Oh the scarcity argument. We have more than enough food to feed everyone on earth.
We subsidies food because agriculture is a "different" industry, due to its cyclical nature, strategic importance etc.
Then, the food that isn't sold on the market is burned in food mountains because allowing it into the market would bring down the price and harm the market, putting the industry at risk.
The whole thing is designed to protect the market, not feed maximum people. (Cont)
Now, imagine if all that effort, all that money, all that productivity, instead of going towards making the markets of agriculture work well as markets that allow investment and profit, imagine if instead they were managed with a goal to, actually feed the maximum number of people.
Imagine if agriculture was considered an industry whose goal was feeding the populace rather than creating profit.
@JohnLoader6 @FandaSin @countcol
I'm not prescribing one thing or the other.
Just saying. What is the value of all this effort to prop up markets.
Let's focus on productivity.
@selzero @FandaSin @[email protected]
Interesting. I agree that the goal of profit may be problematic. Got few questions as I'm not very familiar with agriculture and how it works. How bringing down the price harms the market? Where are those food mountains?
@turtle_green @FandaSin @countcol
The cyclical nature of agriculture means that it is difficult to manage regarding predicting future stocks, volatile weather etc.
So for example say weather meant that we got less strawberries last year, so strawberries were very expensive. Farms when doing their analysis may choose to plant more strawberries this year at the expense of other crops. This has the effect of raising the price of everything else, and making strawberries very cheap. (Cont)
@turtle_green @FandaSin @countcol
So whatever gets planted a lot, becomes very cheap, and farms end up with worthless stocks. In order to organize this, governments decide the price of each stock and guarantee to buy it *no matter what* so farmers can grow whatever they want and have the guarantee that everything will be sold to the government.
The government then buys whatever isn't sold but must destroy it otherwise, again, it will bring the price down. (Continued)
@turtle_green @FandaSin @countcol
If you want to look into the locations you can use Google I guess.
If you find out where the wine lakes are I would like to know!!
(Capitalism creates wine lakes and we are still convinced we have to talk about scarcity 😔)
Selzero
ex or current IDF unwelcome
Turtle Green