5 ms·

And that's a totally legitimate point - but does it support your contention? You seem to be arguing that it is too expensive to raise meat. But food is driven l

by beat 7y ago

And that's a totally legitimate point - but does it support your contention? You seem to be arguing that it is too expensive to raise meat. But food is driven largely by economics. Replacing the integrated farm with the sort of separation of duties you're talking about here is succeeding because it's cheaper. If you're talking about thermal efficiency.. what you're saying is true but irrelevant. Whether my food is the optimum use of sunlight is not a real concern.

dredmorbius 7y ago
"Economics" unfortunately excludes numerous costs and risks associated with both provisioning and consumption of resources, including not only economic impacts, but fully-costed ecological inputs. Most especially in the accounting and market price mechanisms for utilisation of nonrenewable (or, read equivalently: nonsustainably-utilised) resources. The alternatives to sustainable, integrated, ecological agricultural methods are "cheaper" because the market doesn't price in the 5-million-years-to-one rate at which we're extracting fossil fuels from the Earth over that at which they'd been put there,[1] of the strip-mining of topsoil at rates 100x - 1000x greater than those at which it had formed, of the natural-gas-fed fixing of atmospheric nitrogen (again at a roughly 5 million:1 ratio of inputs), of the mining of phosphorus, another critical fertiliser (potash is, for the moment, relatively abundant), of the impacts of eutrophication of rivers, wetlands, and oceans near ag-land outflows, of the systemic risks posed by monoculture cultivation, of the systemic ecological impacts of pesticide use, of the destruction of virgin ecosystems and biological diversity, and more.[2] The "economic" costs are actually financialised costs, which include a long, peculiar, historically-contingent, largely malformed and false worldview model origin, which persists for numerous reasons, largely boiling down to being a highly convenient fiction for contemporary beneficiaries of this particular theology. Though the difficulty in moving to a more accurate, realistic, and one might hope sustainable model is severe. The convenience of the modern lie is profound. Upshot: "cheaper" is based on invalid models heaped on invalid models. There's a vast unbooked debt accumulating. ________________________________ Notes: 1. Jeffrey S. Dukes, "Burning Buried Sunshine" (2003) https://dge.carnegiescience.edu/DGE/Dukes/Dukes_ClimChange1.pdf https://dge.carnegiescience.edu/DGE/Dukes/Dukes_ClimChange1.... 2. Lev Tolstoy has an early and fascinating discussion of cost accounting and factors of production in What Shall We Do Then (https://archive.org/details/whatshallwedothe00tolsrich/page/101 https://archive.org/details/whatshallwedothe00tolsrich/page/...), finding the standard three-factor model of the time, land, labour, and capital, insufficient. The economic theory seems to derive directly from cost accounting, dating principally to Alexander Hamilton Church (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Hamilton_Church https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Hamilton_Church). The problem of defining economic theory to guide accounts based on what accounts tallied to inform economists seems ... problematic. The legal and economic theory of extractive resources has a long, problematic, and almost entirely unscientific history, specifically the Rule of Capture and its logic, and the principle theory of pricing, which though largely dismissed doesn't seem to have found a replacement: Hotelling's Rule.
- beat 7y ago
  Unfortunately, in the world we live in, externalized costs are considered independently from financial costs. Now, it's just a matter of time before fossil fuels are no longer an issue - we are rapidly moving to renewable energy. And that will have a significant impact on farming practice, by altering the cost of tillage and transportation. And as these costs accumulate to the point where they enter the financial equation, farming technology will adjust accordingly. That's what the market does. So what is "sustainability" here? Are we worried that the agricultural system will break so rapidly that it causes massive famines?
  - dredmorbius 7y ago
    Unless the underlying models are corrected and replaced, we'll continue to have the problem. To give a concrete example, Google (well, "Alphabet", but really, Google) launched a project whose entire premise and name were "RE<C": renewable energy cheaper than coal. It failed. https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/google-engineers-explain-why-they-stopped-rd-in-renewable-energy https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/google-engineer... The problem, if you subscribe to my view, is that the underlying premise was wrong. It's not that renewables are too expensive. It's that the accounting for coal's costs are entirely flawed. An interesting implication is that if the underlying accounting, tax, and economic model is changed, fossil fuels will be glued to the ground by a force far stronger than gravity: economic fiscal reality. What are the odds of that happening? Frankly, low. I'm looking to see how much that particular Overton window might swing, however. Addressing your ag question: Another of my academic remits (both agriculture and economics). There are any of numerous problems, most revolving around various forms of risk. One of my personal collapse scenarios would involve major, possibly multiple simultaneous, crop failures, whether from weather (most likely drought, floods or freezes might also have impacts), disease, a polination collapse, or something similar. There are some food reserves, but those are decidedly finite and would present severe difficulties at mass scale. Even through the mid-20th century, massive famines resulting in millions of deaths were seen. The most recent major famine was in Bangladesh in 1974 -- the 1980s Ethiopian famines were comparatively mild, despite the worldwide coverage they drew. Critics of Communism like to point out the Great Famine of China (1959-1961), in which 15-30 million, of a population of about 660 million, died. Roughly 5%. These same critics ignore the 1920s famine under noncommunist Nationalist China, or the numerous 19th century famines under what was largely British control, or the English-exacerbated Great Irish Famine, which saw a fifty percent reduction in the population of Ireland, from a peak still not matched to this day. Throughout history, famines in which 10%, 30%, or even 90% of populations have died over wide regions have been fairly commonplace. In a world of global supply chains, massive monocultures, limited self-sufficiency, and vast inequalities of wealth and military power, a recurrance would be an exceedingly notable event. Though catastrophic collapse isn't the only possibility. The slow yield decline of overworked lands is another possiblity, and again, soil, water, fertiliser, and pest pressures can build with time. Adjustment to such a gradual erosion should be less severe, but still strongly dislocating.

