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silence_kit posted:I sincerely believe that some posters in this thread would defend to the death even the most stupid, pointless, and wasteful government regulation if it gave them an opportunity to rag on a startup company. That might be because, astonishingly, a remarkable number of startups are doing the exact same thing which is: 1. Use modern communications technology to create a distributed business, instead of a conventional business where people go to a place and work there. 2. Get a shitload of venture capital funding for this business. 3. Use unconventional business structure to claim that business is not actually a business and does not have actual "employees" and does not actually "do things" but merely "Facilitates independent activities by parties interested in doing so." 4. Use assertion that business is not actually a business to ignore laws and regulations governing business conduct. 5. Disclaim all liability for actions of not-employees when not-business gets told to get hosed by local government after local government gets around to it. 6. Throw a hissy fit and whine about fascist nazi regulations that are taking money from poor hard working independent contractors and really it's about our not-employees and not at all the cut we're taking from all of their labour, don't you believe in trust and human connection you heartless bureucrats? 7. (hopefully) Not-business collapses because it turns out the not-business model was completely unsustainable and also illegal but laws prevent attachment of liability to not-business because, as stated, it wasn't actually a business. But some people have suddenly gotten quite rich out of this collapse, thus revealing the strange trend that perhaps startups are entirely an exercise in getting venture capital into the pocket of their founders and nothing else, while also attacking labour and safety laws in the process. So with that in mind, yes, the thread is becoming possibly as unoriginal as the thing it is intended to make fun of. How tragic.
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Jun 9, 2016 21:23
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silence_kit posted:I sincerely believe that some posters in this thread would defend to the death even the most stupid, pointless, and wasteful government regulation if it gave them an opportunity to rag on a startup company. Why even bother interacting with other people if youre just going to make up strawmen and attack those? "The people i made up in my head who are doing this thing i imagined them to be doing sure are dumb"
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Jun 9, 2016 21:24
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silence_kit posted:I sincerely believe that some posters in this thread would defend to the death even the most stupid, pointless, and wasteful government regulation if it gave them an opportunity to rag on a startup company. A simple fact of regulation is that rich people hate it. They want it to go away because it costs them money. Does it need a regulatory agency? That costs tax dollars. Are there inspectors and licenses a business has to pay for? Costs money again. The law demands that you clean up your loving mess, pay workers a living wage, and not just bury the nearby community in soot? Well doing those things costs money. More costs means less profit! Profits are good so regulation must be bad! So, of course, they're always looking for ways to get around these regulations so they can make profit. This is why you're seeing more "well we don't have employees" things going on and why more and more workers are temps, contractors, or interns. There's a very strong motivation to do business as cheaply as possible and regulations get in the way of that. Of course venture capitalists are going to vomit money all over a company that looks like it can make bigger profit margins than the competition by skirting regulations. These app companies are a huge problem because their "disruption" is mostly just looking at the government and saying "no it isn't because I said so." It's an argument on the level of a child saying "my monster is everythingproof!" Now that governments are ponying up to what they're doing they're screeching about freedom and whatever, as if their freedom to exploit is more important than their It's tied up in all of the things that are causing massive economic and social problems in America right now but there's resistance to fixing them "because freedom."
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Jun 9, 2016 21:34
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crusader_complex posted:I feel like the 'disruptive startup' discussions all get sidetracked into whether or not the regulations are good/useful, instead of the point that the dispatchers are knowingly dodging the regulations. hopefully the last couple of pages have made it clear why that is the case
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Jun 9, 2016 21:43
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silence_kit posted:I sincerely believe that some posters in this thread would defend to the death even the most stupid, pointless, and wasteful government regulation if it gave them an opportunity to rag on a startup company. can you name some specific examples?
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Jun 9, 2016 22:43
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Samog posted:hopefully the last couple of pages have made it clear why that is the case Haha I was just going to see how the thread was going. Its bunch of arguments about the structural integrity of swingsets, and how many people get food poisoned from church bakesales. And repeatedly drawing the conclusion that all points of view are at hyperbolic opposites. Not trying to dis anyone who has jumped in, I'm just slowly trying to figure out what D&D "is".
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Jun 9, 2016 22:50
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crusader_complex posted:Haha I was just going to see how the thread was going. Its bunch of arguments about the structural integrity of swingsets, and how many people get food poisoned from church bakesales. And repeatedly drawing the conclusion that all points of view are at hyperbolic opposites. This isn't really the place to discuss what D&D is or isn't. There's QCS for such forums metacommentary.
