6 ms·

IMHO a strategy of deliberate over-provisioning for food makes eminent sense, so I have no qualm with that "market" being artificially supported. Naively model

IMHO a strategy of deliberate over-provisioning for food makes eminent sense, so I have no qualm with that "market" being artificially supported. Naively modeled as a service, if humans "timeout" for food at about two weeks, and there are 7.5B of us, I would want a system who's p99.9999999999 < 14 days. The problem w/r/t climate change is we're taking the existing system we have, which already does not meet that target, and we're dialing the Chaos Monkey up and up and up.

jacobush 7y ago
Technically I suppose you could call "inedible corn only suitable for processing into high fructose corn syrup" "food". It's not how these supports started out but it's what they have become to a very large degree.
- sornaensis 7y ago
  What exactly makes it inedible?
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - rabidrat 7y ago
    > The corn used to feed the food animals is considered "not fit for human consumption" because it's rather hard and tasteless.
    - jtuente 7y ago
      That corn was also grown for that purpose. It was never meant for human consumption.
wongarsu 7y ago
As the chaos monkey dials up speculating on food becomes more profitable too, mitigating at least some of the risk. If I expect harvests to fail on a significant scale, buying up huge warehouses of grain (or other storable food) and selling it when prices soar is a great investment strategy. As climate change makes disruptions more frequent I wouldn't be surprised if some investment fonds started launching their own cubesats to feed their prediction models to spot such opportunities before everyone else.
- krastanov 7y ago
  Relying on the free market and speculators to fix this problem sounds both realistic and incredibly dystopian to me. Sure, the market is efficient, but that does not mean it works for everyone. An imaginary efficient benevolent government would use the same prediction models to provision for extra food for the downtrodden instead of trying to exploit the demand they will create for profit. The free market solution really hurts the people that do not have the disposable income to "invest" in the market.
  - wongarsu 7y ago
    This is something a government should absolutely do, it's basically disaster prevention. However I don't think democracies are well equipped to handle such tasks in general: decisions are made by people who are either part of a body of hundreds of people or frequently have term limits that prevent them from seeing the consequences of decisions on disaster prevention. This creates a lack of consequences and personal responsibility. In comparison a dictator-for-life is easy to blame for all problems, he just may not care. Ideally we would find a better form of government. I don't have any particularly good ideas though.
    - jacobush 7y ago
      The other forms of government yet invented and tried, seem to be doing even worse at disaster prevention.
- dalbasal 7y ago
  In theory... In practice, if you think harvests will fail, futures contracts make the whole warehousing thing moot. Arbitrage and clever tradable (or even non tradable) contracts (eg contract for difference) give you an opportunity to speculate on the price of grain without you (or anyone) actually holding any wheat. In practice, you just bet someone else that the price will go up, and they pay you the difference if you're right. No wheat has to be stored. There is very little relationship between derivative markets and the quantity of commodities siloed. If you want an emergency "buffer stock," you need to buy and hold actual commodities.

jacobush 7y ago

Technically I suppose you could call "inedible corn only suitable for processing into high fructose corn syrup" "food". It's not how these supports started out but it's what they have become to a very large degree.

sornaensis 7y ago
What exactly makes it inedible?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- rabidrat 7y ago
  > The corn used to feed the food animals is considered "not fit for human consumption" because it's rather hard and tasteless.
  - jtuente 7y ago
    That corn was also grown for that purpose. It was never meant for human consumption.

wongarsu 7y ago

As the chaos monkey dials up speculating on food becomes more profitable too, mitigating at least some of the risk. If I expect harvests to fail on a significant scale, buying up huge warehouses of grain (or other storable food) and selling it when prices soar is a great investment strategy. As climate change makes disruptions more frequent I wouldn't be surprised if some investment fonds started launching their own cubesats to feed their prediction models to spot such opportunities before everyone else.

krastanov 7y ago
Relying on the free market and speculators to fix this problem sounds both realistic and incredibly dystopian to me. Sure, the market is efficient, but that does not mean it works for everyone. An imaginary efficient benevolent government would use the same prediction models to provision for extra food for the downtrodden instead of trying to exploit the demand they will create for profit. The free market solution really hurts the people that do not have the disposable income to "invest" in the market.
- wongarsu 7y ago
  This is something a government should absolutely do, it's basically disaster prevention. However I don't think democracies are well equipped to handle such tasks in general: decisions are made by people who are either part of a body of hundreds of people or frequently have term limits that prevent them from seeing the consequences of decisions on disaster prevention. This creates a lack of consequences and personal responsibility. In comparison a dictator-for-life is easy to blame for all problems, he just may not care. Ideally we would find a better form of government. I don't have any particularly good ideas though.
  - jacobush 7y ago
    The other forms of government yet invented and tried, seem to be doing even worse at disaster prevention.
dalbasal 7y ago
In theory... In practice, if you think harvests will fail, futures contracts make the whole warehousing thing moot. Arbitrage and clever tradable (or even non tradable) contracts (eg contract for difference) give you an opportunity to speculate on the price of grain without you (or anyone) actually holding any wheat. In practice, you just bet someone else that the price will go up, and they pay you the difference if you're right. No wheat has to be stored. There is very little relationship between derivative markets and the quantity of commodities siloed. If you want an emergency "buffer stock," you need to buy and hold actual commodities.