by beat 7y ago

dredmorbius 7y ago

"Economics" unfortunately excludes numerous costs and risks associated with both provisioning and consumption of resources, including not only economic impacts, but fully-costed ecological inputs. Most especially in the accounting and market price mechanisms for utilisation of nonrenewable (or, read equivalently: nonsustainably-utilised) resources. The alternatives to sustainable, integrated, ecological agricultural methods are "cheaper" because the market doesn't price in the 5-million-years-to-one rate at which we're extracting fossil fuels from the Earth over that at which they'd been put there,[1] of the strip-mining of topsoil at rates 100x - 1000x greater than those at which it had formed, of the natural-gas-fed fixing of atmospheric nitrogen (again at a roughly 5 million:1 ratio of inputs), of the mining of phosphorus, another critical fertiliser (potash is, for the moment, relatively abundant), of the impacts of eutrophication of rivers, wetlands, and oceans near ag-land outflows, of the systemic risks posed by monoculture cultivation, of the systemic ecological impacts of pesticide use, of the destruction of virgin ecosystems and biological diversity, and more.[2] The "economic" costs are actually financialised costs, which include a long, peculiar, historically-contingent, largely malformed and false worldview model origin, which persists for numerous reasons, largely boiling down to being a highly convenient fiction for contemporary beneficiaries of this particular theology. Though the difficulty in moving to a more accurate, realistic, and one might hope sustainable model is severe. The convenience of the modern lie is profound. Upshot: "cheaper" is based on invalid models heaped on invalid models. There's a vast unbooked debt accumulating. ________________________________ Notes: 1. Jeffrey S. Dukes, "Burning Buried Sunshine" (2003) https://dge.carnegiescience.edu/DGE/Dukes/Dukes_ClimChange1.pdf https://dge.carnegiescience.edu/DGE/Dukes/Dukes_ClimChange1.... 2. Lev Tolstoy has an early and fascinating discussion of cost accounting and factors of production in What Shall We Do Then (https://archive.org/details/whatshallwedothe00tolsrich/page/101 https://archive.org/details/whatshallwedothe00tolsrich/page/...), finding the standard three-factor model of the time, land, labour, and capital, insufficient. The economic theory seems to derive directly from cost accounting, dating principally to Alexander Hamilton Church (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Hamilton_Church https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Hamilton_Church). The problem of defining economic theory to guide accounts based on what accounts tallied to inform economists seems ... problematic. The legal and economic theory of extractive resources has a long, problematic, and almost entirely unscientific history, specifically the Rule of Capture and its logic, and the principle theory of pricing, which though largely dismissed doesn't seem to have found a replacement: Hotelling's Rule.

beat 7y ago
Unfortunately, in the world we live in, externalized costs are considered independently from financial costs. Now, it's just a matter of time before fossil fuels are no longer an issue - we are rapidly moving to renewable energy. And that will have a significant impact on farming practice, by altering the cost of tillage and transportation. And as these costs accumulate to the point where they enter the financial equation, farming technology will adjust accordingly. That's what the market does. So what is "sustainability" here? Are we worried that the agricultural system will break so rapidly that it causes massive famines?
- dredmorbius 7y ago
  Unless the underlying models are corrected and replaced, we'll continue to have the problem. To give a concrete example, Google (well, "Alphabet", but really, Google) launched a project whose entire premise and name were "RE<C": renewable energy cheaper than coal. It failed. https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/google-engineers-explain-why-they-stopped-rd-in-renewable-energy https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/google-engineer... The problem, if you subscribe to my view, is that the underlying premise was wrong. It's not that renewables are too expensive. It's that the accounting for coal's costs are entirely flawed. An interesting implication is that if the underlying accounting, tax, and economic model is changed, fossil fuels will be glued to the ground by a force far stronger than gravity: economic fiscal reality. What are the odds of that happening? Frankly, low. I'm looking to see how much that particular Overton window might swing, however. Addressing your ag question: Another of my academic remits (both agriculture and economics). There are any of numerous problems, most revolving around various forms of risk. One of my personal collapse scenarios would involve major, possibly multiple simultaneous, crop failures, whether from weather (most likely drought, floods or freezes might also have impacts), disease, a polination collapse, or something similar. There are some food reserves, but those are decidedly finite and would present severe difficulties at mass scale. Even through the mid-20th century, massive famines resulting in millions of deaths were seen. The most recent major famine was in Bangladesh in 1974 -- the 1980s Ethiopian famines were comparatively mild, despite the worldwide coverage they drew. Critics of Communism like to point out the Great Famine of China (1959-1961), in which 15-30 million, of a population of about 660 million, died. Roughly 5%. These same critics ignore the 1920s famine under noncommunist Nationalist China, or the numerous 19th century famines under what was largely British control, or the English-exacerbated Great Irish Famine, which saw a fifty percent reduction in the population of Ireland, from a peak still not matched to this day. Throughout history, famines in which 10%, 30%, or even 90% of populations have died over wide regions have been fairly commonplace. In a world of global supply chains, massive monocultures, limited self-sufficiency, and vast inequalities of wealth and military power, a recurrance would be an exceedingly notable event. Though catastrophic collapse isn't the only possibility. The slow yield decline of overworked lands is another possiblity, and again, soil, water, fertiliser, and pest pressures can build with time. Adjustment to such a gradual erosion should be less severe, but still strongly dislocating.