Comment by oldandtired | Hacker News Reader

Comment by oldandtired | Hacker News Reader

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Like a lot of things, soil infertility is a symptom of a much larger societal problem. Within society, there are many different competing groups that have "the answer". Progressives want a specific list, conservatives want another list, city dwellers want a list (irrespective of being progressive or conservative), country dwellers want another, business owners want their own list, workers want another, government wants a list, law enforcement wants one, radicals want one, etc., stc., etc.

All of these lists of wants are at cross purposes. All of it is based on self-interest. Very little of it is based on a wider responsibility for all citizens and the country that supports them.

This won't change as people won't give up on their list of wants. The attitude of "us and them" just reinforces the basic problems. Is there a solution? Most certainly. But it requires a change in the basic attitudes of every citizen and most will object to having to face who and what they are.

When a society is focus on "rights" instead of responsibilities then the society loses its ability to think in the large. When a government is focussed on it continuation and power it loses sight of its responsibility to build society.

There is no short term solution that is a quick fix. In the case of America, it is heading down the path of civil war and devastation because pretty well every level in the American society is in the mindset of "them and us". This is obvious to anyone who opens their eyes. Law enforcement has forgotten that they are there to serve and protect the citizenry and not themselves. Government is self-serving. Corporations are treating their customers as slaves and a resource to control. The general population is focussed on their own little problems of day to day self-gratification.

I'd even say the absence of a socially constructed responsibility to sacrifice and conform for the sake of tradition and stability are what make us uniquely American, and I'm damn proud of it.

Responsibility, sacrifice, conformity, keeping your head down, deferring to your betters on questions of government policy and administration... these features have been dominant in human societies across the globe and over millennia. Maybe because it's the only enduring architecture. Still, I have to admire the American experiment in saying "fuck all that."

That is interesting that you brought up conforming to something. I didn't. Sacrifice is a mindset of putting others ahead of yourself (this is essential in having a well-formed family) for the greater good of those around you.

This attitude of Americans that you are presenting is probably the biggest cause for your downfall. The participants in the formation of your nation (the creators of your constitution) recognised the fact that sacrifice is necessary and that being responsible is essential for the well-being of society.

Responsibility and sacrifice do not have to be associated with conformity and keeping your head down. Nor do they have to be associated with deferring to your betters,

You have a very poor understanding of what responsibility and sacrifice actually mean if you associate them with the latter characteristics.

The American self-image is very much a "holier than thou" mindset and has engendered a response such that any American is to be considered a useless arrogant busy-body who has little or no understanding of anything.

Considering that, as a nation, American has a foundation in its constitution that surpasses pretty much every other nation, American falls to the bottom of nations in which justice, mercy and freedom exist.

I have dealt with Americans that I have thought very highly of. Unfortunately, these have been the very small minority. The rest have been inattentive, ignorant, bombastic, arrogant know-it-alls who have failed to show any desire to actually be part of the solution. They have acted in every way to be a part of (if not all of) the problem.

The inherent problems in American society, the lack of justice, of mercy and of freedom, are a result of this attitude. In many ways, America today is no different to China and Russia or any other tin-pot country around the world.

If Americans actually took a serious interest in the American constitution and actively took part in building their society, we might actually find something worthwhile to emulate. American has become a place that many have no interest in ever visiting because it has no justice, no mercy and certainly no freedom.

Your last sentence intrigues me. You do know that hyperbole is lies, right? All three of those things exist in America.

Let's take Chelsea Manning as an example, shall we? She broke the law and went to jail. Justice was served. Obama commuted her sentence. She was shown mercy. Now she is no longer incarcerated. She has freedom.

I could go on for days listing examples, but I need only list the one to counter absolutist statements.

There are many honest reasons to complain about America. I'm not sure why you'd go that route.

Let's look at the illegal activities of the American government and its organisations that led to the Manning revelations, shall we? Committed a public service for the citizenry of America (irrespective of any "laws" that may have been broken - demonstrated the illegal activities of the government). Justice was not served as the government perpetrators were never sent to prison - this included POTUS. Mercy was only shown as it was politically necessary.

You government approves of and participates in the confiscation of money and goods from people who are never charged with any crime. What do they call this - civil forfeiture?

When a government breaks its own constitution and laws or makes laws that allow some activity to be legal only for the government but prisonable for the citizenry, then you have a very serious problem. Killing its own citizens, stealing from its own citizens, treating its own citizens as criminals first - these go on for page after page after page. There is no justice, no mercy and no freedom in America today. So it's not hyperbole, it's the reality of what America has become.

