5 ms·

>It's not even clear to me that "Big Age" is even a bad thing, seeing that their massive economies of scale allow them to produce more for less(money, environme

>It's not even clear to me that "Big Age" is even a bad thing, seeing that their massive economies of scale allow them to produce more for less(money, environmental impact) Big Ag is extremely destructive to the environment, because it doesn't respect existing environments & ecosystems, instead seeing them as a blank canvas for terraforming and imposing industrial processes. Where are you getting the idea that Big Ag has less environmental impact than a backyard garden??? >They will say stuff like "it's practically free to have all this free food I grew on my lawn", while ignoring the massive amount of labor they put in, It doesn't require much labor. That's one of the main points — permaculture is about working with nature rather than against it. Instead of tilling and pumping soil full of mined fertilizer, you use the natural processes appropriate for your local environment to support your crops. When properly applied, permaculture is about minimal effort. >the waste product that they managed to scavenge, Yes, that's also the point of permaculture: diverting waste streams and closing loops. For example, composting is a great way to make high-quality soil while diverting food waste from the landfill where it would anaerobically rot and generate methane. Permaculture can (and should) be low effort. >and the infrastructure they pay little to no taxes for. Huh? Where are you getting the idea that permaculture encourages resource theft and tax avoidance?

zeroCalories 3y ago
>Where are you getting the idea that Big Ag has less environmental impact than a backyard garden??? Most studies I've seen suggest that the larger the farming operation, the more efficiently it's able to use resources. Most of those were small/organic farms instead of a backyard garden, but I don't see many reasons to think it would be better. >When properly applied, permaculture is about minimal effort. You still put in more effort than most people. Someone working a median wage job will be able to buy more food in the time it takes you to maintain your garden. The only exception are the very poor. >Yes, that's also the point of permaculture: diverting waste streams and closing loops. Diverting waste is good, but when scaled up it won't be sufficient. You won't be able to get free fertilizer from people that prune trees because everyone will want it, and that's assuming a lot of this waste would still even be produced in an environmentally conscious world. You will most likely need to produce all of it on your own. >Huh? Where are you getting the idea that permaculture encourages resource theft and tax avoidance? To be fair, this is just from the permaculture people that I know. Many of them work very little and pay nothing in taxes, use medicare, and are still well off because a lot of their labor is untaxable. They live in suburbs and the country where stuff like roads and water are provided to them at a loss to society.
- CapstanRoller 3y ago
  >Most studies I've seen suggest that the larger the farming operation, the more efficiently it's able to use resources. Yes, this is true for modern agriculture, because it's an industrial process that benefits from economies of scale. Unfortunately that process is unsustainable and will ultimately deplete our fertilizer resources while damaging the environment. >Someone working a median wage job will be able to buy more food in the time it takes you to maintain your garden. Permaculture isn't about returning to peasantry. Permaculture is about integrating food production into society while expending minimal effort (less effort than even mowing a lawn). >You won't be able to get free fertilizer from people that prune trees because everyone will want it Fertilizer doesn't need to come from pruned trees. In fact, wood chips alone don't really make for good compost. Properly designed permaculture systems coupled with local programs such as neighborhood composting and an understanding of the local ecosystem can produce a huge amount of food with very little effort or input. >Many of them work very little and pay nothing in taxes, use medicare, and are still well off because a lot of their labor is untaxable. OK, and? Maybe the answer is to reform how we structure society and taxes instead of claiming that low-impact sustainable lifestyles are somehow a form of "theft". You could make the same argument about how people who refuse to buy a new iPhone every year are "stealing" resources because they don't contribute enough to an economy structured around overproduction and waste. It's absurd.
