Slashdot Mirror

DISPROVEN.

Using capital letters hasn't proven anything. All it has proven is that if you can't pound on the facts that you will pound on the table.

Keep trying, me laddo. You'll succeed never.

BS! I dare you to cite one scientific study supporting your statement. Here are some studies or references to studies that conclude organic food [pdf] can feed the world.

Falcon

In that case, if Libertarians had had their way, you would've been lucky that he was on the clock when he hit you. What if he hadn't, and he didn't have enough assets of his own to compensate you for your injury? Tough luck for you, I guess.

No, because this wasn't his first accident he wouldn't have been driving. Legally at least. As it was, though the state he fled from had a warrant out for his arrest he was able to get a driver's license in the state I lived in at the tyme.

Yes, really. Just because the economy was improving doesn't mean everything was fine; an improvement in the average doesn't translate to an improvement in every single person's life. If private charity and the market had been providing for everyone, there would've been no demand for social programs.

Robbing Peter to pay Paul is never right, and that's exactly what government does when it taxes your income. Taxing also hurts the economy, because of taxes people can't spend as much, increasing consumer spending will create jobs. As it is now, billions of tax payer dollars goes to hugh corporations as subsidies. For instance Cargill, a private corporation, and Archer Daniel Midland (ADM) receives billions of dollars in farm subsidies. People talk about welfare but what is rarely ever heard about is the corporate welfare that goes on. ADM has been called a corporate "welfare queen". Over Bush's veto congress passed $300 Billion in farm subsidies. Yet it's not small farmers who are being helped with these subsidies, one farmer called leaving his farm to his children "child abuse". The average age of a farmer in the US is 53, younger people are leaving even though some want to keep farming. They can't compeat with large agricultural corporations who receive massive subsidies.

Investing for your retirement is a good idea, obviously, and I'm fortunate enough to be able to do it myself. But not everyone can afford to invest, and not everyone who does invest will come out ahead.

With lower or no income tax, the economy would be better thus increasing people's pay. With higher pay people would be able to invest more, which would increase employment and again pay. The one place I would tax income is on corporations and maybe on the dividends they pay out to stockholders. I admit many libertarians wouldn't tax corporations but I would. They have limited liability and they should pay for that privilege. Then I'd have user fees and maybe a pollution tax. A fuel tax for instance, drivers would pay a tax on fuel which would then be used to pay for roads. Roads are another place I disagree with other libertarians, at least some want to privatize roads but the USA Constitution specifically gives the federal government the authority to build roads.

I'll also admit I agree that as it is now not everyone will come out ahead. But I place that squarely on education and government. From what I've seen and heard for years school doesn't teach economics and finance much anymore. When I was in 9th grade a teacher I had for civics had us students play a game for some weeks. He had us pretend we had $25,000 to invest and we could invest it however we wanted. During class we'd look through the financial section of the newspaper and decide what we wanted buy and sale, say I may pick to sale the stocks in X I own then buy stocks in Y. The next day I'd look at the selling price of X, then multiply that by the number of stocks I owned in X. Then I'd look at the selling price of Y and divide how much money I had by the amount to see how many stocks of Y I could buy. And that was in a public school. Now, I have not heard of anything

Butterflies weren't exposed to the bT toxin in corn pollen because they don't eat corn pollen, it's well-known that milkweed is the food source for monarchs.

And of course corn pollen conveniently stays on corn plants, and never blows through the air to land milkweed.

Does it do so often enough to present a hazard to monarchs? I don't know. But your contention that it "doesn't even make ecological sense" is unwarranted.

Right - as a safety protocol.

A "safety" protocol that threatens to wipe out neighboring crops. Here I am growing organic corn, saving seed, doing things the wholesome old-fashioned way, when a bunch of Terminator pollen blows from your field across mine. Next season all those seeds I saved, don't sprout.

Yeah, that's safety.

GM crops should simply not be grown in the open air. You want to grow 'em, fine, so long as you manage to keep the pollen contained under biohazard protocols in a greenhouse

And so were the meso-American farmers who originally created corn, 7500 years ago

Completely different. Selective breeding does not introduce new information into a species' genome.

