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Replacing beef with plants will do *nothing* for the starving nations of the world, because we can already feed them three times over. Source.

World hunger is not a production problem, it is a distribution problem. It will not be solved by eliminating meat from anyone's diet.

Quotes from Paul Ehrlich:

***

Yup, he is virtually the dictionary definition of alarmist, and yet...

“Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make,” Paul Ehrlich confidently declared in the April 1970 issue of Mademoiselle. “The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.”

An estimated 250 million preschool children are vitamin A deficient. An estimated 250,000 to 500 000 vitamin A-deficient children become blind every year, half of them dying within 12 months of losing their sight. (WHO Vitamin A Deficiencies)

Well, he may have been a few years out, but, as unbelievable as it might seem, his numbers are in the right ball park. (I'm not really interested in any "rationale" for these figures, I'm just pointing them out)

Paul Ehrlich chimed in, predicting in 1970 that “air pollutionis certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone.” Ehrlich sketched a scenario in which 200,000 Americans would die in 1973 during “smog disasters” in New York and Los Angeles.

Again, maybe a few years out, (I say maybe because historical figures are both hard to find and considerably less reliable), but: "In new estimates released today, WHO reports that in 2012 around 7 million people died - one in eight of total global deaths – as a result of air pollution exposure. This finding more than doubles previous estimates and confirms that air pollution is now the world’s largest single environmental health risk. Reducing air pollution could save millions of lives.

Paul Ehrlich warned in the May 1970 issue of Audubon that DDT and other chlorinated hydrocarbons “may have substantially reduced the life expectancy of people born since 1945.” Ehrlich warned that Americans born since 1946now had a life expectancy of only 49 years, and he predicted that if current patterns continued this expectancy would reach 42 years by 1980, when it might level out. (Note: According to the most recent CDC report, life expectancy in the US is 78.8 years).

Hmm, it almost feels like you're quoting this because you disagree with the premise. Are you suggesting that DDT (and many other chemicals, manufactured in large quantities during the last century, such as CFC's, tetra-ethyl lead, etc.) are not harmful to human health and do not reduce life expectancy?

Granted, his maths on life expectancy contained a rather basic mistake, but I'd say the principles he was warning about were, and are, valid.

In 1975, Paul Ehrlich predicted that “since more than nine-tenths of the original tropical rainforests will be removed in most areas within the next 30 years or so, it is expected that half of the organisms in these areas will vanish with it.”

Yup, blatant exaggeration (scare-mongering, alarmism, call it what you will)! In reality rates of deforestation at the start of this century were around 5.4 million ha/yr with estimates giving around 1803 million ha of tropical forest globally in 2000. Assuming a constant rate of deforestation (a BIG assumption) this means we've only removed about 8% of global rainforest over 30 years. I'm a little more hesitant to pooh-pooh the 50% species loss figure because, while it sounds inconceivable, some species are not numerous, have very small ranges, and are very very 'fragile'. 50% biomass loss, not a chance, 50% of number of species ... unlikely but we have to admit the possibility, and that in itself should be cause enough for us to do something to prevent it (in fairness I think we,

Capitalism is at it's best when it is taking more jobs than it replaces. Take AWS, for instance. It takes less people and capital to run a web app in AWS than it does to build a traditional data center. More DC techs lose their jobs than gain one any time a large web app is moved into AWS.

And, this is a great thing. It makes it easier and cheaper to build web apps in AWS. Moreover, freeing people from a role may seem harsh to those people, ie it removes from them an income and gives them security issues, but in the larger scope of society, it means those people are free labor to work on something new, something different. Capitalism has historically also created new markets and 'created' jobs when there is a combination of cheaper labor and cheaper platforms (like AWS). All this leads to innovation in products and services which benefit us all.

