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Comment by danem | Hacker News Reader

I'll take being able to feed the entire world's population more affordably than ever over the jobs of a small group of people in a rich country. This isn't to say the government should play no role in cushioning those affected by progress, but the progress has been undeniably good.

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Progress implies improvement. s/progress/change/

And how haven't things improved for the vast majority of people on Earth in regard to food security?

The dependence on fossil fuels goes so deep that we may end up having to choose between going hungry and overheating the planet.

Well, it's interesting, we now have obesity problems and other issues brought on by our very success. "Too much is always better than not enough." But too much still brings trade-offs.

Further, consider that, since the invention of artificial nitrogen fertilizer[1] we have been converting oil into humans[2], and population growth is the main driver of environmental impacts. Food security is an illusion: if anything ever interrupts the production of nitrogen fertilizer in a serious way billions of people will starve.

Jared Diamond called agriculture "The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race"[3]

We cannot judge the benefits of our civilization just yet.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process circa 1910

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population Look at the graph, notice that it curves up sharply circa 1925-1950.

[3] http://www.zo.utexas.edu/courses/THOC/Readings/Diamond_Worst...

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