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Comment by ta17711771 | Hacker News Reader

Nonsense.

Don't forget, things were more than livable a hundred years ago.

We don't need multinationals to feed us. It's a sham. We're just not making proper use of our available space/resources as individuals.

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This is a ridiculously myopic view of the world. A more efficient economy supports more people. This is inarguable.

A more efficient economy may also be more vulnerable. Food produced closer to home, with decentralised supply chains, may be more expensive, but are harder to disrupt on a large scale in the face of disaster.

So your solution is to, what, kill people until a less efficient economy works again?

I have no idea where you'd possibly get such a bizarre idea.

For one thing, I'm not offering a solution here, but an analysis. But if you want a solution, mine would be to save as many lives and reorganize the economy so less lives will be risked in the name of short-term profits.

Thank you. Everything is "efficient and streamlined" until the government says stay in your houses for six months...then we all suffer and some of us starve anyway.

We didn't have 7.6 billion people on the planet 100 years ago. 100 years ago in 1920, the world population was approximately 102 million. It's beyond naive to think that the systems from 100 years ago are capable of supporting the needs of 7.6 billion people. Besides the challenge of feeding people without rampant deforestation, you can say goodbye to most of modern medicine. The tech and knowledge won't go away, but the ability to deliver those goods and services will be greatly hindered.

This seems to be a feature, not a bug.

Yes, I'll go first, if it comes to that.

>Don't forget, things were more than livable a hundred years ago.

We also didn't have so many people a hundred years ago. Population increased but the land remained the same.

> Don't forget, things were more than livable a hundred years ago.

Well, you're writing off ~75% of the world population right there. So that's not a strong argument.

There was quite a lot of growing your own food at the time, true, but not barter.

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