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Agriculture used to be more than 50% of ALL employment in the USA. Now it's barely 2%. Ever wondered why? I understand the spirit of this, but most of this ala

by kwar13 1y ago

Agriculture used to be more than 50% of ALL employment in the USA. Now it's barely 2%. Ever wondered why? I understand the spirit of this, but most of this alarmism is misguided in my view.

timeon 1y ago
Americans used to be not fat. Ever wondered why?
- para_parolu 1y ago
  No cheap sugar?
  - abeppu 1y ago
    ... but also increasingly sedentary lives, in part related to the kinds of things we do all day?
    - vntok 1y ago
      No, most countries have followed this trend as well and don't have nearly the same obesity prevalence increase. It's preprocessed food and sugar intake in general that are particularly bad in the US.
    - cloverich 1y ago
      It took me a long time to come around to simplifying it all to sugar. Its not the only reason of course but my mind now thinks: There are other countries like ours, except not everyone is fat. Sugar bypasses our normal satiety - you can put dessert and sugary drinks on top of a regular diet, easier than you can a second or third serving of the entree. Sugar is cheap and an easy way to make money in the food business. And we have sugar factories galore selling candy disguised as coffee. Add one coke a day to a balanced diet, and you add 5-10lb of fat to a person per year. My bias is now simply, its the sugar. No not only. But far and away the number one culrpit.
      - 81222222 1y ago
        not only just sugar but high fructose corn syrup in particular. and yes, I know they're both basically metabolized the same but one is more likely to cause inflammation than the other. and the fact that it's dirt cheap compared to cane sugar makes it more likely to end up in our food at an affordable price. unlike other countries, we substitute sugar with corn syrup and the use of hfcs correlates to the increased obesity we've seen in the past few decades no matter how the ag lobby tries to rationalize otherwise.
brainwad 1y ago
75% even: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Percent-of-the-Labor-Force-Employed-in-Agriculture-United-States-1800-to-2000-Sources_fig1_51117517 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Percent-of-the-Labor-For.... And higher figures were seen in ancient civilisations.
ben_w 1y ago
There were about 20 million horses in March 1915 in the United States. Then you stopped needing them, a USDA census in 1959 showed the horse population had dropped to 4.5 million. Now they're mostly used for riding, and in 2023, there were about 6.65 million horses. (Citation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horses_in_the_United_States#Statistics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horses_in_the_United_States#St...) There's no law of nature that says "there's always a place for more horses", and anyone who suggested there might be would get laughed at. Well, there's also no law of nature that says "there's always a place for more humans", to butcher a like from CGP Grey a little over a decade ago.
KaiserPro 1y ago
> Now it's barely 2%. Ever wondered why? Mechanisation But did you ever wonder what happened to the displaced workers? I'm not an expert on the agricultural changes in the USA, but in the UK, huge amount of tumult can be directly attributed to agricultural changes.
- kwar13 1y ago
  The displaced workers went on to do other things. In the last 100 years for those very workers who "lost" their jobs to mechanization the overall standard of life for ALL american no matter how you measure it it better. There's fewer people living in poverty, people live longer lives, better infrastructure, and no widespread famine in the US I am aware of.
  - KaiserPro 1y ago
    Go and actually look at the outcomes of the people that lived through the great depression or the many many bank runs that preceded it. (or anything to do with the displacement of peasant to the towns) How many of those works displaced survived the winter? You know they lost their homes as well right? Those dustbowlers, how were their life chances? Sure new jobs were created, and the mechanisation boom that stared in the 40s and lasted through to the 70s was _brilliant_ But thats not going to happen again with AI, where are the jobs going to come from, much less decent paying ones.
  - ares623 1y ago
    Is this the Sillicon Valley version of “they went to a farm upstate”?
  - elliotto 1y ago
    The Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck is largely about this concept. If these social transitions were as rosy as you paint them I think the book would be called Grapes of Pleasant Improvements in Living Standards.
cal_dent 1y ago
Think most people do get this. More technology, more growth and innovation is fantastic and people see the benefits (even its taken for granted at times). The problem is the in-between stage between new technology and huge society ramifications which, rationally, people should be concerned with. If you fall on the right side of that on the other side, great but many don't and that's happened time after time. Society doesn't move in a straight line up despite what lots of condensed charts say - collateral damage occurs

by kwar13 1y ago

Agriculture used to be more than 50% of ALL employment in the USA. Now it's barely 2%. Ever wondered why? I understand the spirit of this, but most of this alarmism is misguided in my view.

