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wateroverfire posted:Maybe we can move the derail in the Techbros thread here. It is rather impractical to legislate that consumers have to give away their waste whereas it is much easier to legislate it from suppliers, and also suppliers are rich so they should do it anyway. The law is sensible.
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Mar 23, 2016 17:33
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wateroverfire posted:The point is not that the law is sensible or not. The point is my god, D&D, please stop talking about food waste like it's a conspiracy to cackle at the poor and leave people starving, because it's not. I suppose that depends on whether you consider "conspiracy" to be relegated to active attempts to construct a state of affairs and merely perpetuating one as a series of consciously unrelated actions. That food is private property and is not simply given freely as needed, leading to people overbuying it and production being pegged to how much can be sold, not how much can be distributed, is maybe something that could change.
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Mar 23, 2016 18:29
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wateroverfire posted:One is a conspiracy and the other isn't, yes. As in, it is really only a construct of our society that food isn't just produced and handed out for the asking, and that food production is not expanded to meet any increase in demand that would cause. The problem is not really that food is wasted as much as food is wasted while others go hungry, because food is private property.
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Mar 23, 2016 19:01
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wateroverfire posted:Oooooooookay. Currently, you work, you receive a portion of the product of your work as money, and that money is traded in exchagne for food so you can work. Instead, perhaps it would work better if you were given food, and a portion of the product of the work you do after being fed goes to produce more food. Then you can eat regardless.
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Mar 23, 2016 20:14
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wateroverfire posted:How is that not merely a semantic difference? Well because the food is guaranteed, it's treated as national infrastructure, like roads. You don't all go out and chip in a bit to maintain the road, it's built and then maintained by the productivity which stems from its existence and also anyone can use it whenever they like just for fun. It has a productive benefit but also benefits people who aren't necessarily using it to produce things. wateroverfire posted:To restate it a little. Is it... Well more that money is taken from everywhere to pay for the food, because the food is part of the foundation of all productivity. And also you can just get food even if you don't work. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 20:33 on Mar 23, 2016 |
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Mar 23, 2016 20:31
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deadly_pudding posted:It's too band-aid like, and I think it would devalue labor, especially in low income brackets. The advantage of being paid entirely in currency is that you can choose how much of that currency you spend on food. People need different amounts of food; some people have lesser or greater appetites, or differing dietary preferences/requirements, some people are like power lifters in their spare time and need a lot of protein, and so on. Some people would rather eat beans and rice so they can save up their cash for a few months. Some people don't mind skimping in other areas so they can eat good steaks or whatever more frequently. No you're not quite getting it. I'm saying give away food for free, like, lots of it. Obviously someone shouldn't be able to just take the entire supermarket but just give away a bunch of food to people. Fund food production through taxation. Let people pick what they want to eat and give them it.
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Mar 23, 2016 20:45
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deadly_pudding posted:Okay, that's actually pretty fair, especially at our rate of overproduction. The original wording seemed like the "food pay" was going to cut into the "currency pay", which would massively devalue labor in the "Making $15/hour or less" sector. Nah, that seems more complicated than it's worth. Just treat food more like you would a municipal water supply.
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Mar 23, 2016 20:49
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LogisticEarth posted:The only way this would work and not devolve into a classic case of mass shortages and overproduction is if you literally treat it like municipal water supply and just pipe a uniform food product into everyone's home. So...go Soylent I guess? Why don't we already have mass shortages? People get given money and can spend it on any food they like. What's the difference between that and a fairly generous allowance of food for everyone?
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Mar 23, 2016 20:58
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Jarmak posted:That makes sense, because our food supply is just as homogeneous and locally source-able as water, and it's not like I have to pay a water bill every month. You can go get water from a public fountain if you want to, or poo poo in a public toilet. I suppose if you want fancy water or water delivered directly to your house you do pay more but water is available for the taking even in the blighted hellscape of America where public funding of things is punishable by death and you insist on living in the middle of a desert. And this has been the case for a very long time. Perhaps in this modern age we can improve upon it?
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Mar 23, 2016 21:01
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PT6A posted:So, under your proposed system, are there any limits to the amount of food which one can obtain for free, or its nature? Could I decide that I like to eat t-bone steaks and Osetra caviar for three meals a day, and get those for free, or would certain luxury foods be excluded from this system or limited in quantity? Would luxury foods even be available at all? I suppose rationing would be sort of accurate though I dislike its association with restricting the amount of food you can eat, really the goal should be to increase availability of food for most people because it's pretty cheap and decoupling it from the rest of your income would encourage people to be a little more free with it. You can probably leave the fois gras and poo poo out of the system and just let people buy it but definitely staple foods I think would benefit from being freely distributed.