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Jun 9, 2016 22:56
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crusader_complex posted:Haha I was just going to see how the thread was going. Its bunch of arguments about the structural integrity of swingsets, and how many people get food poisoned from church bakesales. And repeatedly drawing the conclusion that all points of view are at hyperbolic opposites. well with reading comprehension like that you should crack the case in no time, gumshoe the main argument people are making itt is that trying to sidestep regulation by encouraging your end user to profit from petty illegal activity while sending you a cut does not generate sufficient societal good to be worth tolerating or defending
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Jun 9, 2016 22:58
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Uncle Enzo posted:And if I charged people to play on my residential-grade equipment? That would be ok also? I'm sure it'd be fine. After all, what could go wrong?
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Jun 9, 2016 23:20
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Popular Thug Drink posted:well with reading comprehension like that you should crack the case in no time, gumshoe You know when you put it that way it really doesn't make it sound like Sharing at all, it sounds almost like some kind of mafia racket.
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Jun 9, 2016 23:27
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OwlFancier posted:You know when you put it that way it really doesn't make it sound like Sharing at all, it sounds almost like some kind of mafia racket. It's like a protection racket without the protection.
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Jun 9, 2016 23:37
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OwlFancier posted:1. Use modern communications technology to create a distributed business, instead of a conventional business where people go to a place and work there. You know, all this talk about "distributed business" (along with some books I've been reading lately) got me thinking. What would be actually good industries to apply this new model to? Presume integrity. We can of course assume that a new business will operate n as little good faith as Uber or Lyft or AirBNB has but that doesn't really get us anywhere in this thought exercise. Our food culture suffers rather greatly from having to resort to concentrated industrial farming, which has enormous subsidized costs that aren't represented in the final sticker price of the food. The food we get from factory farms is less nutritious, less healthy for us, less healthy for the crops and for the animals, and less healthy for the soil itself. Thanks to the necessities of participating in an interconnected global market . Unfortunately, thanks to having to feed a planet of 7 billion (and growing!)* people, and thanks to the profit drive of capitalism and market-oriented systems, we need to resort to an heavily industrialized and mechanistic system. Individual efficiency doesn't matter as much as ability to operate on an eye-boggling scale. Gathering food from 800 small family farms ends up being more "wasteful" no matter how much better and more individually efficient the farms are at transforming sunlight into food, because it's so much simpler logistically to build a pipeline from a colossal factory farm to the groceries and supermarkets. We already have a bunch of people who are seeking out local farmers for regular food delivery, but this is logistically difficult and financially inefficient and it also only works for the people who are educated, informed, and motivated enough to seek these arrangements out, as well as these who can afford paying slightly higher prices for their food. Why not something like "Farmr" that helps manage the problem of distribution for small-scale farming by coordinating them and helping corral the food into nearby/local groceries? Schedule pick-up times and have a fleet of "first-mile" trucks that can gather the products and bring them to processing centers, then eventually to retail outlets. (Of course, here the specter of Regulation rears up again, a significant chunk of the price of food is thanks to off-farm processing to comply with government regulation. On an individual scale this isn't always necessary, but on a mass scale it certainly is because the likelihood of any given farm loving it up goes up and up.) I'm sure there's lots of problems with this that I haven't fully thought through, and I'm not making a fully serious Farmr proposal anyway, but having read through this entire thread I'm now curious which industries that this idea of distributed business would actually benefit and improve. Thanks to ubiquitous Internet and instant electronic communication we have an extremely powerful tool at our hands to transform our civilization and lol if it's being used anywhere remotely close to its potential. Taxis and weekend bedroom rental and handyman jobs seems like seriously small potatoes. The current "disruption" model seems more like parasitism to me, to be honest. And not even the symbiotic kind. *: Off-topic, but who exactly is this explosion in population actually benefiting? It certainly isn't us peasants. There's only so many people you can interact with in your lifetime, and most of us won't even come remotely close to that number. A higher population means more competition for work and more pressure driving down wages, means less individual agency (your voice matters a lot more when it's 1 of a few million than when it's 1 of 300 million), means far more stress on our global habitat, more pollution and waste, means that if something goes wrong with our globalist system poo poo will really really loving hit the fan. Enormous population counts benefit the people at the top, not the people at the bottom. More peasants means a wider pyramid means more people at the top layers and also means more money and power and privilege for the people at the very top, and also means less of an upset population when they realize they're being screwed. Taking a dollar from everyone upsets the peasants more than when you take ten cents each from a population ten times the size.
