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Across the world we really need to start providing free food at a national level- 1. Many large nations already heavily subsidise food for food security as it

• narrowrail 10y ago
  >within 5 years alone we'll have taxi drivers and hauliers without jobs. I'm going to continue objecting to this idea. Maybe by 2050, but I'd bet $10,000 that this will not happen in 5 years.
  • rqebmm 10y ago
    Yeah, any large-scale self-driving car automation is going to take at least a decade to have a large effect, possibly more. Between the inevitable hiccups, upgrade/replacement costs and safety/labor regulations, it's not going to happen overnight. Even that White House study that said those jobs were going to disappear gave no time frame.
    • Retric 10y ago
      These things are predicted to cost less than 2 years salary making the transition rapid and only really limited by manufacturing. However, the important thing is not if it's 7 or 10 years, but the fact shrinking job markets mean everyone laid off is going to be unable to find a job in the sector.
  • snrplfth 10y ago
    By 2050, we'll have AI Luddites, who'll be able to predict that this time, no really this time for real you guys, automation is going to put everybody out of work and crash the economy.
  • mfukar 10y ago
    Do you realise you are betting against the entirety - literally - of the automotive industry?
    • cm2012 10y ago
      Most of the auto industry is not acting as if there is a 5 year timeline to self driving. More like 20 years.
      • taneq 10y ago
        Seriously? Tesla, Mercedes, BMW, and Uber are all aiming for "a year or so". Volkswagen and Volvo seem to be about a year behind that. Don't get me wrong, I think there are significant challenges to overcome, but this "self-driving is always 20 years away" view doesn't mesh with most credible projections.
        • greglindahl 10y ago
          That depends on if you're talking about level 3, 4, or 5 autonomy, on what kind of roads, and under what kind of weather conditions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_car#Classification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_car#Classification I don't think anyone says level 5 autonomy in bad weather is close.
      • mfukar 10y ago
        https://techcrunch.com/2016/12/20/bmw-to-open-a-new-autonomous-driving-development-center-near-munich/ https://techcrunch.com/2016/12/20/bmw-to-open-a-new-autonomo... https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/04/nvidia-and-audi-aim-to-bring-a-self-driving-ai-car-to-market-by-2020/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/04/nvidia-and-audi-aim-to-bri... That's just the first few stories, and autonomous driving is already in the works - don't expect these companies are starting from zero.
    • theandrewbailey 10y ago
      The automotive industry is only one piece of the puzzle. And narrowrail disagrees (as do I) that the change will happen in 5 years. That's less than the average age of all vehicles being used!
• natmaster 10y ago
  Yeah, screw progress. Breadlines for all!
• wyager 10y ago
  Or, instead of having a grand people's subsidized agricultural regulatory capture program, we could just recognize that the open food market has made food so inexpensive and plentiful that anyone in the free world can already afford to eat. > it's the heavily processed stuff that is dangerous It's this kind of ignorance that makes me not want some bureaucrat deciding what everyone eats and making me pay for it. As an aside, did you see the article posted here yesterday about how the FDA just redacted their long-standing advice about cholesterol? The government is operating almost as ascientifically as the general public, making laws and declarations based on extremely weak predictions. > Once AI removes these jobs we'll have serious problems on our hands with unemployment. We'll also remove one of the biggest cost centers in food production, so feeding unemployed people will be, remarkably, even easier and we still won't need a state-controlled feeding apparatus. > If everyone didn't have to struggle with the time and money to feed themselves No one in the first world needs to struggle to eat. Eating healthy is dirt cheap; many people just don't know how to do it. Instead of bringing back soviet bread lines, we could just teach people practical stuff like how to eat healthily and affordably.
  • snrplfth 10y ago
    > As an aside, did you see the article posted here yesterday about how the FDA just redacted their long-standing advice about cholesterol? The government is operating almost as ascientifically as the general public, making laws and declarations based on extremely weak predictions. No kidding. I remember the "old" Food Pyramid. For decades, you saw that everywhere - in school, doctors' offices, wherever. "8-10 servings a day of bread, pasta, rice, corn, cereal. Carbs carbs carbs! Fats are the enemy!" And now, it's "oh, maybe that wasn't such good advice for everybody, hm, okay....but you can totally trust our New Food Pyramid! Yay!" No thanks.
