51–60 of 284 posts
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Yes, cannot emphasize this enough. Farming is an industry, and we have take it seriously as one and stop romanticizing it. Of course, the irony is that now we romanticize industry too.
The workplace is becoming increasingly abstract. I wonder if there'll be a time when cubicles and spreadsheets become an object of nostalgia or romantization.
Farming is somehow still regarded as being some mom-and-pop heartland thing rather than the highly optimized manufacturing operation it has been for decades. Direct farm employment is now just 1.2% of the population. It was 40% in 1900. The special treatments farms and farmers get is an outdated relic kept alive by the electoral college.
The country wouldn't even exist without the electoral college. It was pivotal in uniting the states under a federal government, and is working as intended. Maybe the USA should be abandoned, and all ties between the states renegotiated, but you shouldn't be able to unilaterally change the terms of the deal.
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If you carpool for money, you're a taxi. And if you take a friend on your plane, and he gives you x€ afterwards for gas money, how is that illegal? I'm sure you're right about the compliance thing in general, but I don't get your example.
It's actually an FAA regulation. If you are not a licensed commercial pilot, there are extremely strict rules on how and when you can accept ANY money for flying, use of an airplane, etc. Actually, even if you are a licensed commercial pilot, there are still strict rules around payment. You can be paid for your skill as a pilot, but you cannot, e.g. charge for giving rides in your personal airplane.
While that sounds like a bad rule when I first read it, I smell Chesterton's fence here. I'd like to understand why that regulation was written before getting rid of it.
How about the US government stop subsidizing farmers? Let them fend for themselves like any other business.
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America just lives under capitalism.
There are plenty of countries that don't like capitalism. If you don't like it you can move to one of those. You can even go somewhere like the UK if you don't want to give up the US's anglo/protestant culture.
I also don't live in the US.
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If the price of food goes up, the public revolts. Not without a good reason honestly. I think you could definitely move the subsidies around, but subsidizing food is a basic good idea for any state really.
The US government also has a program of subsidizing/mandating biofuels that raise prices of both food and fuel for supposed environmental and energy security reasons that mostly don't pass a sniff test.
No, I don't love biofuels either. but it's not entirely a bad idea.
Farming is somehow still regarded as being some mom-and-pop heartland thing rather than the highly optimized manufacturing operation it has been for decades. Direct farm employment is now just 1.2% of the population. It was 40% in 1900. The special treatments farms and farmers get is an outdated relic kept alive by the electoral college.
And yet, farmers are a vocal and critical political bloc in every other EU country, too.
Farming is just important. Not as much because it employs a large portion of the population, but because it keeps a large portion of the population alive. It is the original industry that's "too big to fail" - if you let it, you get famine.
Farming is somehow still regarded as being some mom-and-pop heartland thing rather than the highly optimized manufacturing operation it has been for decades. Direct farm employment is now just 1.2% of the population. It was 40% in 1900. The special treatments farms and farmers get is an outdated relic kept alive by the electoral college.
Yes, cannot emphasize this enough. Farming is an industry, and we have take it seriously as one and stop romanticizing it. Of course, the irony is that now we romanticize industry too.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's actually an FAA regulation. If you are not a licensed commercial pilot, there are extremely strict rules on how and when you can accept ANY money for flying, use of an airplane, etc. Actually, even if you are a licensed commercial pilot, there are still strict rules around payment. You can be paid for your skill as a pilot, but you cannot, e.g. charge for giving rides in your personal airplane.
> Actually, even if you are a licensed commercial pilot, there are still strict rules around payment. You can be paid for your skill as a pilot, but you cannot, e.g. charge for giving rides in your personal airplane. While that sounds like a bad rule when I first read it, I smell Chesterton's fence here. I'd like to understand why that regulation was written before getting rid of it.
You can take your friend for a spin in your plane if you want, or go screw around and kill yourself, but you cannot "hold out" your operation as an air taxi or airline to the general public, and you can't make money off of it in any situation.
A commercial pilot has to undergo much more training in operating an aircraft safely. This means the FAA allows them to get paid to be a pilot - they could be hired to fly someone around in that person's plane. But the commercial license does not really train them in running a safe airline, so the FAA does not allow them to use their own plane to run an airline.
EDIT: To word it differently, the opportunity to get paid increases the likelihood that someone will push limits or take unsafe risks. If you aren't under pressure to make your paycheck, you're less likely to take your passengers into marginal weather. (One of the most dangerous occupations in aviation is medivac/aviation EMS. There, the pressure isn't generally monetary but moral: you want to help a sick patient, so you take more risks.)