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Jun 10, 2016 01:10
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Make food safety regulations unnecessary by including a packet of antibiotics with every meal.
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Jun 10, 2016 01:12
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Brannock posted:I'm sure there's lots of problems with this that I haven't fully thought through, and I'm not making a fully serious Farmr proposal anyway, but having read through this entire thread I'm now curious which industries that this idea of distributed business would actually benefit and improve. Thanks to ubiquitous Internet and instant electronic communication we have an extremely powerful tool at our hands to transform our civilization and lol if it's being used anywhere remotely close to its potential. Taxis and weekend bedroom rental and handyman jobs seems like seriously small potatoes. Well my answer is obviously going to be nationalize agriculture and enforce sustainable practices, also possibly migrate away from low labour high sprawl farming back to higher labour lower sprawl farming to some degree. Get everyone growing stuff in their gardens and that. But the crux of your idea I think is the creation of a communications system that actually serves the public benefit which is basically what tindr/grindr is. Sure it makes money but it also actually does function as a communication platform to fill a use in society, without immediately being detrimental to public safety. To which end, a lot of the actual startup apps would be fine if they weren't trying to build a business on the basis of breaking/avoiding the law. A smartphone app for registered taxis would be a good thing. A social app for people to arrange communal meals would be a good thing. The issue is always the desire to turn a profit off the actual service without a commensurate degree of protection for the consumer and the worker.
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Jun 10, 2016 01:36
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Jumpingmanjim posted:Make food safety regulations unnecessary by including a packet of antibiotics with every meal. Hello extra super gonorrhea!
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Jun 10, 2016 02:14
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silence_kit posted:I sincerely believe that some posters in this thread would defend to the death even the most stupid, pointless, and wasteful government regulation if it gave them an opportunity to rag on a startup company.
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Jun 10, 2016 04:16
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OwlFancier posted:You know when you put it that way it really doesn't make it sound like Sharing at all, it sounds almost like some kind of mafia racket. Now your getting it! You sound like the sort of bright person that would be interested in signing up for Hitr, an exciting new, disruptive service that helps introduce independent contractors to their local community of people who need other people killed. Be your own boss! Keep your own schedule - as little as one assassination per month, or as many as one every day! Got a gun? Turn it into a money-making machine, with Hitr. Once we have a few irksome local regulations ironed out, we should have a bright future. Hobnob fucked around with this message at 04:40 on Jun 10, 2016 |
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Jun 10, 2016 04:27
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Brannock posted:Our food culture suffers rather greatly from having to resort to concentrated industrial farming, which has enormous subsidized costs that aren't represented in the final sticker price of the food. The food we get from factory farms is less nutritious, less healthy for us, less healthy for the crops and for the animals, and less healthy for the soil itself. Most of this is factually inaccurate. Factory farmed food is fine, so long as sufficient health and safety laws are present and enforced. The issues are generally ethical regarding the treatment of food animals and workers, and environmental regarding the impact of the techniques used to get modern yields as regards erosion and especially fertilizer runoff, both of which are still a problem with small farms. Small farms also have less resources to act on these problems in the first place, and are more likely to be hurt by the burdens of compliance with regulations or the losses of a bad season. Liquid Communism fucked around with this message at 06:01 on Jun 10, 2016 |
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Jun 10, 2016 05:56
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Liquid Communism posted:Most of this is factually inaccurate. Factory farmed food is fine, so long as sufficient health and safety laws are present and enforced. The issues are generally ethical regarding the treatment of food animals and workers, and environmental regarding the impact of the techniques used to get modern yields as regards erosion and especially fertilizer runoff, both of which are still a problem with small farms. Small farms also have less resources to act on these problems in the first place, and are more likely to be hurt by the burdens of compliance with regulations or the losses of a bad season. "sufficient laws" is rather nebulous wouldn't you say? Of course with sufficient and enforced laws then anything is perfectly safe and healthy and fine. Ethical issues are rampant in the industry, yes, and while erosion and fertilizer runoff are a (large) problem, I think you're glossing over the impact that pesticides and monoculture have on the health and fertility of the soil. Blasting the soil repeatedly has a nasty side effect of destroying its health and requiring more and more external interference to keep it fertile and able to grow crops. GMO crops are helping to alleviate the pesticide problem, though. I have trouble believing your implication that meat harvested from animals that subsist off corn, protein pastes, and a steady diet of antibiotics, is as healthy and nutritious as that harvested from animals that are allowed to eat and grow as they