THE REAL WORLD- FARMER MEETS ECONOMIST

[Orwellian_Ghost]

The Economist takes a field trip to visit The Farmer. He sees the fields and takes a few notes. The Farmer stands by with pride as the Economist scribbles feverishly upon his pad.

The Economist closes his notebook and wipes his glasses as The Farmer looks out declaring, "Beautiful isn't it? These fields mean food through the winter for the entire valley."

The Economist sighs knowingly and says, "Possibly but scarce resources mean we must better manage resources to optimize production."

At first The farmer seemed confused and a little dejected that The Economist would not, could not, behold what lay before his eyes but then a gnawing doubt came over The Farmer, "the man of letters must know something", and he asked The Economist to explain how things could be better.

The Economist did just that.

The Farmer excited by the prospects of such amazing abundance practiced exactly what The Economist had preached. This went on for several years, despite decreasing results, as The Farmer thought that The Economist must have the wisdom that would bear fruit but only after years of implementation.

Finally one winter, by now The Economist hadn't been seen for years, The Farmer decided that he would go back to The Old Ways as the people in the valley had suffered since the advent of The Economists' wisdom.

The Farmer found that once again the abundance he produced was quite enough to feed the people of the valley and that this was enough.

After a few years of this The Farmer received an unexpected visit from The Economist. Upon arrival The Economist immediately took out his notebook and began scribbling. The Farmer looked over and said, "I took your advice and the people of the valley barely made it through the winter whereas before we lived in abundance. Now I've gone back to The Old Ways and once again the people are fed."

The Economist spoke, "Yes, I can see that. That explanation may be all well and good in reality, but it will never work in theory."

[Orwellian_Ghost]

1. Kick?

:shrug:

[Kali]

2. I was trying to find this great comparison between west Texas

and all the money, expertise, "uncorrupt" govt, and abundance of technology vs. some African rangeland where the mentioned advantages are the exact opposite. Neither place is having much luck halting desertification.

Can't find it, too lazy to scan a book.

[Orwellian_Ghost]

3. Morning read?

:shrug:

[bryant69]

4. That story doesn't make a lot of sense.

What did the economist tell the farmer? "Don't fertilize, don't rotate you fields, don't grow food crops?"

And then it sounds like after a number of years of success, he had a bad winter, blamed the economist and went back to the old ways. So the Economists plans apparently worked for a while?

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[Orwellian_Ghost]

5. Read it again

"The Farmer excited by the prospects of such amazing abundance practiced exactly what The Economist had preached. This went on for several years, despite decreasing results..."

And then read this:

A TOTAL ECONOMY is one in which everything—“life forms,” for instance,—or the “right to pollute” is “private property” and has a price and is for sale. In a total economy significant and sometimes critical choices that once belonged to individuals or communities become the property of corporations. A total economy, operating internationally, necessarily shrinks the powers of state and national governments, not only because those governments have signed over significant powers to an international bureaucracy or because political leaders become the paid hacks of the corporations but also because political processes—and especially democratic processes—are too slow to react to unrestrained economic and technological development on a global scale. And when state and national governments begin to act in effect as agents of the global economy, selling their people for low wages and their people’s products for low prices, then the rights and liberties of citizenship must necessarily shrink. A total economy is an unrestrained taking of profits from the disintegration of nations: communities, households, landscapes, and ecosystems. It licenses symbolic or artificial wealth to “grow” by means of the destruction of the real wealth of all the world…

Aware of industrialism’s potential for destruction, as well as the considerable political danger of great concentrations of wealth and power in industrial corporations, American leaders developed, and for a while used, the means of limiting and restraining such concentrations, and of somewhat equitable distributing wealth and property. The means were: laws against trusts and monopolies, the principle of collective bargaining, the concept of one-hundred-percent parity between the land-using and the manufacturing economies, and the progressive income tax. And to protect domestic producers and production capacities it is possible for governments to impose tariffs on cheap imported goods. These means are justified by the government’s obligation to protect the lives, livelihoods, and freedoms of its citizens. There is, then, no necessity or inevitability requiring our government to sacrifice the livelihoods or our small farmers, small business people, and workers, along with our domestic economic independence to the global “free market.” But now all of these means are either weakened or in disuse. The global economy is intended as a means of subverting them.

...

http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/299/

[bryant69]

6. So we should all live in isolated sustainable communities?

What do we do with the excess population?

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com