So now you've moved the goalposts. You went from no to some.

Yes, that is hyperbole. America has faults, plenty of them in fact. But, I gave examples of all three of the things you claimed we had none of.

And yes, yes we do have faults. Man, have we got faults. We aren't all bad or in truly dire straights. We do have Nazis marching in the streets but, in the US, they are free to do so - and we are free to counter march. Not only are we free to do so, we have the liberty to do so.

Bingo. The point of our system is to protect the rights of the individual over the commons. Disagree with the premise if you want but the system is designed to allow dissent and uncomfortable speech because time and time again governments and people have shown they are incapable of just regulation of these topics.

I'm sorry for the delayed response but I've been pondering how to reply in a constructive and positive manner.

I came up with this:

I'm not sure how to accurately relay that to people such as the person I was responding to. For some reason, they have this really biased view of America. Don't get me wrong, America has its faults.

However, to say that justice, mercy, and freedom don't exist here? Then, they compound it by saying it's not hyperbole - meaning they really believe that?

I wish I were better at communicating. My verbosity indicates my inability. All of those things exist in America - I can see them daily. It's not like I'm a huge nationalist - and I've traveled across the globe.

I'm not sure how one gets to be that biased or what information they're using to draw those conclusions. I don't wish them ill, I feel sorry for them. They're obviously being fed propaganda - and they believe it as gospel. They remind me (and this isn't very nice) of a brainwashed cult member.

I have no solution, or even a path to find a solution. America has lots and lots of things wrong with it. But the three they listed certainly do exist and, while they could improve, to say there is none of any of them is just a sign that they're consuming some very biased media - or, perhaps, mentally ill. I'd like to think it's harmless, but I see those ideas crop up here and there. It's not frequent, but often enough to where I've noticed it.

Ah well... I'll mull it over some more.

Let's look at justice. When the government (at all levels) and the various "law enforcement" can just steal what you have, with little recourse for the citizen, when they do the "plea deals" by actively asking for punishments far in excess of the crime and freely able to outright lie to people, when they justify killing citizens and visitors because of fear (and actively turning on members of the LEO's who don't kill but try to talk down situations), when they make enough laws that ensure that the general citizenry inadvertently become felons, when the security agencies blatantly lie to those who have oversight and break all the laws that are in place to control them, all of this is "justice"?

Let's look at mercy. When prosecutors and Law enforcement are only interested in numbers jailed (irrespective of the level of the crime), when citizens are treated as dangerous and so cannot travel with no indications of what or why the citizens are treated as the enemy, when extra-judicial murders are initiated because of blah, blah, blah, when lives are destroyed because of government embarrassment, there's mercy.

Let's look at freedom. When ICE and Homeland Security treat citizens as serfs and that the constitution free-zone as existing from the border to hundreds of miles inland, when the LEO's consider everyone to be a criminal because of the "war on drugs" and the "war on terror" and every other "war on", this is freedom?

Many of the citizens of America are to be liken to the frog living in slowly heating water. They can't see the danger they are in and the losses of justice, mercy and freedom that have happened.

I live in a nation that has no such constitutional protections. My own nation is going downhill fast, but America is leading the charge to perdition and we are just following in its footsteps.

When push comes to shove, America is seen as a demon amongst nations for its lack of justice, mercy and freedom. When allied nations to America are officially telling their own citizens not to go there because of the fundamental problems in America, it behooves all to start analysing what is going on. From an external POV, your popular choices for president were a globalist murderer or isolationist incompetent. Neither were going to do any good for your nation. But, what the heck, you have made your bed and you are sleeping in it now. The proof of the pudding will be the next couple of years and unless there is a fundamental change in the grass roots citizens, I expect America to head further downhill at an even faster rate than it is currently undergoing.

So back to my original comment, soil fertility is a symptom of the the underlying problems in America. No justice, no mercy, no freedom, no responsibility, no sacrifice.

You write:

> Responsibility and sacrifice do not have to be associated with conformity and keeping your head down. Nor do they have to be associated with deferring to your betters

Interestingly, Manning is a good example of exactly that. Even better would be Snowden, who took extra care to not do any harm to innocent people who could be endangered by the leaks.

>Considering that, as a nation, American has a foundation in its constitution that surpasses pretty much every other nation

What? No! America's constitution was designed to establish a "natural aristocracy" of major landowners! Our much-vaunted First Amendment never stopped them from putting Eugene Debs in jail, you know.

