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It’s an age of marvels

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Re: It’s an age of marvels

#311

Post by LouisSayers »

more_corn wrote: post #76
ertgbnm wrote: post #23

More than anything else, I think the modern American super market would blow the minds of anyone born before 1900 more than any other marvel that exists. You have blueberries for sale in January??? A variety box of tea from 7 different countries? A wall of spices? Pineapples? Packaging made from aluminum that is just thrown away? The bread isn't full of sand and grit? And it's sliced!!! All relatively affordable and…

And yet a lot of people go hungry in this age of marvels. We have enough homes to house all the homeless, we have agencies, money, social workers. And yet we somehow can’t seem to figure it out.

We, as society could easily "figure it out", but there are so many misaligned incentives for those that are in charge or in power.

Why build more housing when it would only work against the value of your own properties? Why give out free food that's "spoiling" when you risk getting sued for potential food poisoning?

Rules are made up in the name of "safety", and they pass because yes there's an element of truth, but what goes unsaid is that much of the time it's maintaining the status quo and blocking competition.

Re: It’s an age of marvels

#312

Post by VelesDude »

Retric wrote: post #88
bee_rider wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shipping blueberries around the world can’t be great for the environment.

Why not? Bulk shipping is really efficient, local farmers markets can easily be worse for the environment than going to a supermarket. A Semi moving 35 tons at 7 MPG is 25 times more fuel efficient vs a ford F-150 moving 1/2 ton at 20 MPG and trains or boats are even better. In the end fuel costs money so more efficient logistics is often good for the environment. Buying local makes a lot more sense if you live in a…

In a previous job, I did the math for shipping goods from Melbourne to Perth here in Australia via freight train. It worked out to be 1 litre of fuel per ton moved 500km. In imperial, that is 1 ton at 930MPG! That efficiency is mind blowing but it does rely on a lot of goods to be moved to gain that scale efficiency.

This is where the last mile problem comes in. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_mile_(transportation)

Re: It’s an age of marvels

#313

Post by marcosdumay »

taneq wrote: post #300
marcosdumay wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've also been in situations with live hyperinflation, like 10% per week. I don't know if it's because I have experienced it, but 10%/week inflation doesn't sound anything near as bleak as "basic necessities are only available every other month".

Give it six months and you’ll understand. Basic necessities are available for money, until they aren’t because money stops working. Edit: Six months of 10%/wk hyperinflation, I meant, not that some crazy hyperinflation is going to hit you personally within six months.

What are you talking about? Hyperinflation is the one I have experienced.

Re: It’s an age of marvels

#314

Post by creer »

mtalantikite wrote: post #87
CooCooCaCha wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But at what cost? How much should we sacrifice so that blueberries exist year round?

My problem with it is that not only are we paying the environmental cost to have berries all year round in the grocery store, it's that they're also just shit quality. Like not just passable, but are bitter and sour and not worth it at all. And it's sort of at the expense of really good, local berries when the real season hits. For example, I live in Brooklyn and the grocery stores last summer barely had any local bl…

We can both recognize that it's amazing AND that we can do better. Is the solution to stop carrying blueberries or to demand better?

Re: It’s an age of marvels

#315

Post by paulmd »

dingnuts wrote: post #294
marcosdumay wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've also been in situations with live hyperinflation, like 10% per week. I don't know if it's because I have experienced it, but 10%/week inflation doesn't sound anything near as bleak as "basic necessities are only available every other month".

maybe it's because cash is just one asset.. at least if goods exist, you can barter for them, if the cash isn't any good if the necessities just aren't there because, oh I don't know, you took the farms from the farmers because they owned land and owning property was deemed evil, and then the crops failed[1], then they just aren't available and it doesn't matter how much money or gold or any other commodity you might…

it's always odd when people latch onto that as an example, because the west has definitely had politically-induced holodomors caused by over-export of staple crops as well. classically, the irish potato famine comes to mind.

you can probably objectively calculate the relative importance of pre-capitalism serfs and post-capitalism serfs by volume of political discourse and online discussion and citations - the peasants are precious right up until we get them to adopt capitalism, and then they can starve to death after getting their hand ripped off in a mill while we ship all their potatoes off to india.

it's sort of like the abortion thing, where fetuses are the most precious thing in the universe until they're yeeted through a cervix and then they can starve to death on the street corner.

