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Sanity check: all you can eat restaurants are not free. You still pay for the food. And there's only so much you can eat during opening hours. Your problem is

Sanity check: all you can eat restaurants are not free. You still pay for the food. And there's only so much you can eat during opening hours. Your problem is that you presume food is abundant because it just is. Reality is that food is being produced, by people who want to be paid for it. Take away that payment, and they will stop producing.

myWindoonn 5y ago
I didn't claim that all-you-can-eats were free, only that they could stay in business despite apparently operating at a loss. This is precisely because the food is much cheaper than a rationalist or economist would predict it to be; it's abundant. Food is abundant because of the Haber process [1] and other industrial-era improvements to food production. Only about 2% of our total labor output is required in order to produce all of our food [2]. The government subsidizes 10% of all food production and purchases [3][4]. If we already can afford to pay 2% of our population to make all of the food, and we already give away 10% of it for free, then it seems like we could reasonably discuss giving away more food for free without disenfranchising farmers. Edit: I just realized that you might be clueless about this entire corner of sociology, so I should tell you about government cheese [5]. WP says, "Government cheese was created to maintain the price of dairy when dairy industry subsidies artificially increased the supply of milk and created a surplus of milk that was then converted into cheese, butter, or powdered milk." In other words, the government put too much money into making food, and gave away the surplus, and this has been happening continuously for decades. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process [2] https://csanr.wsu.edu/we-are-the-98-percent/ https://csanr.wsu.edu/we-are-the-98-percent/ [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_subsidy#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_subsidy#United_St... [4] https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-and-food-statistics-charting-the-essentials/food-prices-and-spending/?topicId=14885 https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-and-food-statistic... [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_cheese https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_cheese
- agent327 5y ago
  I still don't get why you think all you can eat restaurants operate at a loss. Businesses that operate at a loss close after a while; all you can eat restaurants are no different. However, they tend to turn a profit by charging you a pretty sum just for the privilege of eating there (you do know you have to pay for all-you-can-eat restaurants, right?), in the hope that you are not so hungry that you will bankrupt them. In other words, they are taking a gamble - but it's a gamble that usually works out fine for them. Your link specifically says that 2% of the labor force are farmers. It does NOT say that all people involved in the entire chain of activities that ends with food sitting on your plate represent just 2% of the labor force. Other people involved are the people who make the fertilizer, the people who package the food (for example, by canning it), the people who put it on store shelves, and the people who transport it all at each stage. Your fourth link has a helpful chart: actual farming represents a mere 7.6% of the cost of the food. Your links do not establish that 10% of the food production was subsidized. Even if they did, a subsidy is not free money; it is paid from taxes that everybody pays. Thus, assuming the 10% number holds up, the only conclusion that you can draw is that 10% of the cost of food production is socialized. It does not logically follow that if we pay a certain percentage of the labor force for food production, we can therefore afford to give the food away for free. That assumes there is undue profit in the chain that could be removed. Such profit might exist, but you have done nothing to establish that as a fact. Sociology is not the science of government cheese. Even so, the overproduction only represents yet another failure of central planning; the free market would not have made such a mistake. It is public money, taken from tax payers, and spent on producing unwanted goods. Nothing about it is free. However, that 'sociology' does explain a lot about why you are so horribly misinformed about how the world works.

myWindoonn 5y ago

I didn't claim that all-you-can-eats were free, only that they could stay in business despite apparently operating at a loss. This is precisely because the food is much cheaper than a rationalist or economist would predict it to be; it's abundant. Food is abundant because of the Haber process [1] and other industrial-era improvements to food production. Only about 2% of our total labor output is required in order to produce all of our food [2]. The government subsidizes 10% of all food production and purchases [3][4]. If we already can afford to pay 2% of our population to make all of the food, and we already give away 10% of it for free, then it seems like we could reasonably discuss giving away more food for free without disenfranchising farmers. Edit: I just realized that you might be clueless about this entire corner of sociology, so I should tell you about government cheese [5]. WP says, "Government cheese was created to maintain the price of dairy when dairy industry subsidies artificially increased the supply of milk and created a surplus of milk that was then converted into cheese, butter, or powdered milk." In other words, the government put too much money into making food, and gave away the surplus, and this has been happening continuously for decades. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process [2] https://csanr.wsu.edu/we-are-the-98-percent/ https://csanr.wsu.edu/we-are-the-98-percent/ [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_subsidy#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_subsidy#United_St... [4] https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-and-food-statistics-charting-the-essentials/food-prices-and-spending/?topicId=14885 https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-and-food-statistic... [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_cheese https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_cheese

agent327 5y ago
I still don't get why you think all you can eat restaurants operate at a loss. Businesses that operate at a loss close after a while; all you can eat restaurants are no different. However, they tend to turn a profit by charging you a pretty sum just for the privilege of eating there (you do know you have to pay for all-you-can-eat restaurants, right?), in the hope that you are not so hungry that you will bankrupt them. In other words, they are taking a gamble - but it's a gamble that usually works out fine for them. Your link specifically says that 2% of the labor force are farmers. It does NOT say that all people involved in the entire chain of activities that ends with food sitting on your plate represent just 2% of the labor force. Other people involved are the people who make the fertilizer, the people who package the food (for example, by canning it), the people who put it on store shelves, and the people who transport it all at each stage. Your fourth link has a helpful chart: actual farming represents a mere 7.6% of the cost of the food. Your links do not establish that 10% of the food production was subsidized. Even if they did, a subsidy is not free money; it is paid from taxes that everybody pays. Thus, assuming the 10% number holds up, the only conclusion that you can draw is that 10% of the cost of food production is socialized. It does not logically follow that if we pay a certain percentage of the labor force for food production, we can therefore afford to give the food away for free. That assumes there is undue profit in the chain that could be removed. Such profit might exist, but you have done nothing to establish that as a fact. Sociology is not the science of government cheese. Even so, the overproduction only represents yet another failure of central planning; the free market would not have made such a mistake. It is public money, taken from tax payers, and spent on producing unwanted goods. Nothing about it is free. However, that 'sociology' does explain a lot about why you are so horribly misinformed about how the world works.