>Considering that, as a nation, American has a foundation in its constitution that surpasses pretty much every other nation

It's strange that you claim that; as the American Constitution ranks right at the bottom in terms of forcing social accountability. It's an outdated document that allows individuals to get away with everything a reasonable society has at least some claim to punish or direct, and it's something that has held American social progress back. No hate speech laws, extensive rights against self-incrimination, no "right to be forgotten", no socialized medicine, very few equality-of-outcome initiatives, and the like.

And as a result, you've correctly noted that the American commons is horribly polluted and everyone acts as if they were a (little) king.

>Responsibility and sacrifice do not have to be associated with conformity and keeping your head down.

Yes they do- they're inextricably linked. Let's take the example of a father providing for his children- given the choice of a risky venture vs. a more stable position at another company, the choice is now to prevent loss rather than obtain gain. So we see that as responsibility increases, so does the requirement to not rock the boat, so to speak. Never change a running system.

Now let's extrapolate that attitude to individuals in a society. The more that individual feels beholden to it, the more they'll limit risky action in favor of stability. Their window of tolerable risk shrinks- and while they're very unlikely to do anything that costs that society, they're also unlikely to make it prosper. And as a result, any (read: above-average) member of the society has already checked out because even if they have something that will work, it's less likely they'll find others willing to risk what little individual time/capital they have on it (and it's not like they'll ever see a meaningful reward for that risk either as the society feels entitled to most of it).

So either you have a society in which individuals feel beholden to it, in which case you get something that's pretty good for everyone but can't properly reward the people who end up doing most of the work (it's more important than usual that those people believe they owe society something); or you don't, in which case the poor get barely-passable treatment but being objectively useful tends to bring big rewards (and incentivizes advancing the capabilities of the human race).

You can't both encourage deference to society and thinking outside of that society's standards at the same time- you either pick one or the other and live with the benefits and detriments. It'd sure be nice to have both, but you can't beat human nature or reality.

>Responsibility and sacrifice do not have to be associated with conformity and keeping your head down.

>Yes they do- they're inextricably linked.

I see this in a different light. When you conform to American ideals, as they exist today, you are conforming to the celebration of the self and the celebration of consumerism, which are both at odds with responsibility and sacrifice.

A desire to help people at your own loss does not equate to conformity. If it did, the world would be a much better place, because we know that people have no problem conforming.

You've hit the problem on its head, but the solution is not to try and change people's behaviour on a large scale, but to incentivise based on the self-interest you've mentioned.

From the consumers perspective, there is little indication as to the quality of soil something has been grown in. But there must be an effect on the plant itself if it is grown in poor soil in the form of lower macro, trace minerals and other indicators of plant health detectable within the plant.

Like the organic standards that cover production methods, we need an opt-in food quality standard. If plants were tested after production for indicators of plant health and labels could be put on vegetables indicating quality. Self-interest of the consumers buying higher quality foods would quickly incentivise farmers into increasing plant quality, which in turn will correct our soil.

I grew up in an area in which the major crop was sugar cane. Some years ago (15 or so), I was talking to my father about the fertility of the soil in the area.

He passed onto me a conversation he had had with one of his farmer friends. He was told that the soil was totally infertile and was only there to hold up the cane. All nutrients came from fertiliser that they put into the soil.

In this case, the results is sugar which you can't tell how good the plant is.

There have been a number of farmers over the years in that area who did crop rotation and field resting. But they were far and few between. In other areas, they are using recycling methods to put organic matter back into their fields. However, this is not common, even though there are groups of farmers who see the benefit of these processes for themselves and the surrounding environment.

Part of an education process that we undertake with our young people is for them to understand where food comes from, including when we have the opportunity to teach them gardening (vegetables), animal husbandry and the killing, dressing and butchering of animals for food (sheep and goats).

Some take the lessons well, some do not. But they do start to understand where their food comes from.

Too many people have no idea of what is needed to produce the food they consume. No idea.

Testing foods can be quite simple. The taste of good quality well grown food (meat, vegetables, fruit, milk, eggs, etc.) is quite different to those that are grown in the common farming practices of today.

I am currently enjoying eating 7-8 year old mutton and it is better than the best spring lamb that I have had. They ate and they wandered and were not stressed.

>I am currently enjoying eating 7-8 year old mutton and it is better than the best spring lamb that I have had.

Where do you get this?