And I'll note that all that selective breeding took place without patents.

The mendacity of Monsanto, et. al. is evident from their differing stories about how unique GM crops are. When safety concerns come up, it's "hey, this is just corn! Nothing special, shouldn't even be specially labeled. We produced it by means not significantly different than the selective breeding used for all of history."

But when it's time to apply for patents, it's "this is our invention! Nothing like it has ever existed before! It it so unique and precious that the federal government should use force to prevent anyone else from using it without our permission!"

How about feeding people?

Great idea. Best way to do that is to let developing nations grow native crops for local consumption. The solution to hunger requires food sovereignty, not patented GM crops of questionable safety grown for the profit of agribusiness giants.

Send the soybeans to Africa where they would quite literally and without any doubt whatsoever save lives.

Actually, the US regularly produces surpluses of food. This drives down prices and hurts farmers both here and in poor countires. Using farmland to produce renewable fuels would reinvigorate the American farm which is in crisis and soak up excess production in America expanding demand in poor countries where the majority of the population are poor farmers.

Here is an article about that and a quote about farmers in poor countries that summarizes that arguement:

"It's ironic," said Kirsten Schwind, Policy Director at Food First and author of the report. "You would think cheap imported food would help alleviate hunger. But often it doesn't. It devastates the livelihoods of local farmers, who then face the choice of migrating to cities to work in sweatshops." This migration actually drives down wages in urban areas and adds to the number of poor people in cities who cannot afford even cheap food.

I think any scheme that reduces dependence on fossil fuels ( either foreign supplied or local) helps reduce the trade deficit, reduces the amount of money being sent to countries that use it to train Islamic fundamentalists and helps reduce the amount of Carbon Dioxide being put into the atmosphere something which may or may not be causing global warming which in turn is may cause droughts, extreme storms and flooding of low lying countries.

I don't believe a word of this.

You are not angry because you think I will take what my taxes would entitle me to -- you are angry because I refuse to be robbed by your ilk.

No, I am angry that you would not pay taxes, diss the system and then take what you are thus not entitled to. I admit, stricter controls against the likes of you are something we should work on. That is one weakness of the Unviersal Medicare I will readilly agree exists.

Look at your brain drain: I am independent of your chains and my numbers are growing.

Your numbers growing is everything that you ever cared for. Worship of Mammon in its purest form. These "chains" as you call them are called "conscience", "society" and "civilization". No wonder you are yearning to be free of all of those.

Watch now, as Canada seals its borders to emmigration.

I think you have snorted too much of that white powder before posting this.

Actually, our local food banks never run out, though I expect that some might. Then, there are various shelters, and of course, the Sally Ann and other organizations. Private charity is quite vibrant in the U.S., partly because people aren't taxed to death.

And it works wonders.

Not only that, but he doesn't deserve it ... we do!

Sorry, but when 40 gazillion people went to see the movie, each one was contributing to this situation. What, you think that money came out of nowhere? "We" deserve that money? If people were really concerned about solving world hunger, they'd donate their $9 to Food First or something, but apparently they'd rather donate it to New Line.

Organic food also isn't sustainable; organic food can't feed the world

Bullshit.

We now are, and have been for a very long time, producing more than enough high quality food to feed all of the worlds poor. There are problems with distribution of the available food, but the truth is that much of the world's food is destroyed in order to keep prices up. the only solution to those two problems is not going to be found in patent-burdened trans-genic crops, but through programs like the one written about in the article, that allow greater localization of food production without creating indebtedness of local farmers to a US agro-giant like Monsanto.

(obvisouly? popultion? compenstate? artical?)

First world intervention in the third world, even something which seems to be as purely good as increasing the food supply, is a complex and controversial topic, and you should not restrict your opinion to, for example, the article mentioned in the original post. I was just trying to balance the somewhat Pollyanna-ish tone of the Slashdot summary.