I'm not saying capitalism is without ill, but it's hardly a zero sum game. The top five largest cap companies have all brought us innovations that make everyday life easier in the last 10 years. Apple has provided solid consumer electronics, Google has indexed information better than anyone else, Microsoft has provided office productivity and an OS with a remarkably stable API/platform (yes, yes, it sux0rs compared to linux's beautiful, ever evolving arch, but it does have this one good property), Amazon has brought down the price, increased the selection, and increased the availability of consumer goods and also provided the world with a cheap virtual data center for small businesses.

Each of these top 5 companies have some seriously questionable business practices, sure. Still, they all have delivered products or services that their respective consumers consider significant advancements in their lives or places of work. They all created new markets and cannibalized old ones, simultaneously. It isn't zero-sum. While we may debate this point, and on slashdot many would, I would submit that most people consider our lives better for the existence of these five companies.

I definitely agree that food security should properly be going up and that it is disturbing when it goes down. Hunger in America stats suggests food insecurity increased in 2008 but has been going down steadily since then. I'm in agreement that bull markets and exotic derivatives were a significant ill our capitalist system. We've done some things to reverse or prevent those trends, and I'm willing to agree we haven't gone as far as we should, maybe even that we've significantly missed the mark. In the context of history, these trend lines exist in a very short window and the history of the United States and post-perpetual-war Europe shows a miraculous increase in quality of life and food security. What atrocities capitalism commits seem over-matched by the miracles it induces.

what about?

Poverty in rich countries is not comparable to poverty in poor countries. The root causes are totally different. Poverty in poor countries is mostly caused by government mismanagement, and lack of opportunities. Poor people in rich countries are surrounded by an ocean of opportunity, but fail to take advantage of it, often because of substance abuse, mental illness, or simply bad health. Those are much harder problems to fix.

pretty disgusting act by the bolivian government. Whether they like to admit it or not Bolivia still has a very high rate of people living a long way below the poverty line.

what about?

Sure, there is no issue with starvation in the US http://www.worldhunger.org/art....

People can live with other people, but typically they still have to pay rent, at least for adults. Roommates are not going to allow them to live there for free.

Communism was beaten,

Err....China?

few people are starving,

2.3 million children die each year directly due to malnutrition. That's one every 15 seconds.
According to World Hunger, malnutrition is a factor in at least 5 million child deaths per year worldwide. Hardly what I'd call "few people."

access to education is easy,

Easy to say this when you live in North America....

there are no major wars looming

Other than terrorists behind every blade of grass intent on blowing us all to kingdom come....

and the world doesn't seem likely to blow up tomorrow.

Other than all the terrorists that want to blow us to kingdom come.....

I realize the whole terrorist thing is a red herring. But if there are no terrorists wanting to blow us up, then there's no need to spend the billions we (you, really...as I'm not American) are spending to prevent them. You either need to agree that the government is horribly wasting money on this, or think that we're in serious trouble at the hands of terrorists who want to blow us all up. Regardless of who you believe, you should be pissed at one of two groups: politicians, or terrorists.

Apathy really isn't an option for this situation.

Raising children well can take about as much time as most adults can put into it. Our US society is currently suffering for too much parental time put into work and then other distractions. and not enough time spent with kids. The same goes for the effort reuired to maintain social relations with freidns and neighbors. That is historically way most human adults spent most of their time -- raising kids and being social. For reference on a hunter/gatherer lifestyle:
http://www.primitivism.com/original-affluent.htm

I readily agree that people need a sense of "agency" -- that they are accomplishing things to make their life better. But whether that needs to be withing a structured system of economics we call "work" entailing bosses and customers and "wage slavery" is a different question (even if most of us practically have few other short-term alternatives to work).
http://www.whywork.org/

Related to you point, many people like playing a hunter/gatherer in an abundant Minecraft world a lot. Yet, maybe part of that is indeed because of the abundance and the possibilities? Yet, in US society, many people are arbitrarily shut out from all the abundance. This kind of stuff (or the need for it) is just wrong in such a wealthy society:
http://www.publicintegrity.org/2009/08/07/6958/appalachian-fairgrounds-charity-tries-fill-gaps-health-care
http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/Learn/us_hunger_facts.htm
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/10/22/demographic-shift-puts-american-dream-out-reach/

If "welfare is a fast road to unhappy dependency", then:
A. Why do rich people tend to give their children lots of expensive things including Ivy League educations, good cars, condos, trust funds, and so on?
B. Would you turn down a million dollar cash gift?
C. Do monthly "Social Security" payments to any citizen in the USA over age 65 cause enormous distress to the elderly?