Anyway, it's just a weird argument in general. Authoritarian systems are bad, of course, but authoritarianism cuts across planned-vs-market economies, and the hallowed corporate boardroom is the epitome of central planning. What matters is not markets vs state charter, but being allowed to fail, and without it (say) Boeing is no different than the stuffiest soviet OKB, despite the fact boeing is a "free market" company. And when these arguments eventually devolve into people citing the dead nazis who died attempting to annex other countries as "victims of socialism", well...

and again, you can say "tu quoque" all you want, but if a practice is so widely accepted as to be unremarkable then it's unremarkable. And the victims of capitalism are never brought up quite as readily - there's no PR machine spinning for the dead irish peasants, or someone who dies of a treatable chronic illness, or who spends their life in an american gulag for a trivial offense, etc. We got plenty of authoritarianism here too, and it sucks here too, but that's not the angle people bring it up in... literally ever. It's just our elites winding us up against whatever elites our elites are opposed to this week.

The fact of the matter is that as automation displaces not just physical but also intellectual labor to greater and greater degrees, we are going to have to move away from the idea that people's intrinsic value is only what they contribute to the economy (market or state). Non-authoritarian socialism is pretty great and yes, I'll happily take the ticket to Norway and leave you alone.

Re: It’s an age of marvels

#316

Post by creer »

odiroot wrote: post #66
ertgbnm wrote: post #23

More than anything else, I think the modern American super market would blow the minds of anyone born before 1900 more than any other marvel that exists. You have blueberries for sale in January??? A variety box of tea from 7 different countries? A wall of spices? Pineapples? Packaging made from aluminum that is just thrown away? The bread isn't full of sand and grit? And it's sliced!!! All relatively affordable and…

> More than anything else, I think the modern American super market would blow the minds of anyone born before 1900 more than any other marvel that exists. Modern American supermarket would blow the minds of anyone from the Warsaw Pact countries ;), up until probably mid 1990's.

Still current for some countries: 2 weeks ago, a shopper clearly confused half to death barely manages to make themselves understood to me in 3 words of english: They are asking what is the price of the bag of oranges.

Because there were 3 different prices on that price tag. The price, the one if you have the card, the one if you have the app or some other deep magic. (They were not stupid - presumably they could understand on their own the additional price per unit - but most likely not which price this was based on and why...) What a world we live in /s!

Re: It’s an age of marvels

#317

Post by nradov »

VelesDude wrote: post #310
pfdietz wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was then combined with the Green Revolution, where crops were modified to truly take advantage of abundant artificial fertilizer. Before that, too much nitrogen would make wheat (for example) grow so tall and top heavy it would fall over, reducing yield in a process called "lodging". The fact that would amaze Franklin is that only about 1% of Americans are farmers.

Franklin would also be puzzled that there would be many people that are nutrient deficient despite calorie abundance.

It was actually common in Franklin's time for poor people with limited diets (mainly a single grain crop) to suffer from nutritional deficiencies despite getting adequate calories. Think of conditions like pellagra, goiter, anemia, etc. Of course they didn't fully understand the root causes.

Re: It’s an age of marvels

#318

Post by bigstrat2003 »

orwin wrote: post #119
criddell wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's like saying you don't like American beer because you tried Bud Light, Coors Light, and Miller Lite and didn't like any of them. There are a lot of great chocolate makers in the US.

And cheese too! but you will hardly find good cheesemaker at a piggy wiggly (or even in SF more reputable supermarkets). The best i had was one from Hungtinton's Farmer market (WV), easily a top4-top3 goat cheese.

As someone from Wisconsin, I can say with certainly that you can in fact get great cheese at Piggly Wiggly. I have no idea if they exist in other states though, and if they do the cheese is no doubt worse.

Re: It’s an age of marvels

#319

Post by bmitc »

My threshold for marvel is much higher. I feel we're in an age of un-marvels. Nearly every technological "improvement" feels worse than the thing it replaced. I'm not even that old, but things were once much, much more simple before the Internet controlled us all. Except when it comes to healthcare related advances, I feel we'd be much better off without all this technology we've slaved ourselves to.

Re: It’s an age of marvels

#320

Post by bmitc »

ertgbnm wrote: post #23

More than anything else, I think the modern American super market would blow the minds of anyone born before 1900 more than any other marvel that exists. You have blueberries for sale in January??? A variety box of tea from 7 different countries? A wall of spices? Pineapples? Packaging made from aluminum that is just thrown away? The bread isn't full of sand and grit? And it's sliced!!! All relatively affordable and…

I think supermarkets hide a bit of a scary thought though. It sends this signal as food always being available, but it sits atop a very tightly "balanced" supply chain that is quite fragile. A few major supply chain disruptions and food scarcity becomes real very fast (a few days at most).
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