    • JunkDNA 10y ago
      See this article from the scientific journal _Science_ from 2001 (not endorsing the linked website, it was just the first non-paywalled location of the article): http://garytaubes.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Science-The-soft-science-of-dietary-fat-21.pdf http://garytaubes.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Science-The... The fallacies around dietary guidelines have been known to the scientific community for over 15 years at least. I read that article when it was in the original issue and I was dumbfounded by the slapdash way nutrition guidelines are established with minimal proof.
• defen 10y ago
  > Across the world we really need to start providing free food at a national level- This is a terrible idea in my opinion, because you are going to end up subsidizing population growth in areas that aren't naturally capable of supporting that number of people. Thus you'll create a never-ending dependency on free food, which will result in even more human suffering when the free food inevitably goes away for some reason.
  • bildung 10y ago
    > This is a terrible idea in my opinion, because you are going to end up subsidizing population growth in areas that aren't naturally capable of supporting that number of people. Ethically, this is a really frightening argument. Same argument with different words: We have to have people hungering to death to provide a disincentive for population growth. Besides, food availability doesn't really affect population growth (upwards of a certain lower bound, of course). The most effective way to lower birthrates is readily available female education.
    • pliny 10y ago
      >Ethically, this is a really frightening argument. Same argument with different words: We have to have people hungering to death to provide a disincentive for population growth. Not to endorse GP's point, but people move to places with income / food before they start to starve. Like, this scenario plays out a million times a day with old ladies that put a bunch of cat food outside their house, after a couple decades there's 10x as many cats living in a 100 metre radius and the lady dies and then shortly after all the cats die too, of hunger or killed by the municipality. With no old lady to begin with the cats wouldn't have starved, they'd just spread out over a larger area so that they don't have to compete over other sources of food like vermin or trash.
      • oblio 10y ago
        Except that humans aren't cats.
        • 10y ago
• maverick_iceman 10y ago
  Yes, let's have more Soviet style paternalistic government.
  • s_kilk 10y ago
    How's the American style government working out? /s
    • tonyedgecombe 10y ago
      Americans don't seem to be going hungry.
      • snrplfth 10y ago
        "Millions of Americans are currently hungry; we can report that they are moving at speed towards nearby fridges."
• gph 10y ago
  >(you can only get so big eating potatoes, broccoli and meat, it's the heavily processed stuff that is dangerous). That's about as handwavingly ignorant as the government nutritional guidelines. You can get as big as you want eating potatoes, broccoli, and meat if you eat enough of it. Likewise you can remain perfectly thin eating only processed food. Portion control and learning how well your body reacts and processes different foods is the best we can tell so far.
  • toomuchtodo 10y ago
    Foods high in protein and fat cause you to self-regulate due to feeling more satiated than consuming foods high in sugars and starches. You will never get fat on broccoli. This is how a ketogenic diet works (high fat, moderate protein, low/no carbs). It is ridiculously effective. https://www.reddit.com/r/keto/wiki/keto_in_a_nutshell https://www.reddit.com/r/keto/wiki/keto_in_a_nutshell
    • gph 10y ago
      Yes, I'm aware of what a keto diet is. OP never said anything about keto, and you happily skipped over the first item in his list (potatoes) just so you could cram in a spiel about keto. Edit: Just as a follow-up I seriously doubt we could feed the entire world if we all adopted a keto diet. Carbs are cheap.
      • toomuchtodo 10y ago
        > Edit: Just as a follow-up I seriously doubt we could feed the entire world if we all adopted a keto diet. Carbs are cheap. So maybe we need to spend more on agriculture subsidizing healthy foods instead of funding the wrong agriculture subsidies that increase healthcare spending? And yes, I take every opportunity when its relevant to mention a healthy diet.