would "naturally" (here used 'as opposed to in a factory environment"). A varied and natural diet, in combination with plenty of exercise, movement, and sunshine is provably better and healthier for humans than chowing on Doritos while seated indoors 24/7 -- is it really that far-fetched to think that it's also the case for the animals we eat? That's before we get into how much energy is required to operate a global-reaching network to exchange food and fertilizer and all the other things you need to operate a modern industrial farm. That problem is starting to go away as we replace fossil fuels with longer-term and less-polluting forms of energy, but, frankly, it's not going away fast enough (and may already be too late) and it'll still be a long while before we're able to find a suitable replacement for fossil fuels for transportation itself. "Sufficient laws" would, if implemented and enforced, do a lot to address the problems both you and I bring up. Unfortunately, large corporations have a habit of following regulations to the barest possible extent, and there's significant amounts of pressure and pushback from agribusiness against improved regulation, studies on nutritional impact and health, and the like. While it's true that smaller farmers are hit harder by setbacks (either market or act-of-God) and regulations, it's not like the government doesn't already provide assistance for these scenarios. In my experience (which I admit is biased, I interact mostly with local small farmers and these at the farmer's market) conscientious and educated local farmers are better at working their land properly and attending to its unique differences, compared to larger farms leveling and brute-forcing their land and animals with industrial methods. I readily admit that many, if not most, small farmers are (and were) not conscientious and educated. I think we can aim for better ideals with our food and our lives, however, than "Whatever, let the Morlocks out in, heh, flyover country force-feed nature through our industrial machines while the vast majority of us sit around all day in our cities and cubicles." I don't want to start a food derail in this thread though, but I think a thread on the state of America's food industry and attitudes towards food could be a good read and a good discussion.
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Jun 10, 2016 07:10
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Brannock posted:"sufficient laws" is rather nebulous wouldn't you say? Of course with sufficient and enforced laws then anything is perfectly safe and healthy and fine. Your 'experience' amounts to accepting their marketing at face value, and your argument against regulation is 'criminals exist, therefore laws are impossible'.
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Jun 10, 2016 07:38
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Liquid Communism posted:Your 'experience' amounts to accepting their marketing at face value, and your argument against regulation is 'criminals exist, therefore laws are impossible'. I don't know how you could possibly read that and think I'm arguing against regulations. Feel free to go see for yourself, no marketing needed, the results of intensive monoculture farming on the soil, and the reality of how factory-raised animals live and are fed.
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Jun 10, 2016 08:09
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Popular Thug Drink posted:well with reading comprehension like that you should crack the case in no time, gumshoe I agree (aside from the reading comprehension bit, respectfully). I even think its reprehensible and dishonest. I like your framing it as '[not worth] tolerating or defending', though since that sounds like a more productive way to engage with people disagreeing.
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Jun 10, 2016 08:47
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Welp. The Theranos movie will star Jennifer Lawrence. That was fast. Note that there's a LOT of attrition between signing stars and actually making a movie.
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Jun 10, 2016 15:08
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It's objective fact that industrial farming uses fewer resources than organic methods, especially on a national scale. Like literally "economies of scale" science. You may as well be an anti-vaxxer if you deny this.
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Jun 10, 2016 15:36
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computer parts posted:It's objective fact that industrial farming uses fewer resources than organic methods, especially on a national scale. Like literally "economies of scale" science. You may as well be an anti-vaxxer if you deny this. Fewer human resources. It uses, sort of by definition, more raw materials than just sticking crap in the dirt and letting it grow.
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Jun 10, 2016 15:42
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OwlFancier posted:Fewer human resources. It uses, sort of by definition, more raw materials than just sticking crap in the dirt and letting it grow.
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Jun 10, 2016 15:52
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OwlFancier posted:Fewer human resources. It uses, sort of by definition, more raw materials than just sticking crap in the dirt and letting it grow. HOWEVER, industrial farming doesn't count the costs of long-term degradation of the soil, extermination of wildlife, and pollution of aquifers and streams. Industrial farming is degrading common resources in the same way that uncapped smokestacks degraded common air. Industrial farming produces more food *per acre*, not per person. That's the point. Humans are cheap, acreage is expensive. The supply of farmable land is far smaller than the supply of people. (I don't know how this applies to the slow abandonment of prairie farming in the Dakotas and so on; I think that the land is marginal enough that the returns aren't high, but I don't actually know.) tl;dr: Farming is complicated, and what you were taught in school was bullshit.
