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Monsanto gives up fight for genetically modified plants in Europe

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Re: Monsanto gives up fight for genetically modified plants in Europe

#91

Post by genwin »

glhaynes wrote: post #83
smsm42 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This article commits journalistic fraud - it attributes the fact that crops failed due to pests (which can happen to any crop, GM or not) solely to the fact that the crops were GM, and making a false impression that suicides were caused not by crop failures but by the fact that the crops were GM. They imply that "after" means "because", and that's the fraud. Of course, even GM crops can not protect from all causes of…

The whole thing is complicated ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farmers_suicides_in_India ) and the Daily Mail has a history of being an awful source.

The story confirms that the seeds must be purchased anew with each season.

Re: Monsanto gives up fight for genetically modified plants in Europe

#92

Post by glhaynes »

brent_noorda wrote: post #84
smsm42 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>> If GMO saves a million children it will next need to save ten million children Are you advocating population control by starving off the poor?

I think genwin's point is that we humans behave very stupidly whenever we find an innovation that allows for exponentially more of anything. We behave as if that massive growth will continue forever, and it never does, and usually leads to a crash worse than the solution. So if a new invention allows us to feed all 7 billion of us comfortably, instead of just feeding 7 billion of us comfortably we'll instead create 1…

But that's not what studying population shows us: when people have economic opportunities, education, and choices, they choose to have fewer children. So much so that we end up with the "problem" of the birth rate dropping below what's needed for replacement. It doesn't appear that population growth will ever reach the point that we'll have a problem producing enough food to feed everyone.

Re: Monsanto gives up fight for genetically modified plants in Europe

#93

Post by arebop »

mpyne wrote: post #17
ihsw wrote: post #4

The problem isn't GMO plants in Europe, it's the IP system surrounding them that's the problem. The massive upwelling of opposition to GMO's on the part of national governments isn't opposition to GMO, but instead it's opposition to Monsanto and the legal risks surrounding Monsanto's plants. Monsanto is predatory to the point of absurdity, and that is where opposition to GMO comes from. They throw lawyers at you unti…

What system of IP protections would be suitable to allow private industry to subsidize the expense of developing genetically-modified foods that are able to be planted over and over again after the first purchase? I suspect it will at least resemble patent protection, which at least does eventually end. It's a very old problem, with parallels with Unix (as I understand it you could duplicate the install media after p…

If genetics and biotech knowledge is a public good, then one alternative to IP would be to let the public i.e. governments fund the development of this knowledge.

I agree that buying seeds yearly seems pretty practical to me too, but alternatives are imaginable.

Re: Monsanto gives up fight for genetically modified plants in Europe

#94

Post by genwin »

smsm42 wrote: post #89
genwin wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I'm advocating not making the problem worse while ignoring its root cause.

It's not the choice here. Monsanto can not reform Indian or Chinese society into something else. The choice here is either we have better crops and people do not starve, or we do not have them and people starve. You say "people do not starve" is a bad choice. To me it looks like advocating starving off people as the means for population control.

No, the choice here is either we have better crops and people starve, or we do not have them and less people starve. brent_noorda explains above.

Re: Monsanto gives up fight for genetically modified plants in Europe

#95

Post by smsm42 »

api wrote: post #82
smsm42 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not go full scale and demand choice of not using the fruits of scary science at all? Demand every store to carry the products made of wild plants and hunted down wild animals only, with no products of selection (aka "genetically modified") at all? Why would mega-corporations force you to eat modern wheat, whose yields and chemical composition was completely modified by the corporate puppetmasters and whose produc…

Changing the subject. The subject is conservatism. A conservative is not someone who rejects all of a thing, but someone who is skeptical and suspicious of new things. As a result of many past issues with novel food products, people have become increasingly conservative about food. That doesn't mean that they reject all industrial or scientific agriculture, but they're likely to be suspicious of things that haven't b…

>>> The unknown chance is probably very small, but many of those health effects have astronomically high costs that possibly include death or permanent disability.

This is a very basic math error. If you multiply two unknown quantities, you can not assume anything about the result, even if one of them is very big. So basically what you're saying is "we have no idea if it's dangerous or not, and there's absolutely no evidence on any danger present, but if it were, you could DIE!!! so PANIC!!!" This would be an extremely irrational and stupid behavior.

>>> But the benefits are small to nonexistent, especially for your typical first-worlder who as I mentioned is drowning in food.