If you think about these three questions, you may find a missing piece of the puzzle of a picture of the future.

However, your point about the cost of living going down is indeed true and needs to be kept in mind. On the other hand, decreasing costs also generally implies less money going to fewer people. But the marketplace only "hears" the needs of those with cash. If you have zero money, then you can't afford a place to sleep or put your stuff. And further, automation tends to concentrate wealth (at least initially).
http://marshallbrain.com/robotic-freedom.htm

Productivity has doubled or triples over the last few decades in the USA, but real wages for most workers have remained flat (granted, health insurance benefits have increased, but it is not clear people are that much healthier for that). That is a political issue about fairness as well as power.

I'd agree humans want interaction with other humans (generally), but whether that is best in the context of payments (as opposed to gifts or family and friend interactions) is another question. For example, I prefer to have my wife cut my hair than to go to a barber or hair salon.

Another thing to consider is that perhaps all humans have some claim on some of the fruits of the commons?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_credit

BTW, on NYC homeless:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/10/28/131028fa_fact_frazier?currentPage=all

It sounds there like the "means testing" and uncertainty and constant changes create much

You should check your facts again.

Ok, I did.

Hwll, most of them don't even have enough to eat.

From this link:

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that nearly 870 million people of the 7.1 billion people in the world, or one in eight, were suffering from chronic undernourishment in 2010-2012.

and

As of 2008 (2005 statistics), the World Bank has estimated that there were an estimated 1,345 million poor people in developing countries who live on $1.25 a day or less.

So we have the first facts. Somewhere around 1 in 8 do not have enough to eat and there's a lot of people - but nowhere near a majority - living in deep poverty who would be near that starvation level. So most people have enough to eat to the extent of somewhere around 4 to 7 parts to 1, depending where you draw that line.

The fast majority of people in this world don't get paid decent money.

Well, let's take a gander at the situation. Look at the chart on page 12. This is a chart of a change in global real income between 1988 and 2008. The X axis is by global percentile. The Y axis is the measured change in income increase (adjusted for inflation) for the percentile of humanity. This would represent, for example, the percentage difference between everyone who was near the 23% percentile of global income in 2008 over whoever was near the 23% percentile of global income in 1988.

Four things stand out. The expected increase of income of the wealthiest sliver of the world and a vast increase in income of about 60% (eyeballing it) of the world's population from about the 5% to 75% percentiles. The losers are the poorest 5% and a group from about the 75% to 98% percentiles with about 12-15% of the percentiles experiencing a small decline in income.

In other words, there was a huge movement of industry and commerce from the developed world to the developing world over that twenty year period, which helped most of humanity (as in a true majority) and probably by which the wealthiest of the world particularly benefited.

We're basically living off of their lives in our "glory capitalism world".

I mentioned elsewhere the primitive zero sum thinking which seems to pervade so much of this subject. That last chart shows a huge net increase in income for most of the world (as in a majority) aside from perhaps a fifth to sixth of it.

That's an obvious positive sum outcome. But you think of it in "us and them" terms. I'm "taking" from others even though they're doing better than ever before. Perhaps, I need to "take" even more so that they'll do even better?