A quick search on Green Revolution in Google brings up plenty of conflicting informed opinion.

Reality: Abundance, not scarcity, best describes the world's food supply. Enough wheat, rice and other grains are produced to provide every human being with 3,500 calories a day. That doesn't even count many other commonly eaten foods-vegetables, beans, nuts, root crops, fruits, grass-fed meats, and fish. Enough food is available to provide at least 4.3 pounds of food per person a day worldwide: two and half pounds of grain, beans and nuts, about a pound of fruits and vegetables, and nearly another pound of meat, milk and eggs-enough to make most people fat! The problem is that many people are too poor to buy readily available food. Even most "hungry countries" have enough food for all their people right now. Many are net exporters of food and other agricultural products.

So: help that makes you a slave is not really help at all, it just defers short term suffering for greater long-term suffering [oh, we can fix that knee for you for the next few months, but after that you'll never walk again, it's okay because we have a special deal on wheelchairs]. Further, tying GM reliance to food aid then crying 'criminal neglect' is disingenuous when agricultural subsidies and WTO/IMF policies cause as much suffering as any drought conditions.

And please try to be a little more scientific if you're going to be a proponent of technologies. The comparison of husbandry and breeding with genetic engineering is specious.

"Good one, isolated cases without proof."

You want proof? You can't handle the proof!

Far from them being an advocate of free trade other than in speeches, this is only one example of increasing protectionism in the current Bush Administration. Taking the largest single trading partner to the US as an example, a wide range of recent tariffs and duties counter to the NAFTA and GATT agreements has done real harm the Canadian economy. Some economists estimate that the cost of such trade policies costs Canada approximately 1% of annual Canadian economic growth (2002 at 3.4%) The only answer, since this protectionsim seems only to be increasing despite numerous WTO rulings against them, would seem to be long-term diversification of export customers for US trade partners such as Canada, the EU, Australia, Japan & China, resulting in less dependance on access to US markets.

Capitalism is the economic system of choice in the world's richest nation. What should we do with that wealth? Whatever we want! That's why it's called a free society.

It's not a Free Society for everyone in this country. Many American Blacks and Asians face major economic inequity. In West Oakland, CA, the percentage of people who can't pay their mortgage is up around 60%. The amount of children who live under the poverty line in Alameda County CA is staggering - around 40%!

Again, I would have to disagree with this. A major cause of hunger, is, as you've said, a lack of productive economies in hungry nations. But rather than pursue fair trade with producers in other nations, the small minority of people in the United States who control our trade policies (who I would call "Rich people in the USA") insist on subsidizing US farm crops (and dumping them all over the world) while forcing developing nations to export luxury crops to the US (like coffee - 1% of the world's arable land is used for coffee). The WTO and the World Bank, major tools of developed industrial nations, heavily favor the interests of the United States and Europe. The United States especially poor when it comes to pursuing sustainable development... Do you actually believe that wealthy interests in the US have a positive effect on world hunger? Exporting cheap food to poor countries destroys local economies (outcompeting local farmers!), the same way that a Wal-Mart comming to your town destroys local businesses...

In fact, they provide a lot of help to the world's hungry, both in terms of increasing awareness and generating funding.

You must be speaking about these people, otherwise, I think the wealthy in the US need to learn a lot about fundraising for the impoverished...

If ICANN were left to its own devices to fund 'projects' like Google, such 'projects' (Google is very much a profit-making business, not a 'project') would likely never come into existence.

Hunh? How did any of the following come about: Apache, Linux Kernel, GNU utilities, PHP, Perl, The Gimp, GNOME, KDE, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, NetBSD, Debian, etc, etc, etc...

there just isn't the same level of competition out there in the np space.

Again, what about: GNOME vs. KDE, Apache vs. Anything, Mozilla vs. Konqeror vs. everything else, Linux vs. BSD vs. etc. etc. etc...

If you look at the distribution of wealth throughout the world, it is easy to say that economic inequity is the cause of hunger. But in fact the cause of hunger is the simple lack of productive economies in hunger-stricken regions. Why isn't Afghanistan competing with India and China in the tech sector?