The problem is that it is very fragile. If the anti-science idiots ever prevail, the whole food abundance we have now could very well collapse pretty quickly - without science, malthusian scenarios are very real, and the people who predicted massive hunger by 2000s could very well be right if science did not intervene. If the idiots ever succeed in their war on science, first world would be in no way insulated from the disastrous effects of their victory. The whole abundance is the direct effect of what you call "food liberalism" and it is the only thing maintaining it.

>>> The same calculus underlies decisions to take out insurance policies

Not at all. Insurance companies have very accurate actuarial and statistical data, which they use in very accurate and specific ways to issue insurance. They never base their decisions on "multiply two unknown numbers, make assumptions on the result, panic". Your decision on buying the insurance may very well be irrational, but the insurance market itself is very rational.

>>> Statistically you'll probably be better off not buying insurance

It is not true, since you can not be better "statistically" - the fact that it didn't happen to 100000 people would not improve your situation if it happens to you. The whole function of insurance is to make statistics work for you, without it statistics would be just a useless trivia - just as the fact that if Bill Gates walks into a bar, the average income of the bar visitors jumps - is useless for anybody in the bar, because they get no money from it. Insurance is the way to get you some money from statistics.

Re: Monsanto gives up fight for genetically modified plants in Europe

#96

Post by [deleted] »

genwin wrote: post #91
glhaynes wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole thing is complicated ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farmers_suicides_in_India ) and the Daily Mail has a history of being an awful source.

The story confirms that the seeds must be purchased anew with each season.

[deleted]

Re: Monsanto gives up fight for genetically modified plants in Europe

#97

Post by smsm42 »

brent_noorda wrote: post #84
smsm42 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>> If GMO saves a million children it will next need to save ten million children Are you advocating population control by starving off the poor?

I think genwin's point is that we humans behave very stupidly whenever we find an innovation that allows for exponentially more of anything. We behave as if that massive growth will continue forever, and it never does, and usually leads to a crash worse than the solution. So if a new invention allows us to feed all 7 billion of us comfortably, instead of just feeding 7 billion of us comfortably we'll instead create 1…

I do not see factual basis for this claim - how Green revolution led to a crash that is worse than the solution? How modern medicine led to a crash? So far all malthusian prophecies had been reliably wrong. You can claim that sometime in the future it may happen that they still will be true - I can not really disprove that. But you can not say "it never does" - because so far it actually always did.

Re: Monsanto gives up fight for genetically modified plants in Europe

#98

Post by smsm42 »

genwin wrote: post #94
smsm42 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the choice here. Monsanto can not reform Indian or Chinese society into something else. The choice here is either we have better crops and people do not starve, or we do not have them and people starve. You say "people do not starve" is a bad choice. To me it looks like advocating starving off people as the means for population control.

No, the choice here is either we have better crops and people starve, or we do not have them and less people starve. brent_noorda explains above.

In this scenario "less people" is achieved by starving them off, so you're basically saying "we will starve people off and then there would be less people to starve, so it's actually a good thing". Seems to be like an extremely cynical piece of mental gymnastics.

Re: Monsanto gives up fight for genetically modified plants in Europe

#99

Post by genwin »

smsm42 wrote: post #98
genwin wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the choice here is either we have better crops and people starve, or we do not have them and less people starve. brent_noorda explains above.

In this scenario "less people" is achieved by starving them off, so you're basically saying "we will starve people off and then there would be less people to starve, so it's actually a good thing". Seems to be like an extremely cynical piece of mental gymnastics.

Nobody needs to starve when the root cause is focused on. You're basically saying "we will starve people off in the future, but save less people today, so it's actually a good thing". Of the two of us, I'm the one advocating that less people starve.

Re: Monsanto gives up fight for genetically modified plants in Europe

#100

Post by genwin »

glhaynes wrote: post #92
brent_noorda wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think genwin's point is that we humans behave very stupidly whenever we find an innovation that allows for exponentially more of anything. We behave as if that massive growth will continue forever, and it never does, and usually leads to a crash worse than the solution. So if a new invention allows us to feed all 7 billion of us comfortably, instead of just feeding 7 billion of us comfortably we'll instead create 1…

But that's not what studying population shows us: when people have economic opportunities, education, and choices, they choose to have fewer children. So much so that we end up with the "problem" of the birth rate dropping below what's needed for replacement. It doesn't appear that population growth will ever reach the point that we'll have a problem producing enough food to feed everyone.

Education is the key to amending the culture and religion that is the root cause of the problem.
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