"We" already are starving and overpopulated**.

no, even your link says otherwise, we produce more food than we need, and we are able to produce much much more than we need (by some estimates we could easily feed 100 billion people), only problem is some people don't have money to buy it, that is why they are hungry, and not our inability to provide food for them.

as for overpopulation, i presume you are talking about planet surface area available, but you forget that huge percentage of people living in cities uses just a tiny amount of planet area, we can always build more cities if we need more space, not everyone has to live in villages

"We" already are starving and overpopulated**. This research project is sponsored by companies operating in a very rich country - has potential to alleviate starvation and in the third world, but it is unlikely that will happen in our lifetimes. The evidence so far strongly suggests that we now live in a "winner-take-all" world economy, where technological advances do not filter down and only serve to deepen the inequality both within a countries population and between countries. Your stand on the environment one way or the other has nothing to do with that...

** in some areas

despite the overpopulation, abundance of food for everybody

1/8 of the world's population is currently "chronically undernourished": Number of hungry people in the world from worldhunger.org. Of course next you'll let us know how this is a political problem not a technical one, as if that makes any difference in anything but a post-scarcity society, given modern societies' performance to date. Dictators of one stripe or another are the default in the poorest nations simply owing to the circumstances they find themselves in now, and they aren't simply going to roll over and hand out food for free out of the goodness of their hearts - they're dictators, after all. Maybe you could do away with them by having massive buildouts in education and quality of life to build up a middle class but with the world being oiled by capitalism it's in the rest of the world's interests to keep the poorest of the poor right where they are now, to be exploited for manpower and resources.

14.5% of US families suffer from food insecurity. That's 17.2 million households. Your simplistic narrative may be comforting to you, but the truth is that hunger in the USA is dire.
2013 US hunger facts

I don't have to think or believe that a lot of Americans are struggling to feed themselves and their families, because unfortunately I have the luxury of knowing it. 14.5% of US families suffer from food insecurity. SNAP (food stamps) only provides $4 / day.

Page with summary statistics
2011 USDA study

You might wish to do a little more study of history prior to making such statements. One foray into socialism (Mao's Great Leap Forward) resulted in about 30 million people dead. About 2 million of those were suicides. Most of the rest were from famine.

Other attempts have been ... somewhat less successful.

I notice you left out the European and Scandinavian countries where democratic socialism has worked quite well and raised living standards.

So while Larry Page might be taking home a good bit more money than the developers working for him, and that might make some of us unhappy, what we don't have is millions of people dying in the streets around us.

You sure about that? http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/Learn/us_hunger_facts.htm

World hunger is not a production or availability problem. It is a distribution problem. America alone can already grow enough grain to feed the entire planet a couple times over. Doing so, however, would make the bottom drop out of the grain market and have disastrous economic consequences. That is exactly why the American government pays farmers to not grow food.

More info here.

What you say is true, but what you fail to mention is that the dent we've made in these problems is in many cases superficial, and the distance we have yet to go is overwhelming. For Example: Still about half the landmass on the planet is some kind of war zone, and a bit less than 10% of the world's landmass is the scene of serious war and social conflict and its consequences. If you want to go here. The good news is that the actual number of people directly impacted by war and social conflict has dropped markedly, the bad news is that the number of people who have come under the influence of potentially warlike regimes has dramatically increased and the potential for war has actually risen (think Muslim Brotherhood throughout the Middle East.)

As for poverty, though we've made marked strides in life threatening poverty and human suffering on the planet, chronic poverty remains a terrible problem for as much nearly a third of the planet. One in seven people in the world suffers chronic hunger and malnutrition. Here are a couple good sources of the state of the world's poor Poverty Stats and Facts and Hunger Facts and Stats and any suggestion that we've got the problem well in hand is just a bit premature.

And last there's ignorance. There is maybe a glimmer here with the advent of Humanitarian gifts of computers with satellite links for the third world and online education like the Khan Academy. However, the vast majority of the third world still has no infrastructure, no technology, little educational opportunity, and radical religious groups in many places that are dedicated to destroying secular education and particularly education for girls and women. So there's the inherent ignorance in places with out resources, the impact is literally on billions of people. Then there are the people who are being subjected to strict religious education and indoctrination, accounting for billions more. Finally there are the masses of the world who are the victims of government propaganda, poor public schooling, and a society that neither respects nor acknowledges intellectual performance or free thinking. Control the memes and control the culture. Here's a test. Sing the MacDonalds "Bic Mac" jiggle. Okay, now sing the "Battle Hymn of the Republic" or perhaps "The Star Spangled Banner". Notice something? The fact that first world's head is full doesn't ensure the fact that the content isn't fecal in nature. We have a long way to go to eliminate ignorance, deceit, mysticism, prejudice and the purposeful misleading of large groups of people by their governments. Or perhaps you see something don't

At least ten times that number starve to death yearly. We don't need more people.

