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This reminded me of a quote from Catch 22: "His specialty was alfalfa, and he made a good thing out of not growing any. The government paid him well for every
by Ozzie_osman 5y ago
This reminded me of a quote from Catch 22:
"His specialty was alfalfa, and he made a good thing out of not growing any. The government paid him well for every bushel of alfalfa he did not grow. The more alfalfa he did not grow, the more money the government gave him, and he spent every penny he didn't earn on new land to increase the amount of alfalfa he did not produce. Major Major's father worked without rest at not growing alfalfa. On long winter evenings he remained indoors and did not mend harness, and he sprang out of bed at the crack of noon every day just to make certain that the chores would not be done."
- gsinclair 5y agoThis had me in peals of laughter as a student. It was probably the only passage of the book I really enjoyed, being too young at the time to understand the rest of it.
- scrumbledober 5y agoThe chapter where they are driving around in a jeep at night with the headlights off was one of my favorite book moments long before i was mature enough to understand any of that book.
- izzygonzalez 5y agoI read Catch-22 at around 16. I spent hours at the public library in a secluded corner desk trying so hard to stifle my laughter. Amazing book.
- hinkley 5y agoI had a very wrong impression about what sort of books Vonnegut writes, and I've discovered that I'm very much not the only one. If you haven't read him because the titles and the descriptions sound heavy, they really aren't. You're thinking Dostoevsky or Nietzsche but he's closer to Mark Twain.
- gnatman 5y agoCatch-22 was written by Joseph Heller. Similar in ways to Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-5 though! And the two were friends.
- hinkley 5y agoD'oh! Unintentional non sequitur. They do read very similar.
- sooheon 5y agoThey were also contemporaries: True story, Word of Honor: Joseph Heller, an important and funny writer now dead, and I were at a party given by a billionaire on Shelter Island. I said, “Joe, how does it make you feel to know that our host only yesterday may have made more money than your novel ‘Catch-22’ has earned in its entire history?” And Joe said, “I’ve got something he can never have.” And I said, “What on earth could that be, Joe?” And Joe said, “The knowledge that I’ve got enough.” Not bad! Rest in peace! — Kurt Vonnegut
- aasasd 5y ago‘Catch-22’ really benefits from a good audio reading, as any book with lots of dry humor. Best if the reader can make their voice both ‘straight-faced’ and nearly-over-the-top comical at the same time. ‘The Good Soldier Švejk’ works similarly in audio.
- Pr0ject217 5y agoThanks for the laugh. :D
- shrubby 5y agoAwesome. I did not remember this.
- jacquesm 5y agoI recommend re-reading every decade or so, more stuff keeps turning up that didn't make sense or that you missed the previous time.
- jfengel 5y agoIt's a funny passage, but there is a reason governments pay farmers not to produce. They want surplus capacity. They prefer resiliency to efficiency when it comes to food crops (including fodder). If something goes wrong, they want the ability to put additional fields into play quickly. You actually do have to maintain the machines that you aren't using. Inefficiencies always look silly, and there will always be those looking to take advantage of them. Compare the vast amounts of fraud on the recent COVID policies. But they were more effective than just letting people die or go bankrupt, which would be even more disruptive. Heller's book is funny and I don't want to ruin what is basically a good joke. But it's not as silly as it sounds at first.
- QuikAccount 5y agoI work in Agtech and this is not exactly true. At least not true in terms of big farms. They always work at capacity, in fact one of the reasons Covid hit agriculture supply chains so hard is that they had no extra capacity.
- modmans2nd 5y agoBig farms use crazy automated machines that almost (or do) drive themselves. Maximizing output allows them to set the market price because to generate so much compared to any other grower (like OPEC with oil).
- aeternum 5y agoYes, it sounds funny when written out but the character in Catch 22 is providing some useful utility in having those fields ready to grow if needed. Geopolitics can change quickly, the world's two largest wheat producers could go to war with each other. Starvation is bad, and unused fields may be a small price to pay to subvert it.
- giantg2 5y agoIs this true? We aren't seeing this even as we are facing a potential food crisis due to the war in Ukraine. SCOTUS seems to think it's about price control when looking at the Roscoe Filburn case.
- devoutsalsa 5y agoI’m gonna buy some land in the metaverse so I can not grow at scale.