        • botexpert 10y ago
          Agriculture already is heavily subsidizing corn, wheat, soy, all for the precious meat, eggs and milk. It's heaven in the keto world. Do you see billions of dollars for the broccoli industry in subsidies? Don't think so. Keto is a diet for the rich, plant-based diet with occasional meat (once per month) for the poor. The energy efficiency of the plant to flesh conversion is ridiculously low. Feeding a world on the keto is a luxurious feat. Plant-based diet is a much more rational choice for feeding the world.
• nostromo 10y ago
  Basic income is better because you provide people with the money to feed themselves while preserving the free market and all its benefits (efficiency, choice, etc). We see over and over that cash assistance is preferable to providing goods (like food or housing) directly.
  • devoply 10y ago
    The "free" market with companies under heavy competition looking to make consumers into fatty addicts obvious fails in many ways. The choice which is available is often extremely unhealthy and dominated by a few conglomerates. So though the argument for the free market works for many things, I think there is ample proof that it does not produce good outcomes for food. It's optimized to produce cheap, addictive food because that's what the people crave. Much like Brawndo.
    • afarrell 10y ago
      It does not produce good outcomes for food you believe others should eat. But it produces enough of a variety and abundance of foods to serve a variety of needs from celiac to halal to vegan to allergies. How do you propose to do better by having the government mandate specific foods?
      • devoply 10y ago
        The variations you are talking about are not really variations, they are mostly marketing variations mixing the same stuff to produce things that appear different in the minds of consumers, but are really variations of the same thing. Our choice of food is severely limited, i.e. everything is made from corn. The variation of crops planted to feed our limited choice is again a mono-culture and optimized for profit, not for the environment or food diversity or animal rights. We have bad diets in general, any dietitian will tell you that. I don't propose the government mandate anything. I propose the government give out good, healthy food for free. The market can continue to compete for people who wish to participate in it. Food is already subsidized heavily. So what if we give a certain amount of it for free to anyone who wants it.
• randomdata 10y ago
  > within 5 years alone Four years ago Google said they would have a driverless car for sale in 3-5 years. That means we'll see it any day now, right? Probably not. What makes you think the next five years will be any different? Nuclear fusion is always 20 years away and self driving cars are always 5 years away. I don't see that trend stopping any time soon. > we'll have taxi drivers and hauliers without jobs. Once AI removes these jobs we'll have serious problems on our hands with unemployment. In the US, truck drivers account for about 1% of the workforce, and there are only ~200,000 taxi drivers in total. Even if the employment rate goes up by several percentage points, it will still be below periods in the past. Serious problem seems a little overdramatic. Worse storms have been weathered.
  • bps4484 10y ago
    "Four years ago Google said they would have a driverless car for sale in 3-5 years." This is a side tangent, but do you have a source for that? I'm only curious because it has seemed to me most makers of autonomous vehicles, and in particular google, were overly cautious with their estimates and have been repeatedly beating them.
    • randomdata 10y ago
      Here's a randomly selected one: https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/147940-google-self-driving-cars-in-3-5-years-feds-not-so-fast https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/147940-google-self-drivi...
• rick_perez 10y ago
  A problem with this is that government intervention/subsidies competes directly with local businesses and farmers and they won't be able to compete. This will lead to a situation where once you start giving them food, you won't be able to stop or it will devastate the economy and people will starve. It's better to give local businesses and farmers the tools and knowledge to grow the food instead. This way, they won't be completely dependent on another nation for survival. Many of these poor countries have governments that rule with an iron fist and make it nearly impossible for anyone to thrive. This problem needs to be fixed first, or all of our other ideas will only end up hurting them in the long run.
• fdsaaf 10y ago
  A "free stuff" is incompatible with unlimited fertility. The bargain has to be that the necessities of life are provided only if you agree to limit yourself to replacement fertility. If we allow unlimited fertility, then no matter the starting conditions, any group that breeds faster than the rest will come to dominate the whole population.
  • Moshe_Silnorin 10y ago
    This is both obviously correct and politically unfeasible.