Also [citation needed]. Let's take a quick look at your math here. The US has what, 300 million people, half men. Let's assume half of women are sexually active and able to conceive. (So people that are too young / too old / not getting any) That's a total of 75 million people that could potentially have an abortion. That means that every year, one out of every 95 women is having an abortion and requires the assumption that they aren't using any form of birth control. That's frankly ridiculous. Your stats are bad and you should feel bad.

Hunger info here:
http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/Learn/world%20hunger%20facts%202002.htm

Sometimes the best way to help people is to help humanity move forward.

Maybe helping a part of the Humanity to survive day-by-day (very very short term I mean) famine, starvation and thirst could also be a good idea, before helping the other part for better.
But I may be wrong, of course.

The absolute number of hungry people may be up, but as a percentage of the global population, it's probably lower than in the 80's.

Indeed. The UN says there are 925 million hungry people in 2010, around 13.1% of global population.

Around 1980 there were 850 million, although the global population was much smaller (4.5 billion versus 7 million), so the percent hungry then was around 19%.

Most hungry people are in Asia and Africa. India alone has 230 million hungry people. Other countries with large absolute numbers of hungry people are Bangladesh, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Indonesia and Pakistan.

For instance, the level of malnutrition has increased drastically to 1 billion

The number of hungry people has not changed much from 1969-2008, varying between 800 and 900 million people.

Of course in 1969, world population was 3.6 billion, so the percent of hungry was 25%, whereas in 2008 the world population was 6.7 billion, so the percent of hungry is now closer to 13%.

Disagree. The "living is more than just being alive" argument by death-with-dignity supporters applies equally well to the world's population. Sure, tech and other breakthroughs can sustain more people in the literal sense (otherwise the world population wouldn't still be growing), but when you see numbers like 925 million hungry people around the world, and 1.3 billion are considered to be in "extreme poverty", you can't tell me reducing population grown is a bad thing.

And it doesn't have to be the draconian one-child-per-family policies seen in China. Simply providing free birth control (condoms being the simplest) in developing countries would be a huge start, both in reducing unwanted/impossible-to-support pregnancies and reducing HIV/AIDS, but the religious nutcases now in control of several countries restrict or deny funding to any aid organization that promotes contraceptive use or abortion (and are doing their best to kill abortion back home, too). The Catholic church is also guilty/complicit in prolonging this human suffering, again thanks to its anti-contraceptive stance.

The idealistic scenario is to distribute wealth and resources fairly such that no one is in poverty and has a decent life worth living. The reality is this will never, ever happen. Not only would the right-wing scream bloody socialism, communism, etc, the dictators and their cronies in most underdeveloped countries will never allow meaningful aid to reach their underclass--they've seen what reasonably well-off but unhappy populations did during the Arab Spring.

The religious right also screams at attempts to provide contraception too, but this is infinitely more likely to succeed (if only because the idealistic option has 0% chance of happening).

Disagree. The "living is more than just being alive" argument by death-with-dignity supporters applies equally well to the world's population. Sure, tech and other breakthroughs can sustain more people in the literal sense (otherwise the world population wouldn't still be growing), but when you see numbers like 925 million hungry people around the world, and 1.3 billion are considered to be in "extreme poverty", you can't tell me reducing population grown is a bad thing.

