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How America Uses Its Land

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Re: How America Uses Its Land

#201

Post by PakG1 »

EliRivers wrote: post #196
PakG1 wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe that doesn't satisfy the definitions of the word value. Per https://www.dictionary.com/browse/value?s=t 1. relative worth, merit, or importance: the value of a college education; the value of a queen in chess. 2. monetary or material worth, as in commerce or trade: This piece of land has greatly increased in value. 3. the worth of something in terms of the amount of other things for which it can be exchange…

How about crows who, without having been trained to do so, collect items that they have no inherent need for and cannot eat - small pieces of metal and such - and then gift them to humans who feed them?

That's a much better example, gotta agree with that. Counterexample accepted.

Re: How America Uses Its Land

#202

Post by ianleeclark »

baybal2 wrote: post #150
Shivetya wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a better map would be to show how much land is in private hands versus held by Federal and State governments. I bet people would be shocked, see this article from 2016 [1] [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/01/federal...

I advise Americans to auction empty federal land holdings. having so much of land in state's property is wrong, and very uncapitalist.

Sell your kidneys, too. /s

Re: How America Uses Its Land

#203

Post by PakG1 »

beambot wrote: post #197
PakG1 wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe that doesn't satisfy the definitions of the word value. Per https://www.dictionary.com/browse/value?s=t 1. relative worth, merit, or importance: the value of a college education; the value of a queen in chess. 2. monetary or material worth, as in commerce or trade: This piece of land has greatly increased in value. 3. the worth of something in terms of the amount of other things for which it can be exchange…

Your cat example is perfect. Your cat clearly makes value judgements about food options by rejecting one type in favor of other offerings -- ones that may not even be immediately available. That you cannot speak 'cat' for her to explain why the sausage is not ideal is not her failure...

I'm not quite sure about that. The point is that because she rejects one food in favour of another shows a preference, but it does not necessarily show an understanding of exchangeable value. To say it shows she understands how to attribute value I think is jumping to conclusions. I'm not saying it's impossible, I'm saying let's not jump to conclusions about what's going on in her mind. She could say that she prefers cans of tuna. That doesn't mean she is able to think that one can of tuna is worth 200 sausage snack packs to her.

edit: I suppose we could claim that the cat is making judgements on value, but is unable to actually measure the value they're thinking due to complete lack of mathematical prowess. I guess it's possible in that way for cats to understand value, but not actually use or express it in any way, except for choosing whether to eat what's in front of them, due to lack of cognitive capacity. Perhaps I was guilty of thinking value judgements require mathematical understanding.

Re: How America Uses Its Land

#204

Post by freeflight »

rayiner wrote: post #48

The one third being used for cows is misleading. Pasture is basically the Bureau of Land Management’s default use for the vast swaths of federal land. It’s like “here is this land, you’re allowed to graze on it with a permit.” That doesn’t produce that many cows—it’s more about politics and the fact that much of the land is good for little else besides growing grass. The real land use from growing meat comes from the…

> much of the land is good for little else besides growing grass

I wonder how much about that could be changed with a large scale permaculture [0] approach?

There must be something useful able to grow there? From there you can maybe bootstrap a long-term ecological change of the region into something with lusher vegetation.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permaculture

Re: How America Uses Its Land

#205

Post by jaggederest »

zebrafish wrote: post #173
jaggederest wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure the Oregon high desert is really good at being high desert. Does the Mojave have to be useful to humans to be a valuable thing?

It does have to be useful to the owner of the land who is getting taxed on it and has some investment in the land.

Taxed? The BLM? It's an arm of the federal government. They don't pay taxes.

Re: How America Uses Its Land

#206

Post by aceInTheHole »

What a load of horeshit. Why do people buy such bullshit peddled by Forbes, Bloomberg, and other pseudo economists pretending to be knowledgeable. The methods by which America uses its land is irrelevant as long as OPEC prices and sells oil in dollars. Everyone has to sell us their stuff to get dollars to buy their oil. That means the American market is an illusion - we can always leverage the petrodollar to get whatever we want. We could practically put everyone on welfare tomorrow and we would still be fine as long as our military is stationed across the world. The only reason the government encourages everyone to work is because it would have a riot on its hands otherwise.

Re: How America Uses Its Land

#207

Post by [deleted] »

DennisP wrote: post #149
vfc1 wrote: post #134

Looking at that map, Between livestock pasture, feed and feed export it accounts for around 45% of the US. Food that we eat is only a small fraction. Isn’t this a huge waste of resources, and completely unsustainable? If we ate the produce directly instead of feeding it to cows and eating them, how many people could we feed? What about the gigantic consumption of water this implies? The link between this to global wa…

That's the main reason a lot of companies are working on lab-grown meat. If they manage to get it cheaper than cows, the impact will be enormous. In principle it should be possible, since it requires far less resources. The recent book Clean Meat covers the field in detail. Steaks will be a while, but for ground meat we're a lot closer than I'd expected. Dairy is even easier: no cells, just fats, sugars, and proteins…

[deleted]

Re: How America Uses Its Land

#208

Post by soared »

DennisP wrote: post #160
CPLX wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think its natural state wasn't grazing before? It's not like we invented grazing animals in a lab. The Great Plains were teeming with millions of buffalo before, and we have cattle on them now. Sure that's different but it's reasonable to note that a lot of this land looks and basically is pretty much the same as it was before modern ranching.

In a natural state, there are predators, and herds stay closely packed for protection. This is great for the land; the grass is only intermittently grazed, and has time to recover and grow deep roots. Natural pasture like this sequesters vast amounts of carbon. But mostly we kill off the predators. The livestock spreads all over and grazes continuously. The result is topsoil destruction and erosion. There are large a…

You think livestock is currently grazing on a significant percentage of america's landmass? The poster's point is that most of that land is /never/ touched by cattle.

Re: How America Uses Its Land

#209

Post by zhonwang »

aceInTheHole wrote: post #206

What a load of horeshit. Why do people buy such bullshit peddled by Forbes, Bloomberg, and other pseudo economists pretending to be knowledgeable. The methods by which America uses its land is irrelevant as long as OPEC prices and sells oil in dollars. Everyone has to sell us their stuff to get dollars to buy their oil. That means the American market is an illusion - we can always leverage the petrodollar to get what…

eh lolwut

Re: How America Uses Its Land

#210

Post by adbge »

justinwp wrote: post #176
rayiner wrote: post #48

The one third being used for cows is misleading. Pasture is basically the Bureau of Land Management’s default use for the vast swaths of federal land. It’s like “here is this land, you’re allowed to graze on it with a permit.” That doesn’t produce that many cows—it’s more about politics and the fact that much of the land is good for little else besides growing grass. The real land use from growing meat comes from the…

>Pasture is basically the Bureau of Land Management’s default use for the vast swaths of federal land. It’s like “here is this land, you’re allowed to graze on it with a permit.” That doesn’t produce that many cows... And yet it is an incredibly destructive use of land for so few cows. BLM land is often shrubby desert and is not able to cope with the impacts of the cows and remain a healthy ecosystem.

I have the opposite impression, that the grazing of cows on this land is beneficial as it mimics the role the buffalo formerly played.
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