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Jun 10, 2016 15:55
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computer parts posted:It's objective fact that industrial farming uses fewer resources than organic methods, especially on a national scale. Like literally "economies of scale" science. You may as well be an anti-vaxxer if you deny this. How the gently caress do you get this? My family has a small organic farm with an orchard (~120 fruit trees) and a field of assorted veg. We use significantly less water, fertilizer, and zero pesticides and chemicals per plant/unit grown than a commercial operation. We don't use large gas operated vehicles for harvest or maintenance, either. We have a variety of crops that allows healthy use of the land without overstressing the soil (which is how we can get supermarket quality fruits and veg without dumping hundreds of tons of fertilizer on our plants). The only resource we have more of is people - we have 5 adults and 2 kids living and working our farm. An industrial operation using more natural and chemical resources could handle a much larger farm with one guy and his machines. Industrial farming not only rapes the land it is on, but it requires massive amounts of imported products (fertilizers, pesticides, fuel for vehicles including aircraft for spraying) that has a significant impact on land outside the farm. Industrial farms also have favorable water contracts and have little incentive to use that resource efficiently. Industrial farming is cheaper for the consumer, but I'd even question that with the amount of subsidies that industrial agriculture gets. It certainly is not less resource intensive than small organic family farms. The primary benefit of industrial agriculture is amount of food produced, which is a dumb argument since so much food is thrown away in the process - from farm to supermarket dumpster.
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Jun 10, 2016 16:01
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OwlFancier posted:Fewer human resources. It uses, sort of by definition, more raw materials than just sticking crap in the dirt and letting it grow. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pDTiFkXgEE
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Jun 10, 2016 16:03
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Tuxedo Gin posted:How the gently caress do you get this? My family has a small organic farm with an orchard (~120 fruit trees) and a field of assorted veg. We use significantly less water, fertilizer, and zero pesticides and chemicals per plant/unit grown than a commercial operation. We don't use large gas operated vehicles for harvest or maintenance, either. We have a variety of crops that allows healthy use of the land without overstressing the soil (which is how we can get supermarket quality fruits and veg without dumping hundreds of tons of fertilizer on our plants). The only resource we have more of is people - we have 5 adults and 2 kids living and working our farm. An industrial operation using more natural and chemical resources could handle a much larger farm with one guy and his machines. I'm sorry, but your personal anecdote here flies in the face of hundreds of years of agricultural science. Yes, industrial farming is not without problems, and yes, organic farming has its benefits, but in terms of yield/acre and total input cost per unit produced, etc., you cannot come close to matching a modern industrial farm. I went to and work at a leading agricultural school (although I am myself a geoscientist) and this place is lousy with phDs specializing in every aspect of making sure poo poo grows just so. Also, farmers, even large scale ones (especially large scale ones, really) are a loving miserly lot and waste far fewer resources than you might imagine.
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Jun 10, 2016 16:27
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Tuxedo Gin posted:How the gently caress do you get this? My family has a small organic farm with an orchard (~120 fruit trees) and a field of assorted veg. We use significantly less water, fertilizer, and zero pesticides and chemicals per plant/unit grown than a commercial operation. We don't use large gas operated vehicles for harvest or maintenance, either. We have a variety of crops that allows healthy use of the land without overstressing the soil (which is how we can get supermarket quality fruits and veg without dumping hundreds of tons of fertilizer on our plants). The only resource we have more of is people - we have 5 adults and 2 kids living and working our farm. An industrial operation using more natural and chemical resources could handle a much larger farm with one guy and his machines. Arsenic Lupin posted:Welp. The Theranos movie will star Jennifer Lawrence. That was fast. Note that there's a LOT of attrition between signing stars and actually making a movie. cheese fucked around with this message at 16:40 on Jun 10, 2016 |
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Jun 10, 2016 16:34
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ReidRansom posted:I'm sorry, but your personal anecdote here flies in the face of hundreds of years of agricultural science. Yes, industrial farming is not without problems, and yes, organic farming has its benefits, but in terms of yield/acre and total input cost per unit produced, etc., you cannot come close to matching a modern industrial farm. I went to and work at a leading agricultural school (although I am myself a geoscientist) and this place is lousy with phDs specializing in every aspect of making sure poo poo grows just so. Also, farmers, even large scale ones (especially large scale ones, really) are a loving miserly lot and waste far fewer resources than you might imagine. My argument is that input cost per unit is skewed on a national scale by subsidies and failure to factor in the environmental impact, and the benefits of yield/acre are irrelevant when we throw so much food away. We don't loving need those kinds of yields if we're wasting a massive amount of the produce either because it wasn't pretty enough or it didn't sell. Farmers count that as a unit sold, as do your statistics, but within the entire earth to belly agriculture system, those are wasted units and wasted resources. Yeah, my story is anecdotal, but it also reflects the experience of the small time family farms that surround ours. The impact of industrialized agriculture to the land absolutely requires more fertilizers, chemicals, and usually a lot more water per unit grown (and absolutely per unit consumed) than smaller operations. It also apparently requires leading schools that are lousy with scientists to support their methods. If industrial agriculture is so loving cost and resource efficient, why do they need so many subsidies?
