politics and food - "everything i want to do is illegal"

[John Kilduff]

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If agribusiness is in fact unsustainable, it will stop. It's inevitable. The "problem" will fix itself. Someone will come up with some other business model.

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This is just silly. If all the topsoil has blown away in a region, or land become saline through poor irrigation practices, or gets laced with dangerous chemicals like DDT - permanent damage has been done, and the problem does not fix itself, at least not for a long time.

Your argument is like saying: If cutting down the rainforests is indeed unsustainable, it will stop. The "problem" will fix itself

The trouble, pvn, is that there will be no more rainforest remaining, which is very bad for the world economy and future generations.

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People ARE willing to pay more for it, and the market DOES supply it.

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Yes, I said as much.

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What's the hole? That not enough people share your preferences? The history of mankind is *built* on "unsustainable" activity. Yet progress continues. Unsustainability is what drives improvement.

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Actually, no. Previously unlimited resources is what has sustained unfettered capitalism. But those limits are approaching for the first time in history - with oil, with forests, with ecosystems, with arable land, with clean air.

The hole is people not realizing or not caring about the burdens they have to bear until it's too late. Consumers are simply stupid when it comes to complex issues where benefits aren't easily realized. And the nature of capitalism means that someone will always chase a buck - and damn the consequences. You yourself agree that the market can supply almost everything that people want to buy. If the thing that people want to buy is the last skin of an Asian lion, or the last ivory of an African elephant, someone will supply it, if not kept in check.

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If you want stagnation, you can have it, nobody will stop you.

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Long term sustainability is not stagnation. But it does cost, and people simply aren't smart enough to pay it. Fast food proves that.

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Phil153,

I agree with your points about the limits of certain natural resources approaching being reached for the first time in history, and I think that many free-marketeers simply disbelieve this or choose to ignore this (on the flip side, some resources that appear to be in jeopardy may actually prove to be more resilient than expected).

I think the great problem pushing these developments, though, is not so much capitalism as it is population growth. If the world's population were much smaller, these looming issues would be very much less threatening. As the world's population increases, these issues are being forced to the forefront.

I think the world's population would be a reasonable match with the world's ecosystems at - and I'm just guessing here - perhaps about one-tenth of the world's current population. The natural world evolved for a mix where humans were far less dominant over natural species and where humans had far less power to curtail or destroy wild species and natural environments.

The level of population during the time when the continent was populated by Indians only would be a good natural balance, in my opinion. Of course, Europe and some other regions had long exceeded such human population levels, anyway.

It wouldn't be necessary to jettison all our present technology if the globe hosted only one-tenth of the humans it currently hosts. A modern lifestyle would still be a good and convenient thing.

Humans at lower population levels could easily fit in with the natural world and pressure the natural environment and resources hardly at all. In fact, the main reason there is so much emphasis and debate today (and during the 20th century) about capitalism versus communism or other economic systems, in my opinion, is largely because that is when the human growth population really exploded. The more people are forced to live very close with others, and the more people use limited natural resources, the more talk and concern there will be about "management" and "organization".

It might be interesting to speculate on what life would have been like with the population levels of 200 years ago, yet with all of our current modern conveniences. My guess is that that would have been better for humans than either of the historical time periods that actually unfolded, past or current.

As for the future, I don't see much hope of great human population redution save for calamitous occurrences, either natural or man-made. In my opinion, that's just too bad, because humans are ruining the natural world and are doing so mainly because there are just too many humans on the Earth (from a naturally balanced perspective). The ironic thing is, that too many humans will also be bad for humanity and already is to a significant extent.

Ah the irony of the universe. Humans have already wiped out 90% of the fish in the oceans; maybe the natural world will have the last laugh someday with a plague that wipes out 90% of humanity. Maybe that plague will be started by a mutant virus from some recombinant DNA experiment, who knows?

I hope there won't be some calamitous way that the human population gets reduced, and I would prefer to see a slow reduction by lower average fertility rates around the world; but a slow reduction in birth rates below replacement levels appears unlikely at present.

A calamitous crash WILL happen eventually, if population growth is not checked. Every natural population that grows wildly and remains unchecked eventually crashes; I see no reason why the population of humans should prove to be an exception to that rule.

Then, you'll no longer have to worry much about natural resources being overpressured due to capitalism - as long you're one of those who manage to survive the calamity.

[Misfire]

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There was simply more money in it that way.

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Please tell me how there would be fewer elephants (or how I would earn less than the average poacher) if I was allowed to breed them like cattle?

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People are greedy and don't think or care about the long term

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Does not compute. The "greediest" of capitalists, when allowed, will work to make as much as they can in the long term.

