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Think about it. The biggest legacy of the hippies is that their critique of food and agriculture evolved into the mainstream's. (Well, that and same process wit

Think about it. The biggest legacy of the hippies is that their critique of food and agriculture evolved into the mainstream's. (Well, that and same process with nuclear engergy.) The problem is it's incoherent mix, then and now. We have jumbled together: - Nostalgia. First this was yeoman farmer nostalgia. Now there is also pre-agricultural nostalgia. Primitivism is coherent, but only once you embrace what it really entails, which paleo dieting absolutely does not. - Anti-monpolization. Great idea. - Corperations-are-bad-so-their-means are bad. Cargill might be bad, but that doesn't mean combine harvesters are. - Concern about environmental externalities. Good idea. - Concern about nutritional externalities. Good idea. It's crazy we gave 0 fucks about supply chain risk and other security concerns, but focus on cranking out carbs in a way that only global armageddon justifies. GMO hysteria among heirloom lovers is a funny small example: please just say biodiversity is good, and tons of GMOs or tons of hierlooms will be good, and purely golden rice or purely sweet delishious apples not so much. Even "locavorism": Guess what? it takes like <5 days to transport anything within continental US, easy. If your non-California produce sucks, it's not because distance, per-se, it's because warehousing. ------ Now, back to the question at hand, I absolutely don't believe your average Ag wantrepreneur is immune to the current in the larger culture. I mean think about it, modern gourmet-mediocre-----fancy food culture is per-dollar, easily the Bay Area's biggest cultural export, ahead of anything SV ever did. So what might an Ag startup look like instead? Well, conquering externalities - without changing government policy - still making a profit - at a scale to actually matter is just some liberatarian wet dream so let's not worry too much about that. I would rather worry about the bullshit job problem. Average person is spending all their time doing useless shit, or not being paid enough doing useful shit. Ag is super efficient putting everything else into stark relief (well, super efficient when they aren't over-leveraged looking like fools and Daddy USDA bails them out). How about we give people lifetime food for a portion of their earnings?! Just like Worry-Free but fiancialized. Could actually work, certainly given today's "10 years no profit is fine" model.

Ericson2314 6y ago
Basically anyone thinking agriculture disruption should read about the Hutterites[1] rather than get caught up with some vert ag thing. Hutterites have major capital expenses (unlike Amish), and yet they are farmers. Income-portion subscription model maybe doesn't so crazy if you consider employees can live off the surplus food on one hand, and so the subscription can largely go into capital and operational expenditures. It sounds dual to "lifetime cut of earnings to pay for college", since education is considered the ultimate personal capex, and food the ultimate personal opex. But considering the rat-race nature of bullshit jobs, and the basic income studies, a lifetime free from fear starvation could well kick one up the hierarchy of needs enough to learn far more efficiently. So food indefinitely is actually pretty good personal capex from that perspective. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hutterites https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hutterites
- Ericson2314 6y ago
  Final thing is remote work + medicare-for-all could make SNAP-for-all less inferior to $$-for-all, in that housing and healthcare, the big rent-seekers drains are decapitated, raising food costs as a portion of household budgets back where they should be.
chrisco255 6y ago
We simply have food stamps if you find yourself too poor to afford food. That's a fine system, in my opinion. I, of course, already pay for my lifetime supply of food with a portion of my earnings, which I hand over to the grocery store.
- Ericson2314 6y ago
  Left another comment below on why I think this could work better than SNAP.

Ericson2314 6y ago

Basically anyone thinking agriculture disruption should read about the Hutterites[1] rather than get caught up with some vert ag thing. Hutterites have major capital expenses (unlike Amish), and yet they are farmers. Income-portion subscription model maybe doesn't so crazy if you consider employees can live off the surplus food on one hand, and so the subscription can largely go into capital and operational expenditures. It sounds dual to "lifetime cut of earnings to pay for college", since education is considered the ultimate personal capex, and food the ultimate personal opex. But considering the rat-race nature of bullshit jobs, and the basic income studies, a lifetime free from fear starvation could well kick one up the hierarchy of needs enough to learn far more efficiently. So food indefinitely is actually pretty good personal capex from that perspective. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hutterites https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hutterites

Ericson2314 6y ago
Final thing is remote work + medicare-for-all could make SNAP-for-all less inferior to $$-for-all, in that housing and healthcare, the big rent-seekers drains are decapitated, raising food costs as a portion of household budgets back where they should be.

chrisco255 6y ago

We simply have food stamps if you find yourself too poor to afford food. That's a fine system, in my opinion. I, of course, already pay for my lifetime supply of food with a portion of my earnings, which I hand over to the grocery store.

Ericson2314 6y ago
Left another comment below on why I think this could work better than SNAP.