timeon 1y ago

Americans used to be not fat. Ever wondered why?

para_parolu 1y ago
No cheap sugar?
- abeppu 1y ago
  ... but also increasingly sedentary lives, in part related to the kinds of things we do all day?
  - vntok 1y ago
    No, most countries have followed this trend as well and don't have nearly the same obesity prevalence increase. It's preprocessed food and sugar intake in general that are particularly bad in the US.
  - cloverich 1y ago
    It took me a long time to come around to simplifying it all to sugar. Its not the only reason of course but my mind now thinks: There are other countries like ours, except not everyone is fat. Sugar bypasses our normal satiety - you can put dessert and sugary drinks on top of a regular diet, easier than you can a second or third serving of the entree. Sugar is cheap and an easy way to make money in the food business. And we have sugar factories galore selling candy disguised as coffee. Add one coke a day to a balanced diet, and you add 5-10lb of fat to a person per year. My bias is now simply, its the sugar. No not only. But far and away the number one culrpit.
    - 81222222 1y ago
      not only just sugar but high fructose corn syrup in particular. and yes, I know they're both basically metabolized the same but one is more likely to cause inflammation than the other. and the fact that it's dirt cheap compared to cane sugar makes it more likely to end up in our food at an affordable price. unlike other countries, we substitute sugar with corn syrup and the use of hfcs correlates to the increased obesity we've seen in the past few decades no matter how the ag lobby tries to rationalize otherwise.

brainwad 1y ago

75% even: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Percent-of-the-Labor-Force-Employed-in-Agriculture-United-States-1800-to-2000-Sources_fig1_51117517 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Percent-of-the-Labor-For.... And higher figures were seen in ancient civilisations.

ben_w 1y ago

There were about 20 million horses in March 1915 in the United States. Then you stopped needing them, a USDA census in 1959 showed the horse population had dropped to 4.5 million. Now they're mostly used for riding, and in 2023, there were about 6.65 million horses. (Citation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horses_in_the_United_States#Statistics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horses_in_the_United_States#St...) There's no law of nature that says "there's always a place for more horses", and anyone who suggested there might be would get laughed at. Well, there's also no law of nature that says "there's always a place for more humans", to butcher a like from CGP Grey a little over a decade ago.

KaiserPro 1y ago

> Now it's barely 2%. Ever wondered why? Mechanisation But did you ever wonder what happened to the displaced workers? I'm not an expert on the agricultural changes in the USA, but in the UK, huge amount of tumult can be directly attributed to agricultural changes.

kwar13 1y ago
The displaced workers went on to do other things. In the last 100 years for those very workers who "lost" their jobs to mechanization the overall standard of life for ALL american no matter how you measure it it better. There's fewer people living in poverty, people live longer lives, better infrastructure, and no widespread famine in the US I am aware of.
- KaiserPro 1y ago
  Go and actually look at the outcomes of the people that lived through the great depression or the many many bank runs that preceded it. (or anything to do with the displacement of peasant to the towns) How many of those works displaced survived the winter? You know they lost their homes as well right? Those dustbowlers, how were their life chances? Sure new jobs were created, and the mechanisation boom that stared in the 40s and lasted through to the 70s was _brilliant_ But thats not going to happen again with AI, where are the jobs going to come from, much less decent paying ones.
- ares623 1y ago
  Is this the Sillicon Valley version of “they went to a farm upstate”?
- elliotto 1y ago
  The Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck is largely about this concept. If these social transitions were as rosy as you paint them I think the book would be called Grapes of Pleasant Improvements in Living Standards.

cal_dent 1y ago

Think most people do get this. More technology, more growth and innovation is fantastic and people see the benefits (even its taken for granted at times). The problem is the in-between stage between new technology and huge society ramifications which, rationally, people should be concerned with. If you fall on the right side of that on the other side, great but many don't and that's happened time after time. Society doesn't move in a straight line up despite what lots of condensed charts say - collateral damage occurs