  - lukas099 3y ago
    To be fair, the person you're responding to didn't use the word "theft" which you're quoting. That came from someone who replied to them.
  - zeroCalories 3y ago
    The point isn't about wood chips in particular. I'm saying that the waste you're diverting won't be enough to sustain you if everyone is trying to get it, and ideally there wouldn't be any waste to begin with. That means we will return to some form of industrial process, and the bigger the better. Of course, we will want to encourage people to farm sustainability through policy, which will be far easier if there are a few centralized operations instead of a large number of small distributed operations. >OK, and? Maybe the answer is to reform how we structure society and taxes instead of claiming that low-impact sustainable lifestyles are somehow a form of "theft You're avoiding taxes while depending heavily on tax payer provided services. Not scalable for a modern society. > You could make the same argument about how people who refuse to buy a new iPhone every year are "stealing" resources because they don't contribute enough to an economy structured around overproduction and waste. It's absurd. No? It's not about contributing to an economy, it's about contributing your fair share for the public good. A better comparison might be crypto people that want to avoid taxes by doing all transactions under the table.
kamray23 3y ago
Firstly, I absolutely agree with both people here. Industrial agriculture is large-scale enough to be able to use everything with extreme efficiency. Secondly, modern industrial agricultural practices result in the transformation of nature into an unsustainable hell-scape which will collapse in on itself within a few centuries at the latest. But I don't think you should consider humans as separate from nature, there is evil to being artificial and there is no evil to sometimes going against nature. Humans are, by their nature, a species who take natural fruits and labour upon them to transform them, to give them a new use-value. That is a, if not even the, universal constant which has held through every age of human (pre)history. Humans, just as bees or termites or elephants or trees, transform nature by our nature. Everything natural is artificial and everything artificial is natural. To transform nature, to bend it and to change it is our species being, it is part of our role in nature to transform it as do countless other species. However, unlike those guided by pure instinct, we have both the ability to imagine and project through labour that ideal into reality. Importantly, that's not really any more artificial than a beehive is, artificial is not a very well defined concept or in any way scientifically useful. Once again, it is part of our natural role, our nature, to transform nature around us. When we do transform nature in major ways, we speak for the trees, as much as destroy them. However, our societal development has led us into a transformation of nature which is wasteful and unsustainable. These are very scientifically useful concepts and things like sustainability can be experimented upon and proven. Imagining alternative transformations is the first step to projecting them into reality, to transforming nature once again in a way which has a long-term benefit for us all. There do however exist major economic barriers which can never be broken which prohibit permaculture on any real scale, though that's only true as long as the economy is as it is now. Beside the point for now. My point is that it is not useful to consider ideal and badly defined concepts like artificial and natural and a struggle between the two. It is much more useful to think in terms of our nature, how our nature and labour is governed by our society, how by our nature of transforming nature that leads to the current unsustainable mode of life, and then think about what needs to be done within that more explanative framework to imagine not only unreachable ideals but to project them into reachable ideals in the real, material world.
- dogcomplex 3y ago
  We are nearing, if not already well past, the inflection point where solar panels powering industrial chemical sugar production can make sucrose and feed plants (and therefore animals) better than the plants would naturally produce themselves using chlorophyl with the same sunlight. Rewilding - bringing artificial human-made processes to grow thriving natural environments - is something we should definitely consider. We are capable of creating abundance beyond what nature provides alone

