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> During the COVID-19 curfew, however, tourists were not allowed to access the island, and monkeys began to face food scarcity. This can't have been the first
by tetris11 3y ago
> During the COVID-19 curfew, however, tourists were not allowed to access the island, and monkeys began to face food scarcity.
This can't have been the first time these monkeys have experienced food shortage.
I know we had a bioengineering boom in the 50s, and probably a lot of animals have been eating well for the past few decades because of that... but I wonder if the behaviors of the monkeys with tools and crows dropping nuts is something that often happens with animals during the down period where crop yields aren't doing so well, and then they revert back to scrounging when they are.
I guess we had luck that the tools we developed during our own shortages in the past could be used to kill and enslave other animals. Let's hope the crows and monkeys aren't taking notes.
- hyperthesis 3y agoNecessity is the mother of invention. Humanity's greatest creation is therefore manufactured scarcity, through marketing, mortgages and competition.
- onlyrealcuzzo 3y agoThere's definitely scarcity if you look around. Check out the housing and infrastructure in Nigeria. About ~2B people globally are in that situation or worse.
- flandish 3y agoRight. Also it’s a manufactured scarcity. The too brass of this capitalist system we working class suffer under could clearly fix house scarcity.
- gcau 3y agoHow? By hugely cutting down immigration?
- BenFranklin100 3y agoHouse scarcity is caused by restrictive zoning laws that limit or even outright ban the construction of new homes in high demand areas. It has little if anything to do with capitalism. The main supporters of restrictive zoning are homeowners who oppose new homes in their neighborhoods. See Katherine Einstein, “Neighborhood Defenders’. http://tinyurl.com/mr394vbe http://tinyurl.com/mr394vbe House scarcity is a result of too little capitalism, not too much.
- idle_zealot 3y agoNIMBYs are incentivized to restrict zoning to preserve the value of their capital.
- BenFranklin100 3y agoYou’re equivocating on the terms ‘capital’ — the monetary assets required for a business to provide goods and services— and a ‘capitalist system’ — an economic system in which the means of production and distribution are privately owned. Neither of these terms have much to do with restrictive zoning. A more precise statement is that NIMBYs support public municipal regulations that preserve and/or increase the value of their private assets, i.e. homes.
- adrianN 3y agoI don't think zoning is the problem in Nigeria, but I know little about Nigerian politics.
- BenFranklin100 3y agoNor I. I interpreted the OP’s comment to be a general statement not limited to Nigeria. In the Western world at least, zoning is the problem.
- pkfmi8 3y agoZoning implemented by top of the capitalist food pyramid. Zoning is not divine mandate. It comes from people. We can’t fix zoning without going through capitalists at the top who work tongue their way into owning all that they do. They’ll fight it as a violation of their right to turn us all into serfs I tire of the technical euphemism. It’s like Soylent Green; just people hallucinating BS about themselves all the way down
- ben_w 3y ago> Right. Also it’s a manufactured scarcity. The too brass of this capitalist system we working class suffer under could clearly fix house scarcity. No. While capitalism does create incentives for manufactured scarcity, houses aren't that. The only things the "top brass" can do would be reducing the standards in building codes so that anyone can build anywhere, but that would lead to shanty towns[0] without good connections or services, which isn't likely to attract the job opportunities that make cities desirable and expensive in turn. If you want to make houses cheap, figure out how to make infrastructure cheap: the roads, the sewage system, the power lines… all the boring stuff. [0] they might be nice looking, for example this holiday home which is large enough to live in, whose material cost is just 5% of the cost of a "proper" house sale price (the latter includes land, but still): https://www.kaufland.de/product/396861369/ https://www.kaufland.de/product/396861369/ but that doesn't solve the actual issues, and it's still saving money on the list price only to raise long-term costs on heating and fire safety.
- grugagag 3y agoThere are perfectly good towns that don’t attract job opportunities because all jobs concentrate in a few areas, for no good reason. See RTO for example…