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the global economy so inter-dependent that it's scary. We have a cascading failure that could now create famine, which would result in a feedback loop that make

the global economy so inter-dependent that it's scary. We have a cascading failure that could now create famine, which would result in a feedback loop that makes everything even worse. All of this basically stems from a few weeks of true hard lockdown. will be interesting to see how governments handle the balance of efficiency vs redundancy in the future

maxerickson 5y ago
Famine would be a choice though, not an inevitable consequence of fertilizer availability. Crops can be shifted to legumes, and away from livestock production, we spend a lot of calories on preference these days.
- coffeemig 5y ago
  Maybe that’s the play to transition western consumers off of meat diets. Gotta happen someday soon, right?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - gjsman-1000 5y ago
    No. Don’t underestimate how radical and unpopular dropping meat is with the more level-headed parts of the country. One can admit the existence of Climate Change while thinking the proposed solutions are too far and just power-hungry bunk.
    - coffeemig 5y ago
      I’m not saying I’m excited about it. I’ve seen other policies go through lately that make level-headed people tear their hair out.
- jtdev 5y ago
  You clearly know very little about agriculture. Beef cattle actually graze many hundreds of thousands of acres of land that could not realistically be converted to legume production.
  - dang 5y ago
    Please do not cross into personal attack on HN, no matter how little someone else knows or you feel they know. Your comment would be fine without the first sentence, and even better if you had added one or two sentences more to explain why it could not realistically be converted to legume production. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=share%20know%20learn%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor... Edit: having looked at your comment history, it's painfully clear that you're using HN primarily for ideological battle. That's the line at which we ban accounts*, regardless of what they're battling for, so I've banned this account. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. * https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0&query=primarily%20test%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
  - maxerickson 5y ago
    Corn can be converted, and it's not like finishing of livestock consumes zero corn and soy. Also, what's with the insulting tone?
    - tomrod 5y ago
      I agree, grandparent comment is pretty brash while also being substantively wrong. Most of our meat in the US comes from factory farms. > 70.4 percent of cows, 98.3 percent of pigs, 99.8 percent of turkeys, 98.2 percent of egg-laying hens, and over 99.9 percent of chickens raised for meat come from factory farms. https://www.livekindly.co/99-animal-products-factory-farms/ https://www.livekindly.co/99-animal-products-factory-farms/ This said, the range that beef cattle occasionally graze could be reclaimed, but not necessarily for legume production. Legumes: https://gilmour.com/planting-zones-hardiness-map https://gilmour.com/planting-zones-hardiness-map Beef: https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/agricultural-and-biological-sciences/grazing-lands https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/agricultural-and-biolog... There is overlap, but no where close to 100%.
gjsman-1000 5y ago
Two weeks to slow the spread… that didn’t really do much and has just caused cascading problems that have caused innumerable other health effects. For example, imagine many lower class families eating less healthy because food is more expensive. Or smoking more to reduce stress. Lockdowns look a lot less effective when external damage is considered at this point.
libertine 5y ago
I have a growing feeling that the dream of globalization is becoming a nightmare: shortage of natural resources, the difference in buy-power, the rize of global monopolies that are unstoppable... it's creating a greater gap and establishing even greater power dynamics. I don't discard the benefits as well, like economic growth, ease of travel, etc... but I start to wonder if it's balanced at all.
rightbyte 5y ago
I think the fundamental problem is that legislation preventing cartels and "guilds" in the base industry, making top of the chain industry where the money is at, where the niche company more or less has monopoly by the nature of being niche or by controlling distribution/marketplace. So base industry is put out of business in e.g. Europe and North America and stays in protectionist countries, making them overly dependent on foreign industry. Greater custom duty should probably solve some of the unstable base industry situation.
- frazbin 5y ago
  So the problem is that it's the not the 15th century, and the solution is mercantilism? Color me skeptical. Now in the 20th century there were these things called 'unions' for a while..
  - rightbyte 5y ago
    You don't have to go all in Hanseatic. Just have high enough customs that local industries can compete with industries that e.g. take advantage of child labor (clothing) or industries in areas that lack environmental protection laws/costs. Also, open price fixing could be legalized to move bargain power to manufacturing of base products.
sofixa 5y ago
> All of this basically stems from a few weeks of true hard lockdown. I'm sorry, but that's just bullshit. The best comparison scenario we have is Sweden, which closely resembles it's neighbors in terms of temperature, society, households. They didn't do any lockdowns, just recommended people not to gather too much; Denmark, Norway and Finland all went through multiple lockdowns. The economic downturn seen in Sweden is comparable to the one in its neighbours, even without stringent restrictions. Brazil also didn't do any lockdowns and their economy indicators are far from great. Pandemics impact us regardless of our opinions.
- ren_engineer 5y ago
  you missed my point entirely, because China locked down the entire global supply chain got messed up because of how interconnected it is. Bottlenecks in a few places have had impacts that will last for years moving forward
  - sofixa 5y ago
    But not every supply chain depends on China. The issue discussed in the article, elevated gas prices causing fertiliser manufacturers in Europe and the US to stop production, has little to do with China's lockdown.