And it doesn't have to be the draconian one-child-per-family policies seen in China. Simply providing free birth control (condoms being the simplest) in developing countries would be a huge start, both in reducing unwanted/impossible-to-support pregnancies and reducing HIV/AIDS, but the religious nutcases now in control of several countries restrict or deny funding to any aid organization that promotes contraceptive use or abortion (and are doing their best to kill abortion back home, too). The Catholic church is also guilty/complicit in prolonging this human suffering, again thanks to its anti-contraceptive stance.

The idealistic scenario is to distribute wealth and resources fairly such that no one is in poverty and has a decent life worth living. The reality is this will never, ever happen. Not only would the right-wing scream bloody socialism, communism, etc, the dictators and their cronies in most underdeveloped countries will never allow meaningful aid to reach their underclass--they've seen what reasonably well-off but unhappy populations did during the Arab Spring.

The religious right also screams at attempts to provide contraception too, but this is infinitely more likely to succeed (if only because the idealistic option has 0% chance of happening).

This is the problem. Vapid, ignorant, uninterested people who don't even bother to illuminate the vast empty place between their ears. You mention Nazis. So let's do this by the numbers. WHY WERE NAZIS BAD? Because they were Fascists and slaughtered a bunch of innocent folks. What is a Fascist? Well, Mussolini, a Fascist, said its the corporate state. Why is this bad? Well when a nation's corporations determine the fate of that nation and its people all kind of predictable things, bad things, begin to happen. You see profit is a great thing to motivate people, but as a guiding target for a society, it can lead to dark things. At first everything is great and the society enjoys explosive growth. But soon, the system begins to cannibalize itself. Ultimately the wheels come off, it crashes and explodes, and often a lot of people die. That why we don't like fascism. If you want to know how to tell a Fascist State here are some signs to look at. If you've not been in a coma for the last decade, you may notice that modern day America now has something in common with Germany and sadly its not the love of beer. So your Nazi comment as clever as you might have thought it was echoes a sad and frightening irony.

As for soup kitchens and bread lines, are you brain damaged? Here, try these sites: People in line at foodbank, The State of Poverty in America, What replaced the Soup Kitchens, The real state of Unemployment in America Today, Tent Cities Sprouting up all over the country. One in five children in America today goes to bed hungry. One in six people in this country suffers chronic malnutrition. One in eight is out of work and can't find employment. Entire regions of America have been depressed for so long, they now have names like "The Rust Belt." One in seven people in this country is saved from hunger by food stamps or federal food programs. There are scenes all over the country of people lined up for blocks waiting for food from food banks. There are shanty towns and tent cities across the nation of homeless people who were formerly middle class, and tens of millions of middle class Americans who live a single pay check away from becoming homeless. Food banks are pleading for support, they've never before been required to support so many people and many are on the verge of collapse. Are you so blind and poorly informed that you don't even see the profound state of social collapse around you? Are you sleep walking? Medicated? Either you have no mind or you have no heart, please which is it?

As for the ruling class, the top 400 people in this country now have the same wealth as the bottom HALF of the country, over 160,000,000 people. The imbalance of wealth in America today is greater THAN ANY TIME IN HUMAN HISTORY. That is the ruling class. They have hijacked our government. They have hijacked the media and our sources of free information. They have robbed us of our Bill of Rights and damaged our form of government to the very edge of its ability to be repaired. They are working hard to rob us of our last best hope for human freedom and development, the internet.

I don't advocate violence, and never have, but I tell you now, I am plenty angry. I pray that we find our way back without the spilling of blood, but I have a hard time imagining a bright future with so many like you walking the street today. You scare me more than the despots.

... there are people starving in Africa. Food is meant for eating, not for driving cars! http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/Learn/world%20hunger%20facts%202002.htm

Horse crap. Biomass from post consumption is now being turned into Bio Fuel. Do some research first.

Yes, we should all focus on something so vast and out of our control that we don't really have to do anything except pose and 'be concerned' about it to be fashionably hip without actually making any personal effort.

Here's a clue. How about all those people feigning concern actually go show concern about something that matters.

