29 ms·

It has to stay. Farms, mines, and factories (usually in small towns, anyway) aren't going to run themselves and cannot all be outsourced.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
FussyZeus 8y ago
These seem like problems that could be solved with applications of proper mass transit.
- AmVess 8y ago
  Your solution to small town newspapers dying off is to make people ride hundreds of miles a day on buses?
  - ajmurmann 8y ago
    Where did he mention buses?
- cwbrandsma 8y ago
  Do you realize how spread apart farms are? They aren’t stackable. My parent’s farm is in a town of 2000 people, their land is a 10 minute drive from town if direct. The nearest city is 2 hours driving. If you had to bus all the farmers to their different fields that would take all day. Oh, and these guys will have multiple properties scattered all over the map to attend to. Really, the majority of America’s farm land is not near any city at all. Cities tend to push out and run farmers off. City planners see farm land as land that should be developed. Then there are the small town people themselves. And the end of the day, none of those people want to live in a city. I live in a city, frankly, city life sucks. If you switch to saying “we should do more urban farming”...which you should, please do. That works until you start talking about meat and dairy products. You probably don’t want animal operations inside a city (check out Chino, CA dairies), and even if you do, the feed for the animals will have to come from outside the city.
- ryneandal 8y ago
  There's really no way to optimize public transit in such remote areas. A lot of farmers will have a few hundred acres in one section and another 800 a few miles away, they're constantly traveling around to where their crops are. Also, they can't fit their gear in a backpack like most office workers. There's really only one option when your payload varies from hundreds or thousands of lbs to a few lbs, and that's living reasonably near your land, not to mention the variety of equipment that requires driving.
yellowstuff 8y ago
I see this asserted frequently, but I'm not convinced it's true. Focusing on agriculture, say that in 2020 a vindictive President Warren passes the Farmer Retribution Bill, banning commercial agriculture in the US, effective 2024. Would people starve in the streets, or would food prices rise slightly as international markets massively increase production and export to the US? Considering how much California and Mexico produce I already see in New York my hunch is that food can be shipped cheaply and efficiently, but I'm not basing that on much, and wasn't able to find any relevant research.
- war1025 8y ago
  I would guess that you are massively out of touch with how much agriculture there is in America.
  - ben_w 8y ago
    Without googling, I would estimate 50% by land area, between 1% and 5% of GDP. As America is about 5% of the world population, it wouldn’t significantly alter everyone else’s food production to supply you, leaving only the question of transport logistics. The frozen pizza right in front of me is 240 cal per hundred grams; assume the average American consumes 3000 cal per day and that pizza is a representative calorie density, 1.25kg per person per day = 148 million metric tons per year. Googling now, USA ports handle 2.3 billion tons per year [1], so that’s fine. Internal transport I don’t even have to think about because you must already have it in place or you’d already be starving because you couldn’t get the food from your own farms to your own shops. [1] Figure 3-2 https://www.bts.gov/sites/bts.dot.gov/files/docs/browse-statistical-products-and-data/port-performance/216906/bts-ppfsp-ar-congress-2017.pdf#page28 https://www.bts.gov/sites/bts.dot.gov/files/docs/browse-stat...
  - yellowstuff 8y ago
    It's about 1% of GDP and employs less than 2% of the population.
    - war1025 8y ago
ben_w 8y ago
Automation and mechanisation is increasing in all of those three examples. Give it a generation and they may well run themselves. Trade in the output of farms and mines literally predates writing, and whether or not the same can be said for factories depends entirely on what you count as a factory. The very same thing which allows rural farms in America to sell to American cities also allows rural farms outside America to sell to American cities. Likewise factories and mines.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

FussyZeus 8y ago

These seem like problems that could be solved with applications of proper mass transit.

AmVess 8y ago
Your solution to small town newspapers dying off is to make people ride hundreds of miles a day on buses?
- ajmurmann 8y ago
  Where did he mention buses?
cwbrandsma 8y ago
Do you realize how spread apart farms are? They aren’t stackable. My parent’s farm is in a town of 2000 people, their land is a 10 minute drive from town if direct. The nearest city is 2 hours driving. If you had to bus all the farmers to their different fields that would take all day. Oh, and these guys will have multiple properties scattered all over the map to attend to. Really, the majority of America’s farm land is not near any city at all. Cities tend to push out and run farmers off. City planners see farm land as land that should be developed. Then there are the small town people themselves. And the end of the day, none of those people want to live in a city. I live in a city, frankly, city life sucks. If you switch to saying “we should do more urban farming”...which you should, please do. That works until you start talking about meat and dairy products. You probably don’t want animal operations inside a city (check out Chino, CA dairies), and even if you do, the feed for the animals will have to come from outside the city.
ryneandal 8y ago
There's really no way to optimize public transit in such remote areas. A lot of farmers will have a few hundred acres in one section and another 800 a few miles away, they're constantly traveling around to where their crops are. Also, they can't fit their gear in a backpack like most office workers. There's really only one option when your payload varies from hundreds or thousands of lbs to a few lbs, and that's living reasonably near your land, not to mention the variety of equipment that requires driving.

yellowstuff 8y ago

I see this asserted frequently, but I'm not convinced it's true. Focusing on agriculture, say that in 2020 a vindictive President Warren passes the Farmer Retribution Bill, banning commercial agriculture in the US, effective 2024. Would people starve in the streets, or would food prices rise slightly as international markets massively increase production and export to the US? Considering how much California and Mexico produce I already see in New York my hunch is that food can be shipped cheaply and efficiently, but I'm not basing that on much, and wasn't able to find any relevant research.

war1025 8y ago
I would guess that you are massively out of touch with how much agriculture there is in America.
- ben_w 8y ago
  Without googling, I would estimate 50% by land area, between 1% and 5% of GDP. As America is about 5% of the world population, it wouldn’t significantly alter everyone else’s food production to supply you, leaving only the question of transport logistics. The frozen pizza right in front of me is 240 cal per hundred grams; assume the average American consumes 3000 cal per day and that pizza is a representative calorie density, 1.25kg per person per day = 148 million metric tons per year. Googling now, USA ports handle 2.3 billion tons per year [1], so that’s fine. Internal transport I don’t even have to think about because you must already have it in place or you’d already be starving because you couldn’t get the food from your own farms to your own shops. [1] Figure 3-2 https://www.bts.gov/sites/bts.dot.gov/files/docs/browse-statistical-products-and-data/port-performance/216906/bts-ppfsp-ar-congress-2017.pdf#page28 https://www.bts.gov/sites/bts.dot.gov/files/docs/browse-stat...
- yellowstuff 8y ago
  It's about 1% of GDP and employs less than 2% of the population.
  - war1025 8y ago

ben_w 8y ago

Automation and mechanisation is increasing in all of those three examples. Give it a generation and they may well run themselves. Trade in the output of farms and mines literally predates writing, and whether or not the same can be said for factories depends entirely on what you count as a factory. The very same thing which allows rural farms in America to sell to American cities also allows rural farms outside America to sell to American cities. Likewise factories and mines.