Looming food shortages is the next ‘slow-moving disaster’ to hit world | Hacker News Reader

Looming food shortages is the next ‘slow-moving disaster’ to hit world

nypost.com

75 pointsBostonian116 comments

I've been reading Matt Stoller over the last couple of years, discussing how weak anti-trust enforcement is leading to consolidation and concentration in the market and a reliance on foreign exports in the name of efficiency. Mostly he focuses on the US but I suspect that similar things are happening in the UK. It leads to a fragile supply chain rife with bottlenecks and "just in time" links, overly reliant on imports and not robust to unexpected events like COVID or war in Europe.

If you're interested here is some further reading:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/oct/01/americ...

https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/national-champs-or-nation...

https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/counterfeit-capitalism-wh...

That may be, but the massive corn subsidies in the US maybe can finally ful-fill their original purpose - protect against starvation in case of war.

Or we could just... make sure people don't starve? Subsidizing corn is the worst, least direct way to do that. People don't need more high fructose corn syrup and most of that corn is going to feed or ethanol anyways.

US produces enough raw food to satiate 10 billion people. The cost is not the issue

The argument in favour of subsidies is not to generally reduce the cost to the consumer, it is to deliberately encourage overproduction most of the time so that even in bad years you’re still OK.

I don’t have the domain knowledge to know if this is or isn’t the reality of any actual subsidy that really exists, all I can say is that the argument seems plausible.

Grain reserves store grain in adequate quality for at least a year so subsidizing massive overproduction doesn't make a lot of sense if a bad year is the only concern. IMO a lot of food security policy around overproduction is related to poverty, domestic hunger and international starvation in normal years.

(Driving prices down is making food a smaller percentage of the economy, making it more affordable directly to people in poverty and easier to support food programs from charity/tax.)

Stores don't help if someone else is willing to pay more for the grain as infamously demonstrated in famines in productive regions (Irish Potato Famine and Holodomor).

Just reserves lead to speculation dynamics in shortages. There is always an expectation of the reserve running out and panics turn it self-fuffilling as infamously demonstrated by supply chain issues or possibility of snowfall. Increased production kills the expected future price.

You seem to be talking about long term underproduction.

In the Irish case, the subsistence farmers would have been devastated by a US overproduction even before a famine, similar to subsistence farmers in Africa and India today.

Holodomor includes perpetual mismanagement and a political decision not to accept food help or really do anything. No amount of overproduction before Stalin would have prevented food being seized and then rotting in transit.

Certainly it's the case that you need at least enough overproduction to drive prices down marginally and to restock a reserve if it is actually used, and make speculation not a sure bet.. I think current subsidies go beyond that and arguably don't work because all that overproduction drove innovations in making food fungible to energy (i.e. as ethenol) and energy is now a more retainable wealth as the major input to proof of work.

Subsidized corn has a massive effect on decreasing food prices. People may not need high fructose corn syrup, but they need food and a lot of food has corn syrup in it. Cheaper feed leads to cheaper meat. Cheaper ethanol leads to cheaper fuel which makes everything a little less expensive.

I can't vouch for corn subsidies being the best way to lower prices, but it's certainly a powerful lever that decreases food prices across the board.

> a lot of food has corn syrup in it

Trash food.

> Cheaper feed leads to cheaper meat.

Great, don't eat meat. It's incredibly expensive, and not just monetarily.

If we're facing a food shortage, corn seems like a really bad place to dump money.

In terms of calories per acre, corn is absolutely king. Chickens and pigs turn corn calories into meat calories at a ratio unreasonably close to 1:1, and feeding people without meat is very difficult.

You have it backwards. Feeding people with meat is difficult.

This is why meat is expensive and why people in less developed countries can't afford as much meat as Americans.

Cow meat is expensive. Chicken costs about as much as potatoes.

How close do numbers need to be as much and what country?

But I also imagine it can't be cheaper to buy X food and feed it to chicken to then eat the chicken compared to just eating X food.

https://www.globalproductprices.com/Thailand/

I, for one, would much rather have chicken than chicken feed.

"Making sure people don't starve" means there has to be food. That doesn't just happen; someone has to grow it. The corn subsidy isn't about high fructose corn syrup, not really. It's fundamentally about growing more food than we need, so that, if something bad happens, we still have enough.

> US produces enough raw food to satiate 10 billion people.

I'm skeptical of that claim. Source?

I would also like to see that estimate it seems close, but not quite enough.

“Overall production of corn in the U.S. was 15.1 billion bushels for 2021“ * 56 lb per Bushel / 10 billion people = 84.6 lb of corn per person is about 23% of the minimum calories needed per year. But corn is about 37% of all crop land.

Fishing, cattle on grassland, and hunting etc might bump that a little, but ~5 billion seems like a better theoretical estimate and presumably lower in practice.