"--3.5 percent of U.S. households experience hunger. Some people in these households frequently skip meals or eat too little, sometimes going without food for a whole day. 9.6 million people, including 3 million children, live in these homes." - http://www.worldhunger.org/

There's something they can all actually do something about, but they won't - because that would be effort. They would rather smile at peta pictures of emaciated 16 year old looking mostly nude models holding signs and act oh-so-concerned about global issues than help the poor bastard who lives 20 miles away.

As Penn and Teller would say, it's all Bullshit.

This sounds like a very serious problem.

In other news 1.02 Billion people on the planet (roughly 15%) do not know when they will get their next meal.
  http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/Learn/world%20hunger%20facts%202002.htm

Subsistence style living is not an option ... large scale commercial style farming is the only way to feed the number of people we have (and it isn't enough, really)

I agree with your basic point, that large scale commercial farming is necessary. But not only is it enough, it is more than enough. The world currently produces enough food to feed everyone in the world more than adequately. And that's with using just a fraction of the available farmland. The reason so many people in the world go hungry are entirely due to economic and political issues.

Starvation is a geopolitical problem, not a resource problem. Grain production has consistently outpaced population growth for the past 30 years. Even during last year's food crisis, resource shortfalls were not an issue.

more here: http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/Learn/world%20hunger%20facts%202002.htm

I'm waiting for a list.

Sure, google it. That's just as reasonable as your request that I go prove your claim, something you can't justify in your own words.

Simple: any time people are free to succeed or fail, and society permitted to change and adapt, not everyone will become equally rich.

I agree that agriculture subsidies are bad. Do you "get" that? What I disagree is *where* the bad effects manifest. And I claim that receiving underpriced food is *not* [b]ad for those receiving the underpriced food.

I wonder how many folks that refuse to give money to Microsoft based on moral reasons evenly apply their morality to other purchases. Do they make sure they buy fair-trade coffee? Refuse Nike shoes? Purchase food that wasn't grown by a factory-farming corporation? Buy 'dolphin-safe' tuna?

Microsoft is fiercely competitive, but I'd hesitate to call it _evil_. Microsoft doesn't have an army of children it's exploiting, and doesn't destroy the environment to make it's millions.

Pick and choose your battles I guess. Personally, Microsoft can have my $100 or whatever for Windows, because the convenience and price is better than the competition. They're gonna use that money to make a better version of Windows and hawk it--big deal. My peronal beef is with big media companies such as Disney and Clear Channel. I could rant a long time about the injustices of big media, but it's off topic.

My point is that maybe you'd (not you, the general 'you') want to investigate if your antiestablishment energy would be more productive elsewhere. Fretting about Microsoft can be good, but maybe it's better to help out here, here, or here?

The bee is such an insect. But there might be things like ants starting to attack beehives as an food source. Extreme severe colds could suddenly kill a lot of bees which means that the next season might suffer diminished crop yield. This in turn mean less food supply and thus even greater competition by insects and us to it. Imagine a small grain yield, attacked by grasshoppers. Do you think we can really win that one.

This doesn't include the secondary affects by people. I mean once that crap hits the fan society collapse. An easy way to notice that is simply to notice how people change in a large power blackout. If you can't get diesel or poison to fight the insects, the yields go down further. If people want something bad enough they'll take it, once city dwellers goes to occupy farmland we have real big problems. The infrastructure is simply not there to support it, also those people don't have the experience to produce food in large enough quantities let alone in the "new" environment.

Look at what is happening in Zimbabwe due to Robert Mugabe's farm resettlements. Basically people without skills are given farmland, they simply cannot produce food on a large scale. As soon as that happens, you end up with people dieing from hunger. Or basically you diminish the population's immunity to diseases, then suddenly plagues start to spread much easier. Imagine a new out break of the Bird Flu with not enough resources to "manage" it and a population more susceptible to disease. There is one out now as I am writing this.

These are all things that no "modern human" has experienced before, maybe that is what happened to the people from Atlantis or the Mayans. Are we prepared, do we even have enough time still left to prepare ?