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Jun 10, 2016 16:37
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cheese posted:The problem with your point is that all of the agricultural inputs are, at the end of the day, converted into dollars, and industrial agriculture produces more pounds of food per dollar than organic farming. If it didn't, people wouldn't do it. There is no room full of evil business overlords going "Yes, yes, we could make just as much food with organic farming but I just LOVE spraying pesticides so much!". They use all that fuel and spray those pesticides and consume fertilizer by ton because it results in more food (and more profit) for every dollar they spend. You get that right? Yeah, and maybe using the dollar as the metric for measuring that is dumb. It doesn't factor in environmental damage or food waste. e: To clarify, yes, industrial farming is awesome for industrial farmers. It's not really much better for anyone else. Even as cheap as food is, poor people can barely afford it, even with tons of it ending up in dumpsters along the way. Industrial farming is inefficient use of resources but results in larger profits for agribusiness. Higher food prices would not destroy the average consumer - they would learn to waste less. Tuxedo Gin fucked around with this message at 16:42 on Jun 10, 2016 |
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Jun 10, 2016 16:39
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Tuxedo Gin posted:How the gently caress do you get this? My family has a small organic farm with an orchard (~120 fruit trees) and a field of assorted veg. We use significantly less water, fertilizer, and zero pesticides and chemicals per plant/unit grown than a commercial operation. We don't use large gas operated vehicles for harvest or maintenance, either. We have a variety of crops that allows healthy use of the land without overstressing the soil (which is how we can get supermarket quality fruits and veg without dumping hundreds of tons of fertilizer on our plants). The only resource we have more of is people - we have 5 adults and 2 kids living and working our farm. An industrial operation using more natural and chemical resources could handle a much larger farm with one guy and his machines. Wouldn't doing what your family does on a society-wide scale necessitate huge amounts of people going back into agricultural labour since the yields are not as good per person? As in, reversing the trend of how less and less people are being farmers every year because agricultural work is pretty lovely? As has been pointed out already labor is a resource as well, alternatively if you are organic farming on the same scale (if not the same methods) as industrial farming then you are still going to be using as much fuel etc. to cover the area and get a lower yield at the end of it. Jumpingmanjim posted:Make food safety regulations unnecessary by including a packet of antibiotics with every meal. SCENE: A diarrhea pandemic is sweeping the nation after food safety regulations are replaced with antibiotic packets. A government researcher stares at a noticeboard of headline pages stating the death toll. While in the midst of a wracking TB coughing fit he sits his computer, booting up wikipedia. For the 1000th time he goes to the page for food poisoning, but for the very first time notices the word "Rotavirus". He clicks the link. He clicks again. "Viruses cannot be treated with antibiotics" He stands, trembling and wide eyed at the screen, sweat suddenly dripping from his forehead, and makes for the door.
