this entire sentence here isn’t organized, so I do not know what your point is. More food doesn’t require more land. We don’t need more land in order to create more food. We have created more food through machines, and other labor-saving devices. We have created fertilizers that allows us to keep the land fertile…so that we don’t have to use up entire land and move on to the next area. More food does not require more land.
Arman, I want you to look at what happened during the 20’s with the federal farm board that was created by Hoover. I believe a lot of your ideas of helping farmers leads to stuff like this:
The Agricultural Adjustment Act (or AAA) (Pub.L. 73-10, enacted May 12, 1933) restricted production during the New Deal by paying farmers to reduce crop area. Its purpose was to reduce crop surplus so as to effectively raise the value of crops, thereby giving farmers relative stability again. The farmers were paid subsidies by the federal government for leaving some of their fields unused. The Act created a new agency, the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, to oversee the distribution of the subsidies.
I mean, this is one way of helping farmers. Paying them not to grow stuff.
Arman, you have to remember that at the end of world war I, america had a HUGE surplus of farmers. Because the market was flooded with food and other agricultural products, the prices of these goods were quite low. A lot of farmers were having trouble staying in business because of the low selling price of their crops. So hoover decided to create the FFB(federal farm board). What this organization first did was made loans to farm cooperatives so that farmers could keep their crops, mainly wheat and cotton, off the market until their prices rose. But this approach failed because when prices did rise(because of lack of supply), farmers produced a hell lot more the following year, pushing prices down again. This made the surplus problem even worse. So the FFB created the grain stabilization corporation, and purchased massive amounts of wheat(for example) from farmers at prices well above world prices. So farmers in america sold their wheat to this organization, instead of exporting it. Government farm buearucrats were sure that by keeping american wheat off the world market, a world shortage of wheat would occur, and other countries would beg americans for their wheat. But alas, Canada and Argentina grabbed american’s share of wheat.(source: politically incorrect guide to american history by Thomas Woods).
Secondly Arman, whatever crops that farmers can’t sell here in america, they don’t simply just “throw it away.” It is exported. Other countries import our wheat because they have a shortage. Think of it in the macro. Don’t focus just on the US. Think worldwide. Scarcity exists worldwide.
Also, saying buying new when the old is just fine is waste is quite silly. I mean, think about it in computer terms. Do you think a computer that only has 512 ram and 1.8 processing speed with a GEFORCE2 video card will do just fine with the current games out in the market today? Do you think it will do just fine trying to run a game like Crysis? Also, tearing down a smaller house to build a bigger house is not a waste. If something isn’t demanded anymore, then it is not “wasting resources.” You can’t waste something that no one wants. I guess when we switched from horse-pulled trains to steam trains, it was a “waste.” I guess all innovations create “waste.”
This is not a poke at a point, but the making of noise so as to drown out the speaker
No you don’t.
“1 Adam [a] lay with his wife Eve, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Cain. [b] She said, “With the help of the LORD I have brought forth [c] a man.” 2 Later she gave birth to his brother Abel. Now Abel kept flocks, and Cain worked the soil.”
You spout your beliefs as though they’re fact. You spout what you think might be true only if it contradicts my understanding. You make noise for no reason whatsoever except to drown me out
That’s funny. I mean rotflmao funny. Try under the singular poppy.
More noise for nothing. My ideas did not ever influence Hoover. I think I have made it clear to you that the primary goal of government assistance is to promote excess food, not to increase shortage of food. You keep throwing this thing in my face like it is part of my platform, and you’re like a dog with a bone that won’t let go.
I thought it a ridiculous waste of resources when my friend told me that he was getting a 40 meg hard drive (that was a few years ago). The entire gaming industry is wasted resources aimed at wasting your time
.Yes, but we have it to waste. I’m not saying that waste is a bad thing, but use this in argument against your aversion to wasting resources on unneeded food.
Stay on-topic, please, and try to avoid personal comments.
Aside from the Bible, does there exist any reconstruction of early human history that skips hunter-gatherer societies entirely and goes from humanity’s appearance directly to pastoral and agricultural societies of the kind that, from all evidence we have, only came about around 10,000 BC or later? Based on archaeological and genetic reconstructions, tribes took thousands of years to start farming.
Of course, this is simply your opinion. I do not believe it is a waste of resources, and neither does your friend. Also, the entire gaming industry isn’t wasted resources, because there is a large demand for it(if you want to argue that, I can easily say movies and music is wasted resources). But alas, it is not, since people value it and want to use it.
So I guess the tractor created waste by not using the pull mule. I guess all increased technology used to make more food created waste. This is because we could feed the same amount of people we could 200 years ago.
Oh yes, Poppy either means money, or flower petals, which one?
You didn’t understand my point, let me explain to you why he did that. You said we must protect farmers. Farmers were rapidly GOING OUT OF BUSINESS. Their lot in life was failing. If prices are depressed and low, how are farmers going to stay in business? What, you are just going to give them money straight out? Simply force all stores to buy their products at a minimum price? How is that going to be enforced? I guess according to you, you would create a huge import tax on foriegn food to the point where nobody would buy foriegn food, and create minimum prices high enough so that farmers can live a good life. I know your ideas didn’t influence hoover, that would be dumb…but I did not say that. The government DID create excess food, not a shortage through that. Why do you think FDR latered ordered a “destruction” of food? Nobody wanted that food. He couldn’t put it back into the market, because it would hurt farmers. You are ignoring the supply part of food. As food supply increases, prices decrease…hurting farmers.
As a history, the old testament is unparalleled. These are stories that have been written down and venerated for at least 3000 years and probably much much longer than that. You want to compare these to the current interpretations of garbage pit excavations.
Without excess food, you cannot trade. Only when you have more than what you need to eat can you leave off the scrounging for meals and think about wanting other things. I am rather surprised that there would be any demand for animal husbandry and cultivation there being a very small population settled on a very pristine natural environment, but the claim is there. This claim has been studied and mused about for thousands of years. I think current conventional opinions quite invalid when they run contrary to the old testament record.
Yes. ALL economic expansion is a utilization of resources that are not really needed. Gaming is a waste of time, but so what? It is fun, and it is my time to waste. Making of games is wasted resources, but so what? There are lots of people that like it, and we have the resources to waste.
A simple price floor would prevent the prices from dwindling in the face of growing supply. Same as with minimum wage. The demand is not at all hurt, but only the tendency to devalue the labor in the face of advancing efficiencies.
But their intent was to create shortage, because the conventional wisdom was that the economy runs on scarcity. The government did not create excess food, but through its efforts was completly incapable of creating a scarcity of the kind that the economist wanted.
A farmer may not have produced enough food to save, but he may still trade his potatoes by cattle, so he can provide for a proper diet to his family.
I can sell my services, so I can get food. In fact, I will be more urged to trade if I don’t have any saved and face hunger.
I believe in economics, waste is when it costs more to produce than to consume. So its a matter of personal value evaluation. You attribute negative value to gaming, so no way you will spent your resources to enroll in it. But considering its a billion dollar industry, I’d say others disagree. 