4 ms·

It's just that you can't rely on people making rational choices for themselves to produce long-term overall good outcomes. Yet most of the world relies on such

by refurb 1y ago

It's just that you can't rely on people making rational choices for themselves to produce long-term overall good outcomes. Yet most of the world relies on such a system and it’s produced the highest advancement of any system. The tale you weaved is clearly an edge case of a monopoly. That’s not the situation we have. And you’re ignoring the fact that farmers will be aware that they are purchasing from a monopoly and that can help weight their decision.

geysersam 1y ago
> Yet most of the world relies on such a system and it’s produced the highest advancement of any system. Nah this is a simplification at best. Countries have regulation and laws, none rely only on free markets. GMO is great but it needs governance
- pfdietz 1y ago
  Why does GMO need governance, vs. (say) hybrid non-GMO seeds? All these arguments smack of badly functioning rationalizations for basically irrational prejudice against GMOs.
  - georgefrowny 1y ago
    Food security in general does need governance and this does includes vulnerability to price fixing of non-GMO seeds and agricultural chemicals as well as safety. It also includes vigilance against such things as agricultural equipment with expensive repair lockouts, antibiotic overuse, soil degradation, deforestation and poor disease control. The original assertion was that rational self-interested agents would naturally find and migrate to optimum global outcomes for everyone. Not only is this not true in the abstract game theoretic sense, but it's especially not true when many of the agents are independent developing world smallholders and some are multibillion agritech transnationals.
    - pfdietz 1y ago
      So it has nothing to do with GMOs specifically.
      - georgefrowny 1y ago
        Correct. It's continuing the general observation first made here (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45725408 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45725408) that doesn't specifically mention GMO at all and a disagreement with the premise of the reply to that here (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45725551 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45725551). Obviously the argument is using GMO as the subject due to the context of the article, but you can have the exact same argument about powerful companies angling for capture of slices of many industries and even parts of the general human experience in many places where you can say "well if it wasn't going to be good for the farmers/taxi drivers/warehouse workers/software engineers/people looking for a date/restaurant chefs/whoever, they're not stupid and wouldn't agree to it".

by refurb 1y ago

geysersam 1y ago

> Yet most of the world relies on such a system and it’s produced the highest advancement of any system. Nah this is a simplification at best. Countries have regulation and laws, none rely only on free markets. GMO is great but it needs governance

pfdietz 1y ago
Why does GMO need governance, vs. (say) hybrid non-GMO seeds? All these arguments smack of badly functioning rationalizations for basically irrational prejudice against GMOs.
- georgefrowny 1y ago
  Food security in general does need governance and this does includes vulnerability to price fixing of non-GMO seeds and agricultural chemicals as well as safety. It also includes vigilance against such things as agricultural equipment with expensive repair lockouts, antibiotic overuse, soil degradation, deforestation and poor disease control. The original assertion was that rational self-interested agents would naturally find and migrate to optimum global outcomes for everyone. Not only is this not true in the abstract game theoretic sense, but it's especially not true when many of the agents are independent developing world smallholders and some are multibillion agritech transnationals.
  - pfdietz 1y ago
    So it has nothing to do with GMOs specifically.
    - georgefrowny 1y ago
      Correct. It's continuing the general observation first made here (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45725408 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45725408) that doesn't specifically mention GMO at all and a disagreement with the premise of the reply to that here (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45725551 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45725551). Obviously the argument is using GMO as the subject due to the context of the article, but you can have the exact same argument about powerful companies angling for capture of slices of many industries and even parts of the general human experience in many places where you can say "well if it wasn't going to be good for the farmers/taxi drivers/warehouse workers/software engineers/people looking for a date/restaurant chefs/whoever, they're not stupid and wouldn't agree to it".