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Mar 23, 2016 21:10
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LogisticEarth posted:You just said you wouldn't have food vouchers or whatever and would just give it away for free. No I didn't I said you wouldn't be paid in food, I said you get food regardless and that it should be more than you realistically need. Whether you actually need to ration it or not I suppose depends on the food. Do people regularly go up to public fountains and try to fill an 18 wheeler tanker off them? Exactly how much dried rice do you feel like carting away from the supermarket even if it was free? PT6A posted:So, you basically get a set amount of basic staples, inexpensive proteins and in-season fresh produce, and then you'd be allowed to buy additional or different food if you chose to do so? Well like I said food waste itself isn't really a problem, the problem is food being wasted while other people are hungry, or at least while other people are being held hostage in some way over their not having free access to food. Food that is thrown out can be composted and put back onto the farm. It's a bit inefficient I suppose but there's not really a social problem with it because production should be more than expandable to overcome that wastage. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 21:18 on Mar 23, 2016 |
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Mar 23, 2016 21:15
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PT6A posted:It depends. Do I think we can afford, as a society, to basically give away all the potatoes and carrots we want? Yes. Do I think the same applies to stuff that has to be imported regularly out-of-season, like red peppers or asparagus or any of the other expensive produce items at the grocery store? No, I don't think you should be able to take as much as you want. Should you be able to take just the premium cuts of meat, to any quantity you like? I have no problem with letting people grab a free whole chicken, but I think allowing people to take boneless, skinless chicken breasts for free would result in a glut of other sorts of chicken, since breasts are generally considered more desirable, and that would create more waste. Remember: you can't pass off the less desirable cuts for less money if you're giving the desirable stuff away for free. I can agree that it creates some logistical issues for some products certainly, I wouldn't suggest just letting people take as many T bones as they want to so that may be either a thing for the supplementary markets or which you may have to ration, but certainly I think many basic foodstuffs should be pretty easy to regulate by just not letting someone try to cart the whole pallet out of the store, no need for much bureaucracy in getting access to them. PT6A posted:EDIT: There's also the issue that imported foods (or, I guess in the US context, food that come from a long way away in the same country) have a higher carbon footprint, as do animal proteins, so prices should reflect the externalities of those things to some degree. You can't do that if you're giving it away for free. If you centralize the distribution of those things you can figure out whether a certain thing is causing a significant problem in that regard and either replace it with a local alternative or reduce the supply of it, or increase taxes to fund something else to offset those externalities. The food tax also goes to fund some green energy or something because everyone wants their poo poo trucked across the country. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 21:29 on Mar 23, 2016 |
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Mar 23, 2016 21:26
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Jarmak posted:You realize that infrastructure isn't designed to provide daily use levels of water to the general public right? And that outside of a handful of municipal water fountains whoever owns the building is paying for it and offering it as a convenience? Well, no it is, otherwise the general public would not be able to use water daily. It's just the public infrastructure isn't designed to do that at the moment. If the state owned all the water infrastructure and just let you do whatever with it, then funded the infrastructure by raising a tax instead of by getting people to pay for it directly, what would really change? Do you avoid leaving the tap on all day because you don't like paying for it or do you just not see the point in doing it?
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Mar 23, 2016 21:54
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Jarmak posted:I was referring to the public sources of water, obviously our in home plumbing in capable of providing water for daily use. And yes, I am more conscious of water use when I'm paying for it rather then it being included in the rent. Then wouldn't it be nice for you not to have to?
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Mar 23, 2016 22:03
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freezepops posted:Are you seriously asking what would happen if water was unmetered? Usage would increase drastically and large amounts of it would be wasted because people would find all sorts of uses that are currently not done because water isn't free. Not to mention all incentive to conserve water would be lost. I'm sure usage would increase but, for example, water is not always metered where I live, peopel still don't just leave the tap on for no reason. As water is not destroyed when used the issue then becomes the reprocessing capacity. If you can't expand the reprocessing capacity to meet demand then you can consider meters which cut off after very excessive use but I think it would be pretty easy with a bit of investment in infrastructure to meet the water usage demands of the population without requiring much at all in the way of restriction of use, except possibly in drought conditions. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 22:39 on Mar 23, 2016 |
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Mar 23, 2016 22:37
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Jarmak posted:There's a broad spectrum of waste that falls short of "I'm gonna leave my taps at full blast all day because gently caress the water supply" Yes, as I said, usage would likely increase, but my point is not infinitely. The issue is not with waste, really, as much as ensuring an available supply.
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Mar 23, 2016 22:41
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Jarmak posted:Oh hey look, 40 out of 50 states report they will experience shortfalls in their freshwater supply under average weather conditions. Well yes if you live in a desert that will happen, but even then, it's a question of infrastructure. If you wanted to you could cover both coasts in desalinization plants and pipe it across the country, but that's hard to do without national-level investment.
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Mar 23, 2016 22:47
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Run it off nuclear power, and consider doing the same thing to the energy grid while you're at it?
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Mar 23, 2016 22:58
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wateroverfire posted:Do you believe that resource constraints are a thing, or are they a conspiracy of the capitalist oppressor? Mostly the latter.
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Mar 24, 2016 03:26
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Helsing posted:Typically "junk food" refers to food that's high in calories and comparatively low in nutritional content. The fact it's a pejorative and colloquial word doesn't mean its either incoherent or useless as a description. That describes a lot of foods that have been staples of diets for most of history.
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Mar 25, 2016 19:24
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Helsing posted:You can freak out over the fact that "junk food" is a colloquialism and not a precise scientific term as much you as like, but that's what most fast food and a lot of instant microwavable meals are: junk food. Now aside from your incredible and misplaced pedantry regarding the term "junk food", do you actually disagree with the doctors in the Lancet who are warning about the dangers of eating too much "cheap, sweet, fatty, salty, or processed foods that need little cooking" at the expense of " fresh fruit and vegetables"? The main difference between those two aside from some vitamins is that raw vegetables are not very calorically dense, because humans can't efficiently digest them. So you would have to eat a huge amount of them to get a lot of calories out of them. You could theoretically achieve similar results by just eating less calorically dense food, which is not inherently unhealthy, just easier to overeat. Excessive sugar intake can be a problem but you can get a lot of sugar from say, eating a bunch of fruit. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 22:28 on Mar 25, 2016 |
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Mar 25, 2016 22:25
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shrike82 posted:http://frac.org/initiatives/hunger-and-obesity/are-low-income-people-at-greater-risk-for-overweight-or-obesity/ Which is to say, yes, there's a correlation between poverty and obesity.
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Mar 27, 2016 22:15
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