The sheep were originally given to me by people who just wanted to get rid of them, I still have a goat that was originally intended for someone else and I had been asked if I could look after it for a few weeks. The person who was to receive it moved into a nursing home and it was subsequently given to me. My 6 year old granddaughter has been keen to be involved with doing the goat, which I'll be doing later. If the weather is still cold when I get back from visiting my parents, I'll be looking at doing it then. In the meantime, he will be fattened up as much as possible.

I have 2 acres just on the edge of town and for many years, we have run some level of stock on it. All of the various beasts have ended up in my freezer. The last lot I killed, dressed and butchered myself (with the help of a number of young people) out of necessity as no butcher would come in for just 3 sheep.

As the sheep had little need to run anywhere and had luscious feed, they turned out to be so tender. I did try to source some more via the local butchers, but found that would be extremely expensive as most of the sheep are culled for lamb and not kept for wool in our region.

If you ask around, you might find some appropriate beasts that you can get cheaply (whether that be steers, goat or sheep). Though you may find getting them to the abattoir and then to the butcher somewhat expensive.

"If plants were tested after production for indicators of plant health and labels could be put on vegetables indicating quality"

It's a fine idea until Monsanto, et al., find a way to subvert the standards and bend them into an anticompetitive regulatory mote via government lobbying.

What we really need, as Step Zero in any plan for wholescale reformation of American society, is to reimpose and reinforce campaign finance restrictions and sever the direct financial ties between our big corporations and the politicians who serve them.

Some readers may choose to see this as a line item on the progressive wish list. I see it as a necessary precondition to any attempted societal change whatsoever. Right now, the very heart of our issue is that the government no longer serves the people of this country; it serves moneyed interests, nakedly and shamelessly.

Obligatory Star Trek reference: America has become Ferenginar. We think we're the Federation, but we're headed down the wrong path for that. We are effectively an oligarchy at this point, heading in the direction of totally dysfunctional kleptocracy. The "us vs them" mindset tearing us all apart right now is a symptom of political polarization, which the lobbyists would consider to be a feature and not a bug. Until our voices matter to politicians more than David and Charles Koch's billions, we're fucked. Nothing will change, and anything we try to change will be immediately corrupted and turned against us. The fox bought the whole damned henhouse.

> reimpose and reinforce campaign finance restrictions and sever the direct financial ties between our big corporations and the politicians who serve them.

I don't disagree, but it seems to me that it is only possible to legislate such a thing when the problem such legislation would solve doesn't exist.

I tend to prefer even less likely solutions, such as term limits, or diffusion and decentralization of one or both of the legislative bodies, but these solutions run up against the same problem as campaign finance reform - the people with the power to enact the change are the ones who benefit most from the status quo.

> From the consumers perspective, there is little indication as to the quality of soil something has been grown in. But there must be an effect on the plant itself if it is grown in poor soil in the form of lower macro, trace minerals and other indicators of plant health detectable within the plant.

The thing with putting everything in complex chains of economy is that important indicators can be easily masked, and stay invisible until it's too late. In this case, low soil quality will primarily affect yield. Which, between farming methods, subsidies, futures and other forms of economic magic, is completely invisible to the customer.

> You've hit the problem on its head, but the solution is not to try and change people's behaviour on a large scale, but to incentivise based on the self-interest you've mentioned.

Indeed. Unfortunately, the same problems extend on the meta-level. You need to incentivize important actors to incentivize people, based on the formers' self-interest. Like:

> If plants were tested after production for indicators of plant health and labels could be put on vegetables indicating quality

Try doing that, and you'll find plenty of opposition from actors who earn money on production not being evaluated for quality. Also, even if you set this up, you'll likely face an increase in food costs for the transition period in which the producers readjust. And that is a political no-go.

> Try doing that, and you'll find plenty of opposition from actors who earn money on production not being evaluated for quality. Also, even if you set this up, you'll likely face an increase in food costs for the transition period in which the producers readjust. And that is a political no-go.

It has to start the same way organic food did - As a choice - Not something that is done across the board. That would never work for some of the reasons you've stated.

Higher quality food would naturally be more expensive, there's no way around that. That cost needs to be passed on to the consumer and then the consumer can decide price vs likely better taste and higher nutrition quality.

I think to do this, one will need to heavily lean on regulatory support. In particular, law would be needed to force companies to provide accurate information about food quality, content and production process. Otherwise it'll end up exactly like organic food did - a mostly bullshit fad propagated by misinforming customers. I mean, lots of people are still willing to spend more money for better food, but the food needs to actually be verifiably better, not just differently marketed.

Or maybe we could just reduce or eliminate corn subsidies.

Where then would we get all the corn we need to dilute our gasoline with?

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