zeroCalories 3y ago

>Where are you getting the idea that Big Ag has less environmental impact than a backyard garden??? Most studies I've seen suggest that the larger the farming operation, the more efficiently it's able to use resources. Most of those were small/organic farms instead of a backyard garden, but I don't see many reasons to think it would be better. >When properly applied, permaculture is about minimal effort. You still put in more effort than most people. Someone working a median wage job will be able to buy more food in the time it takes you to maintain your garden. The only exception are the very poor. >Yes, that's also the point of permaculture: diverting waste streams and closing loops. Diverting waste is good, but when scaled up it won't be sufficient. You won't be able to get free fertilizer from people that prune trees because everyone will want it, and that's assuming a lot of this waste would still even be produced in an environmentally conscious world. You will most likely need to produce all of it on your own. >Huh? Where are you getting the idea that permaculture encourages resource theft and tax avoidance? To be fair, this is just from the permaculture people that I know. Many of them work very little and pay nothing in taxes, use medicare, and are still well off because a lot of their labor is untaxable. They live in suburbs and the country where stuff like roads and water are provided to them at a loss to society.

CapstanRoller 3y ago
>Most studies I've seen suggest that the larger the farming operation, the more efficiently it's able to use resources. Yes, this is true for modern agriculture, because it's an industrial process that benefits from economies of scale. Unfortunately that process is unsustainable and will ultimately deplete our fertilizer resources while damaging the environment. >Someone working a median wage job will be able to buy more food in the time it takes you to maintain your garden. Permaculture isn't about returning to peasantry. Permaculture is about integrating food production into society while expending minimal effort (less effort than even mowing a lawn). >You won't be able to get free fertilizer from people that prune trees because everyone will want it Fertilizer doesn't need to come from pruned trees. In fact, wood chips alone don't really make for good compost. Properly designed permaculture systems coupled with local programs such as neighborhood composting and an understanding of the local ecosystem can produce a huge amount of food with very little effort or input. >Many of them work very little and pay nothing in taxes, use medicare, and are still well off because a lot of their labor is untaxable. OK, and? Maybe the answer is to reform how we structure society and taxes instead of claiming that low-impact sustainable lifestyles are somehow a form of "theft". You could make the same argument about how people who refuse to buy a new iPhone every year are "stealing" resources because they don't contribute enough to an economy structured around overproduction and waste. It's absurd.
- lukas099 3y ago
  To be fair, the person you're responding to didn't use the word "theft" which you're quoting. That came from someone who replied to them.
- zeroCalories 3y ago
  The point isn't about wood chips in particular. I'm saying that the waste you're diverting won't be enough to sustain you if everyone is trying to get it, and ideally there wouldn't be any waste to begin with. That means we will return to some form of industrial process, and the bigger the better. Of course, we will want to encourage people to farm sustainability through policy, which will be far easier if there are a few centralized operations instead of a large number of small distributed operations. >OK, and? Maybe the answer is to reform how we structure society and taxes instead of claiming that low-impact sustainable lifestyles are somehow a form of "theft You're avoiding taxes while depending heavily on tax payer provided services. Not scalable for a modern society. > You could make the same argument about how people who refuse to buy a new iPhone every year are "stealing" resources because they don't contribute enough to an economy structured around overproduction and waste. It's absurd. No? It's not about contributing to an economy, it's about contributing your fair share for the public good. A better comparison might be crypto people that want to avoid taxes by doing all transactions under the table.

kamray23 3y ago

Firstly, I absolutely agree with both people here. Industrial agriculture is large-scale enough to be able to use everything with extreme efficiency. Secondly, modern industrial agricultural practices result in the transformation of nature into an unsustainable hell-scape which will collapse in on itself within a few centuries at the latest. But I don't think you should consider humans as separate from nature, there is evil to being artificial and there is no evil to sometimes going against nature. Humans are, by their nature, a species who take natural fruits and labour upon them to transform them, to give them a new use-value. That is a, if not even the, universal constant which has held through every age of human (pre)history. Humans, just as bees or termites or elephants or trees, transform nature by our nature. Everything natural is artificial and everything artificial is natural. To transform nature, to bend it and to change it is our species being, it is part of our role in nature to transform it as do countless other species. However, unlike those guided by pure instinct, we have both the ability to imagine and project through labour that ideal into reality. Importantly, that's not really any more artificial than a beehive is, artificial is not a very well defined concept or in any way scientifically useful. Once again, it is part of our natural role, our nature, to transform nature around us. When we do transform nature in major ways, we speak for the trees, as much as destroy them. However, our societal development has led us into a transformation of nature which is wasteful and unsustainable. These are very scientifically useful concepts and things like sustainability can be experimented upon and proven. Imagining alternative transformations is the first step to projecting them into reality, to transforming nature once again in a way which has a long-term benefit for us all. There do however exist major economic barriers which can never be broken which prohibit permaculture on any real scale, though that's only true as long as the economy is as it is now. Beside the point for now. My point is that it is not useful to consider ideal and badly defined concepts like artificial and natural and a struggle between the two. It is much more useful to think in terms of our nature, how our nature and labour is governed by our society, how by our nature of transforming nature that leads to the current unsustainable mode of life, and then think about what needs to be done within that more explanative framework to imagine not only unreachable ideals but to project them into reachable ideals in the real, material world.

dogcomplex 3y ago
We are nearing, if not already well past, the inflection point where solar panels powering industrial chemical sugar production can make sucrose and feed plants (and therefore animals) better than the plants would naturally produce themselves using chlorophyl with the same sunlight. Rewilding - bringing artificial human-made processes to grow thriving natural environments - is something we should definitely consider. We are capable of creating abundance beyond what nature provides alone