maxerickson 5y ago

Famine would be a choice though, not an inevitable consequence of fertilizer availability. Crops can be shifted to legumes, and away from livestock production, we spend a lot of calories on preference these days.

coffeemig 5y ago
Maybe that’s the play to transition western consumers off of meat diets. Gotta happen someday soon, right?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- gjsman-1000 5y ago
  No. Don’t underestimate how radical and unpopular dropping meat is with the more level-headed parts of the country. One can admit the existence of Climate Change while thinking the proposed solutions are too far and just power-hungry bunk.
  - coffeemig 5y ago
    I’m not saying I’m excited about it. I’ve seen other policies go through lately that make level-headed people tear their hair out.
jtdev 5y ago
You clearly know very little about agriculture. Beef cattle actually graze many hundreds of thousands of acres of land that could not realistically be converted to legume production.
- dang 5y ago
  Please do not cross into personal attack on HN, no matter how little someone else knows or you feel they know. Your comment would be fine without the first sentence, and even better if you had added one or two sentences more to explain why it could not realistically be converted to legume production. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=share%20know%20learn%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor... Edit: having looked at your comment history, it's painfully clear that you're using HN primarily for ideological battle. That's the line at which we ban accounts*, regardless of what they're battling for, so I've banned this account. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. * https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0&query=primarily%20test%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
- maxerickson 5y ago
  Corn can be converted, and it's not like finishing of livestock consumes zero corn and soy. Also, what's with the insulting tone?
  - tomrod 5y ago
    I agree, grandparent comment is pretty brash while also being substantively wrong. Most of our meat in the US comes from factory farms. > 70.4 percent of cows, 98.3 percent of pigs, 99.8 percent of turkeys, 98.2 percent of egg-laying hens, and over 99.9 percent of chickens raised for meat come from factory farms. https://www.livekindly.co/99-animal-products-factory-farms/ https://www.livekindly.co/99-animal-products-factory-farms/ This said, the range that beef cattle occasionally graze could be reclaimed, but not necessarily for legume production. Legumes: https://gilmour.com/planting-zones-hardiness-map https://gilmour.com/planting-zones-hardiness-map Beef: https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/agricultural-and-biological-sciences/grazing-lands https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/agricultural-and-biolog... There is overlap, but no where close to 100%.

gjsman-1000 5y ago

Two weeks to slow the spread… that didn’t really do much and has just caused cascading problems that have caused innumerable other health effects. For example, imagine many lower class families eating less healthy because food is more expensive. Or smoking more to reduce stress. Lockdowns look a lot less effective when external damage is considered at this point.

libertine 5y ago

I have a growing feeling that the dream of globalization is becoming a nightmare: shortage of natural resources, the difference in buy-power, the rize of global monopolies that are unstoppable... it's creating a greater gap and establishing even greater power dynamics. I don't discard the benefits as well, like economic growth, ease of travel, etc... but I start to wonder if it's balanced at all.

rightbyte 5y ago

I think the fundamental problem is that legislation preventing cartels and "guilds" in the base industry, making top of the chain industry where the money is at, where the niche company more or less has monopoly by the nature of being niche or by controlling distribution/marketplace. So base industry is put out of business in e.g. Europe and North America and stays in protectionist countries, making them overly dependent on foreign industry. Greater custom duty should probably solve some of the unstable base industry situation.

frazbin 5y ago
So the problem is that it's the not the 15th century, and the solution is mercantilism? Color me skeptical. Now in the 20th century there were these things called 'unions' for a while..
- rightbyte 5y ago
  You don't have to go all in Hanseatic. Just have high enough customs that local industries can compete with industries that e.g. take advantage of child labor (clothing) or industries in areas that lack environmental protection laws/costs. Also, open price fixing could be legalized to move bargain power to manufacturing of base products.

sofixa 5y ago

> All of this basically stems from a few weeks of true hard lockdown. I'm sorry, but that's just bullshit. The best comparison scenario we have is Sweden, which closely resembles it's neighbors in terms of temperature, society, households. They didn't do any lockdowns, just recommended people not to gather too much; Denmark, Norway and Finland all went through multiple lockdowns. The economic downturn seen in Sweden is comparable to the one in its neighbours, even without stringent restrictions. Brazil also didn't do any lockdowns and their economy indicators are far from great. Pandemics impact us regardless of our opinions.

ren_engineer 5y ago
you missed my point entirely, because China locked down the entire global supply chain got messed up because of how interconnected it is. Bottlenecks in a few places have had impacts that will last for years moving forward
- sofixa 5y ago
  But not every supply chain depends on China. The issue discussed in the article, elevated gas prices causing fertiliser manufacturers in Europe and the US to stop production, has little to do with China's lockdown.