A "computer" economy will not feed the people of a developing nation. Who will grow the food? Will those people be a perpetual underclass?

The source of the economic inequity between nations is largely a result of the laws that govern patents and trade, which are themselves a product of the nation's culture.

Wrong. The laws that govern patents and trade are dictated not by culture, but by the threat of force and sanctions by more powerful countries. Do you actually think that people in Jamaica, the Phillipines, or China want to be used as cheap labor for European and American tastes? What about Cuba? Do you think that the culture of Cuba dictates their economic situation? Or was if force from the United States?

It is what makes this discussion possible at both the idiological and the technological level.

People in non-western countries also talk freely about politics, technology, and other issues... I myself am Persian, and persians love to talk politics... It seems like you have been watching too much Fox News Network... In the United States, there is no guarantee of free discussion about political issues, as the squelching of public dissent in the face of ridiculous media conglomeration. Our current Federal Legislature and Presidential Administration is not exactly

For more information check out: the EFF, and FAIR...

Actually, economic inequity, and not lack of food, is the prevalent cause of hunger. Thus, in a way, making more people rich does create something wrong. Unless you consider it is ok that one sixth of the world's population faces chronic hunger. Like energy, there is only so much capital in the world...

I am saying ICANN (or someone like them) - not Venture Capitalists - should fund projects like Google.

Yes I have this study to cite:
This Paper
Written by the great Agroecologist Peter Rosset...

I guess I failed to point out the social benefits of smaller farms... In a system of larger agricultural farms, farm owners tend to be very rich and farm workers are very poor: the rural economy is transformed from one of self-suficiency to one in which farmers are forced to make livings as wage earners. The point is, more small farms means more farmers producing for themselves rather than becoming dependent on the poor wages derived from farm work.

Also, smaller farms (with diverse crops) can be more easily tended to without expensive (economically and socially!) pesticides or chemical fertilizers. This helps eliminate the health dangers associated with agrochemicals (sometimes known as the "hidden economy" of industrial agriculture)...

I'm not sure what this problem of distribution is? In countries like Afghanistan, where only 11% of the land is arable, there is an understandable distribution problem. But what is more prevalent is a "policy" problem, where there is food available everywhere, and people don't have the money to buy food.

India currently has almost half of the world's hungry (defined as people who do not consume enough calories to sustain daily activity) at 250-300 million. However, India currently has about 60 to 70 tonnes of grain in storage, grown for export in accordance with IMF/World Bank Policy! This is insane. I suppose that I would say, to solve the distribution problem that India faces, would be to:

• Focus on growing agriculture for local market
• Eliminate ridiculous global institutions like the IMF, and the WTO... programs that favor the interests of industrial agriculture.
• Focus on bringing more economic equity to the world...

Actually, 5 billion could make a huge difference. The UN World Food Program estimates that: the whole of the world population's basic needs for food, drinking water, education and medical care could be covered by a levy of less than 4% on the accumulated wealth of the 225 largest fortunes. To satisfy all the world's sanitation and food requirements would cost only $13 billion, hardly as much as the people of the United States and the European Union spend each year on perfume.

For more information on food supply and cost issues, try looking at:
Institute for Food and Development Policy
UN World Food Program

This issue is really ridiculous. Things that are cause suffering and chronic hunger include:

• Wasted food and poor food distribution
• Overpopulation
• Poor countries exporting monocultured plants that are meant only for rich western markets, thus using their land to grow stuff for us
• Lack of available Education and Health Care
• Low wages and exploitation of cheap, desperate people for labor

If we attack malnourishment problems one vitamin at a time, we will never solve real issues like lack of viable social infasturctures for countries with chronic hunger problems, (including the UNITED STATES!). The best way to solve a problem with as many causes as malnourishment has is not to throw at it an expensive, narrow soloution that will be merely a remedy for one symptom of chronic hunger...
CHECK OUT for more info:
FOOD FIRST
PUBLIC EDUCATION NETWORK
World Health Organization