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Exactly. It's bizarre how often you see people arguing as if a lack of rural or farm subsidies would suddenly mean food disappearing.
by TulliusCicero 5y ago
Exactly.
It's bizarre how often you see people arguing as if a lack of rural or farm subsidies would suddenly mean food disappearing.
- ochoseis 5y agoThe core function of the government is to provide basic necessities to its constituents. In other words, guaranteeing a food supply is a critical national interest and there’s no better way than to incentivize home-grown food.
- landemva 5y agoThe primary function of government was to protect liberty. The USA liberty experiment is nearly done.
- gameman144 5y agoThese two go hand-in-hand. As a whole-cloth believer in government's main goal being the protection of rights, I'd propose that it's pretty tough to guarantee those rights if you have invading armies or revolting citizens. Guaranteeing stability for the nation (in economic, military, and civic spaces) is needed, even if only as a means to protect liberty.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- nitrogen 5y agoConsider this scenario: 1. The US drops all agricultural subsidies and tariffs. 2. The US begins importing most of its food from elsewhere. 3. "Elsewhere" goes to war with a US ally and stops selling food to the US. 4. The US then wishes it hadn't given up its abilty to grow food.
- kevin_thibedeau 5y agoThe prime growing areas will just move north where there is already plenty of rural land not being used.
- bombcar 5y agoThe amount of “the worlds economy is so interdependent that no country would go to war” argumentation seems to have died somehow. Also I don’t know how “we will get food from even further away rural communities argues against food coming from rural communities”.
- TulliusCicero 5y ago> 2. The US begins importing most of its food from elsewhere Gonna stop you there. This wouldn't happen, because the US has plenty of growing acreage and plenty of demand. The farming industry doesn't need subsidies, and removing them would affect total output only slightly on average. Now, if we were more like Japan and had issues with enough space for farming, then yeah I'd agree with you.
- ungamedplayer 5y agoUnless medium to large scale farming in the US is significantly different than the rest of the world, Land availability and demand are only tiny parts of the puzzle and not even the hardest issues to solve when farming. The need for immediate scale for any kind of shortage is guaranteed to cause significant shortages + massive price hikes starvation in the short term.
- TulliusCicero 5y agoLol, just how big do you think the farm subsidies are? This is some big-time Clancychat you're throwing out there.
- ungamedplayer 5y agoLol, i'm not talking about scale changes, not subsidies! loloolol