tfourb

23 ms·

301.
by tfourb 3y ago
See my sibling comment: property in most societies is something that not only confers rights to the owner, but also responsibilities. If you own an apartment in a city where there is great demand for housing, but (for whatever reason) you d
302.
by tfourb 3y ago
That is a very extreme view of property that is not shared by vast sections of global society. The German constitution has a very explicit article that states "Property obligates. Its use should simultaneously contribute to the wellbei
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by tfourb 3y ago
Good housing first programs do not cluster beneficiaries but try to integrate them into "normal" neighborhoods and provide them with ongoing support by social workers, medical attention, etc. Just dumping a couple of dozen homeles
304.
by tfourb 3y ago
But who is gaining anything if the "drugged out, violent, no desire to improve" folks are living on the street instead of some government provided (or paid for) permanent housing? The point of the Finnish project and similar appro
305.
by tfourb 3y ago
That the first step of resolving someone's homelessness is to provide them with a home (and then obviously don't stop there but provide additional support where needed). Who would have thought?
306.
by tfourb 3y ago
Not at all the same in Germany, but even as a property owner, I see some justification for effectively legalizing squatting in unused buildings. It would create some incentive for property owners to invest and rent out buildings, or otherwi
307.
by tfourb 3y ago
It also seems to be very US-centric and seems to put a strong focus on reporting on the economy. I personally found nothing particularly relevant to my existence featured on the site. These two biases are probably indicative of a host of ot
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by tfourb 3y ago
The issue is not the lack of technical expertise. The structure of the German public transport system is very localized, due to its historical growth. local networks are often owned by the municipalities that they are serving, the actual bu
309.
by tfourb 3y ago
Because public transport is owned by the public (or publicly owned entities) in many places outside the US. In Europe, it is the norm, not the exception, as is the case in many other places that have some sort of socialism/social dem
310.
by tfourb 3y ago
Germany used to have a very similar system to Austria's up until a few years ago. Same deal: do military service or "civil service" instead for 9 months. It was in theory compulsory for all male 18 year olds, but getting disq
311.
by tfourb 3y ago
It technically is in many places around Germany: The national railway infrastructure is owned by a government-owned entity, as is the main railway company. Many municipal public transport systems are also owned directly by the municipalitie
312.
by tfourb 3y ago
Climate control is only one aspect of energy usage. Another is light. Flying over the Netherlands at night is spectacular, in some parts it looks like they've just flooded entire regions with grow lights. I think I've read that ma
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by tfourb 3y ago
The type of intensive and regular tilling currently practiced in industrialized agriculture is part of a system that relies on the cheap availability of chemical fertilizers and pest control, which in turn were supported by the political an
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by tfourb 3y ago
Mark Shepard's system has been reproduced/used as inspiration in many other places, I could name at least a few here in Germany from the top of my head, all of them commercially successful (tough I admittedly do not have calorie p
315.
by tfourb 3y ago
It is dump enough that it is now actively discouraged by German ag-extension services, if an alternative soil preparation/seeding method is available.
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by tfourb 3y ago
Why out-perform? Wouldn't it be reasonable to have similarly or slightly worse performing system in exchange for using drastically less energy and degrading natural resources less? A concrete example would be New Forest Farm: about 40
317.
by tfourb 3y ago
Actually we are trying to feed 8 billion people, 21 billion chicken, 1.4 billion cattle, 1.2 billion sheep, etc: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/livestock-counts The systems I have highlighted have demonstrated comm
318.
by tfourb 3y ago
> Agriculture is engineering an unnatural surplus for human consumption, and keeping everything else from eating that surplus. If that is the case (and there were no other alternatives) the dominant form of agriculture (industrialized mo
319.
by tfourb 3y ago
Japan has about half the arable land per person as the Netherlands [1] but the Netherlands is the worlds #2 food exporter [2]. Japan could probably be more or less self-sustainable in terms of food production, if they made it a political pr
320.
by tfourb 3y ago
Simply not true. Many plants accumulate surplus nutrients in their root systems or provide the required support for the soil life that sequesters nutrients in the soil. All of that remains in the soil when you harvest the plant, if you are
321.
by tfourb 3y ago
Functioning ecosystems do provide pest control, otherwise there would not be ecosystems at all, because some pest would just destroy the entire thing. There are very well established agricultural systems that use that principle and employ i
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by tfourb 3y ago
Ingress of pathogens into pig farms almost always come through contaminated clothing, tools or fodder, not some fancy human to pig contraction. Vertical/indoor farms will need a lot of human supervision and interaction, as well as wate
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by tfourb 3y ago
In the EU, commercial pork production is almost exclusively done in large-scale indoor operations with hundreds to thousands of animals in one facility. These animals represent hundreds of thousands of Euros worth of investment for their ow
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by tfourb 3y ago
The vast majority of humanity is living in places where basically all food can be grown locally, with some exceptions for luxury (tropical fruits in high latitudes) and seasonality (not alle produce does store well fresh, though practically
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by tfourb 3y ago
There are plenty of great projects and commercial regenerative farms that have demonstrated that exploited and degraded soils can be made productive again in a matter of years with little to no external inputs in terms of fertilizer and wat
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by tfourb 3y ago
If nature wouldn't have great pest control, there wouldn't be any nature. The whole point of evolution is for living things to get better at resisting pests (also avoid being eaten and mate more successfully). Industrialized agric
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by tfourb 3y ago
Indoor and especially vertical farming might be worthwhile in some edge cases but all the fancy Startup babble does conveniently ignore that you lose access to thousands of dollars worth of free services provided by nature: irrigation, fert
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by tfourb 4y ago
The origin of the German discourse about nuclear power is linked to a) nuclear proliferation and b) Chernobyl The generation born after WWII developed a deep desire to not repeat the slaughter of WWII and many felt that their parents essent
329.
by tfourb 4y ago
A country like Germany could expand its current electricity production by about 50% while simultaneously phasing out nuclear and fossil fuels at a whole sale price for electricity below current market rates and with current technology. In c
330.
by tfourb 4y ago
tl;dr: In a first step, private citizens over the age of 18 will be able to a) keep and consume up to 25 grams of Cannabis on their person and keep up to three flowering plants and b) join a non-profit "Cannabis Club" that will be

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