World's Largest Water Diversion Plan Won't Quench China's Thirst • Hacker News Board

Re: World's Largest Water Diversion Plan Won't Quench China's Thirst

#51

Post by WalterBright » Mon, Dec 11, 2017, 10:35 PM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #50

throw2016 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every country heavily subsidizes and protects their agriculture market. There is no free market in agriculture. World hunger has not been 'solved' and any success cannot simply be credited to 'free markets' for a such a large scale complex human social problem.

Hunger is a solved problem everywhere there is a free market. It makes sense for countries to protect their domestic food production as a military asset - cutting off the food supply is a common warfare tactic. Subsidies also come about because of powerful agricultural lobbying interests. As to if subsidies reduce hunger, the evidence is scant to none. There is plenty of evidence, however, that they result in ineffic…

Also, many subsidies in the US are in the form of price supports, and paying farmers to not farm. These are designed to increase costs to consumers, because the free market was allegedly too successful in reducing the price of food.

Check out the great American pig slaughter during the Depression:

https://livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe30s/crops_17.html

Re: World's Largest Water Diversion Plan Won't Quench China's Thirst

#52

Post by danmaz74 » Tue, Dec 12, 2017, 11:07 AM UTC

Lazare wrote: post #25

danmaz74 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did it ever occur to you that pricing hundreds of millions of poor Chinese farmers out of their ability to grow food to eat, so that much richer exporting industries can have more water, while being a "market solution", might not be an acceptable - even a humane - solution?

Did it ever occur to you that a cash subsidy might be a lot more acceptable and humane answer that the current water subsidy? You're framing this as a question of "should we give these peasants free water, OR just let them starve?" That's not what's being debated, and is disingenuous at best.

This is what I understood was being debated: industry requires a lot of water, and they can pay it 10 times what the peasants pay for it. But, currently, they aren't allowed to buy the water that is needed for farming, which is the same as giving a subsidy to peasants. Instead, we should let the market decide, ie, let industry buy the water and leave the peasants without it. What will the peasants do then? Why, they are free to move to the cities and become industry workers; perfect market solution.

Did I get it wrong?

Re: World's Largest Water Diversion Plan Won't Quench China's Thirst

#53

Post by Lazare » Tue, Dec 12, 2017, 12:08 PM UTC

danmaz74 wrote: post #52

Lazare wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did it ever occur to you that a cash subsidy might be a lot more acceptable and humane answer that the current water subsidy? You're framing this as a question of "should we give these peasants free water, OR just let them starve?" That's not what's being debated, and is disingenuous at best.

This is what I understood was being debated: industry requires a lot of water, and they can pay it 10 times what the peasants pay for it. But, currently, they aren't allowed to buy the water that is needed for farming, which is the same as giving a subsidy to peasants. Instead, we should let the market decide, ie, let industry buy the water and leave the peasants without it. What will the peasants do then? Why, they…

> which is the same as giving a subsidy to peasants.

Correct. It is a large subsidy to the peasants.

> Instead, we should let the market decide, ie, let industry buy the water and leave the peasants without it.

Yes, but with the money, which as earlier discussed is worth several times more than its value in subsistence agriculture. The person you were originally replying to was complaining that a 90% discount on the sale of water was essentially an extremely inefficient cash subsidy; the obvious solution is replacing it with an efficient cash subsidy. That's hardly humane.

> What will the peasants do then? Why, they are free to move to the cities and become industry workers

If that was a practical solution at the required scale, they'd have already done it. Hence why a subsidy is needed.

> Did I get it wrong?

It does look that way, yes.

Re: World's Largest Water Diversion Plan Won't Quench China's Thirst

#54

Post by LeifCarrotson » Wed, Dec 13, 2017, 12:19 AM UTC

golergka wrote: post #31

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does, and it would, but what are you going to do with those 100 million farmers? Their children are rushing to the cities faster than you can possibly imagine. But it takes at least a generation or two to change a country of poor farmers into an industrial, educated, urbanized society. And until then, you have this problem.

In a capitalist, free market economy, we don't have to do anything with people. They're doing anything they want instead. China might not be there yet, but thankfully, they're already got rid of the central planning.

That only works in a reasonably static society, where people can make informed decisions about what they want. If an elderly farmer had an opportunity to learn a trade or get an education, yes, he might be a welder, or a wine taster, or a writer - but it's a little late for that when he's 40 with a house and wife and kid, and everything he owns is in that farm, which was the best option he had as he steered himself down the path of his life.

And now the market is saturated with cheap, industrially farmed food, making his output worthless. It's hugely oversupplied with obsolete farmers. Yes, the market will even things out eventually - but that can have a steep, painful human cost.