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Jun 10, 2016 16:43
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Another startup dealing with licencing and then funding issues trying to disrupt the industry.http://www.ctvnews.ca/business/travellers-await-relaunch-of-low-cost-flight-reseller-newleaf-1.2939775 posted:
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Jun 10, 2016 16:48
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MikeCrotch posted:Wouldn't doing what your family does on a society-wide scale necessitate huge amounts of people going back into agricultural labour since the yields are not as good per person? As in, reversing the trend of how less and less people are being farmers every year because agricultural work is pretty lovely? As has been pointed out already labor is a resource as well, alternatively if you are organic farming on the same scale (if not the same methods) as industrial farming then you are still going to be using as much fuel etc. to cover the area and get a lower yield at the end of it. To bring this derail back onto the tracks of the thread, with all our outsourcing, automation, and industry disruption, people are going to need to supplement their independent contractor incomes with something - might as well become a little more self sufficient. Since they can't afford to live in the city or suburbs, might as well leverage the land in the exurbs where they live to grow a bit of food. Industry in the US has a declining need for workers. Work is outsourced, automated, or workers are simply being expected to to the job of multiple people. Unemployment is high. Grow some loving vegetables.
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Jun 10, 2016 16:50
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twodot posted:I think we can reasonably accept dollars as a proxy for resources, and observe the cost of production of industrial farms per unit is lower than other farms, and conclude they use fewer resources in general. Maybe you care about a specific resource (oil), but distinguishing on human is weird unless you think it's good to have a bunch of people maintaining farms. If the argument is that industrial farming requires too many raw materials in the form of fertilizer and pesticides to keep the soil functional then this is arguably, primarily a function of mechanized farming which exists to keep labor costs down. As I had cause to point out in UKMT the other day, it's quite possible to massively, massively increase yield per acre over conventional farming methods by greatly increasing labor use and forgoing the use of traditional harvesting machinery. OwlFancier posted:The value of modern industrial farming is that it requires minimal labor, we have an abundance of farmland. OwlFancier posted:They're very large greenhouses: Yes current industrial farming methods do increase yield over pre-industrial methods but that is not really the point of them, the point of them, as with all industry, is to reduce labor costs because actually just owning land is cheaper than having to pay workers. There is no reason for the market to favor increasing crop yield per acre when you can just sprawl farmland over 90% of the country. If, however, you think doing that is ecologically damaging or unsustainable in the long term due to soil damage or whatnot, then the farming method you're looking for is quite different from what is commonly used now. As has been pointed out above, we have a surplus of labor and it seems probably that that will only increase over time. So mechanized farming, while certainly profitable, does not really serve that much of a need in terms of productivity per-acre unless you have something better to use your labor surplus for. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 16:58 on Jun 10, 2016 |
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Jun 10, 2016 16:54
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unknown posted:Another startup dealing with licencing and then funding issues trying to disrupt the industry. quote:The company contended that it did not require a licence because it is not an airline and doesn't operate airplanes. Instead, it purchases seats from Kelowna, B.C.-based Flair Airlines and resells them to the public. Flair Airlines, which owns and operates a fleet of Boeing 737-400 jets, is licensed under the CTA. So... they're like a limited form of Expedia? I'm seeing neither the disruption nor the innovation here. 
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Jun 10, 2016 16:58
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Tuxedo Gin posted:My argument is that input cost per unit is skewed on a national scale by subsidies and failure to factor in the environmental impact, and the benefits of yield/acre are irrelevant when we throw so much food away. We don't loving need those kinds of yields if we're wasting a massive amount of the produce either because it wasn't pretty enough or it didn't sell. Farmers count that as a unit sold, as do your statistics, but within the entire earth to belly agriculture system, those are wasted units and wasted resources. Better to overproduce than under, I'd say, so long as it can be done in a more or less sustainable fashion (it can and that's what some of those doctors of farming are for). unknown posted:Another startup dealing with licencing and then funding issues trying to disrupt the industry. So they've come up with the ultra revolutionary idea of being a travel agency. Brilliant.
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Jun 10, 2016 17:00
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Tuxedo Gin posted:Yeah, and maybe using the dollar as the metric for measuring that is dumb. It doesn't factor in environmental damage or food waste. 2) The idea of making food more expensive to somehow help poor people is asinine. Cheap food is what is keeping poor people alive, and that includes being able to go to McDonalds and feed a family of four for 10 bucks. The food is poo poo, no doubt, but stomachs have to be filled. Tuxedo Gin posted:To bring this derail back onto the tracks of the thread, with all our outsourcing, automation, and industry disruption, people are going to need to supplement their independent contractor incomes with something - might as well become a little more self sufficient. Since they can't afford to live in the city or suburbs, might as well leverage the land in the exurbs where they live to grow a bit of food. I think you are also ignoring the massive numbers of urban poor for whom a plot of farmable land is a pipe dream (because they live in a lovely apartment in an ocean of asphalt).
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Jun 10, 2016 17:00
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