[Misfire]

I take serious issue with the idea that humans are anything but natural.

[Phil153]

I agree totally. The world would be a paradise with under 2 billion people (I think 1-2 billion is optimal), and most of the world's environmental and political problems would be solved.

I'm sure that won't happen though - the destruction of most of the world's natural areas will be complete in my lifetime. There's no way to stop it short of military intervention and mass murder, given the hundreds of millions of subsistence farmers living on forest boundaries, unchecked breeding in the world's poorest areas, and the rise of industrialization in the second world. Regardless of what the West does, these people are guaranteed to destroy what's left. The point of no return was passed 10 or maybe 20 years ago.

[Phil153]

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Please tell me how there would be fewer elephants (or how I would earn less than the average poacher) if I was allowed to breed them like cattle?

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Elephants and lions don't breed like cattle. Nor do they live on grass.

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People are greedy and don't think or care about the long term

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Does not compute. The "greediest" of capitalists, when allowed, will work to make as much as they can in the long term.

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The forest of Brazil would be far more valuable if managed for the long term. They are stripped bare for cattle ranches that last a few years before becoming permanently barren. This is a pattern that repeats itself around the world. The big oil companies with their vast amounts of capital and expertise aren't doing anywhere near what they could to investigate green energy, because there's still huge profits, right now, in pushing oil. How do you justify to shareholders cutting profits for 10-20 year to invest in the long term? You simply can't. The greed of capitalism keeps the focus on the quickest dollars in the shortest time. And the OP shows exactly the same thing with farming. It's all about this year's profits, this year's crop, and competing with the guy who'll wreck his own land to undercut your prices and make a buck.

[BCPVP]

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Elephants and lions don't breed like cattle.

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Probably not, considering cattle are often bred artificially. Technology can help speed up the natural process.

[quote[Nor do they live on grass.

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Actually, that's exactly what elephants eat. And if one can 'farm' elephants, then they can control their diet (just like cattle farmers), which means that the elephant doesn't have to go roaming for food and water and possibly die from not being able to find enough of either.

[hmkpoker]

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I agree totally. The world would be a paradise with under 2 billion people (I think 1-2 billion is optimal), and most of the world's environmental and political problems would be solved.

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How did you get that number?

[latefordinner]

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BTW latefordinner - I'd be interested in your thoughts on my post. Which do you believe is more to blame for the current state of unsustainable agriculture? The government, or consumer preference and farmer/supplier greed? I think it's overwhelmingly the latter, but I'd be interested to hear your arguments why this isn't the case.

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Phil, you haven't written anything I disagree with. As I have said in other posts I think that corporate capitalism creates a system in which people pursue "rational" actions that they wouldn't pursue in another socioeconomic system.

I think your points about the nearly limitless supply of free energy that is now coming to a close and reaching ecological boundaries are prescient, so to the point about agribusiness becoming unsustainable because we have literally stripped the soil of all nutrients looking far different than normal product obsolescence.

However if you read the first pdf, or watch the movie about Monsanto (one of the most evil corporations on earth IMHO - engineering a seed to die after it grows once to enforce "intellectual property rights" is such an awful idea that could only have arisen out of a system where profit-seeking has replaced sanity) State-intervention has played a huge role in creating and propping up agribusiness - and subsidies for agribusiness is a huge budgetary expenditure.

i was actually looking for ideas from market anarchists over how such a crappy state of affairs wrt food came to be - a discussion about why corporate agribusiness is good would fall into the apologetics category I think.

I'm also still unclear as to how people "own" animals in AC-world, last I checked they weren't too concerned with human property rights, but maybe in another thread.

[BCPVP]

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i was actually looking for ideas from market anarchists over how such a crappy state of affairs wrt food came to be - a discussion about why corporate agribusiness is good would fall into the apologetics category I think.

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I don't think you're going to find any ACist who'll defend the actions of agribusiness.

[matrix]

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Fast food proves what?

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that advertising is able to sell absolutely anything to stupid people.

That people are inherently lazy.

That there are enough stupid people in the world to sustain the profits of many large multinational corporations - despite those corporations selling "food" that isn't really food.

Presumably because those same stupid people believe the advertising they are brainwashed with and are too lazy to care.

(from Dictionary.com) food - n. any nourishing substance that is eaten, drunk, or otherwise taken into the body to sustain life, provide energy, promote growth, etc.

the "food" the vast majority of fast food outlets sell does more to damage the human body than nourish it - hence my claim that it is not really "food"

Co-incidentally the farming practices that encourage deforestation to provide grazing land for large herds of cattle do a lot of damage as well.

In any sane world fast food should not exist - there ought not to be the huge demand for it imo.