I wonder how much of our government's deep embrace of corn subsidies might have something to do with the fact that the Iowa Caucuses play such an outsized impact on our presidential elections. That, and how the Midwest has become more and more of a purple battleground region. I know it's not the biggest factor, but I can't help but think it has something to do with it.

I always assumed as much. Constant fear of nuclear war is not what has made the corn subsidies constant.

I get that you're being a bit glib, but this sort of thinking is pervasive and bothersome so I'll choose to take it seriously.

'make people not starve' is a laudable _goal_. It's a state of the work we want to reach. 'Subsidize corn farming' is a _policy_, it's an intervention that has all sorts of intended and unintended effects on the state of the world. Under that policy, fewer people starve, but also there's more HFCS, some farmers make more money than the would, some make less in inequitable ways, etc.

Regardless, if one thinks a policy isn't doing a good job achieving its intended goal, one can't just suggest achieving the goal as an alternative. If it was trivially attainable, why do we have government intervention and policies in pursuit of it?

One has to articulate an alternative policy, or at least acknowledge that an alternative is necessary. Why, after all, is it the case that the US produces as much food as it does. Is it in spite of the prevailing farm policy?

</rant>

> One has to articulate an alternative policy

Food stamps are the best way to ensure people don't starve, not specific crop subsidies.

That helps feed people who can't afford food, but doesn't make food available. Subsidies are insurance for farming risk, you can't use stamps on food they didn't grow.

> but doesn't make food available

Yes it does. If people spend more money on food, food prices will go up, and more food will be grown.

It could make food available later. That is retroactive though, to use the stamp the food has to exist in the first place. It also doesn't relieve any risk to the farmer which is the point of the subsidy.

Cash is probably better than food stamps. Food stamps prevent you from directly buying what you actually need/want, but it doesn't prevent you from buying groceries for strangers and trading those groceries for less money so you can actually buy what you need/want. The result is that the same amount of money spent on providing assistance as food stamps doesn't provide as much benefit to the recipients as the cash equivalent. And this doesn't even include the costs of maintaining the infrastructure (including time wasted writing laws that restrict what food you can use food stamps for) required to make food stamps work.

There are also lifestyle shifts that can be made that are far less severe than starvation, like the Woodrow Wilson's WW1 proclamation for meatless Tuesdays and one meatless meal every day [1]. That would reduce pressure on supplies of basic cereal grains.

It will also be interesting (if it happens) to see how substitutable other cereal grains are for wheat. One impact of globalization is that people are far less provincial in what they will eat than they used to be, so they could substitute more rice for wheat, for example.

The thing there is no substitute for today is fertilizer, which is used at similar rates by all 3 main stable cereal crops, but rice and corn produce several times more calories per hectare than wheat [2]

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meatless_Monday#History

2. https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/in-defense-of-...

With some variance across cultivars, wheat has 50% more protein than maize and nearly double the protein of rice.

Further, "feed corn" (maize) isn't really suitable for humans. Best way to turn it into calories for human consumption is to feed it to egglayers, after that it's broilers, then dairy cattle, then swine and beef cattle.

Finally, changing a crop mixture is something that has a long lead time. Got to sow the fields a season in advance, at least. Rising price of wheat means that some of the land used for maize for this season will be wheat for next harvest. Market will take care of that. Won't have any food shortages in the USA, but could be rough in less agriculturally-capable parts of the world.

Why it isn't suitable for humans? To me it seems perfectly fine.

It is certainly not the best food source, but it a subsistence.

During famines in Finland people used to eat even bark, especially inner bark.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bark_bread

Can't just mill it and eat it as you can with wheat. Needs to be post-processed extensively with alkaline water, plus what the threshers and mills turn out for ethanol and feed ain't what you'd want to make tacos in the first place.

Plus, maize is only okay in the diet, low in proteins and nutrients compared to wheat, it really needs some pulses alongside if you want good nutrition, so pulses would need to be planted a bit more or soy processing would have to shift over from feed to tofu alongside. Historical records show pre-Columbian folks in the maize empires (Aztec, Incas) were a bit malnourished compared to their wheat-eating European and meat-hunting North American counterparts. In the modern day, animals (eggs, poultry, dairy, swine, beef) basically post-process a less-than-ideal crop into something real good for the human.

A few egg layers in the back yard, though, works wonders to turn feed corn into something nutritious for a human being.

Field/dent corn is perfectly suitable for humans. You make corn meal and corn bread from it.

Nixtamalization is important, if it’s a major component of the diet. It makes great tacos, tamales, and enchiladas.

> Further, "feed corn" (maize) isn't really suitable for humans. Best way to turn it into calories for human consumption is to feed it to egglayers, after that it's broilers, then dairy cattle, then swine and beef cattle.

So a less red-meat-intensive diet. I don't think Woodrow Wilson meant vegetarian when he proclaimed Meatless Tuesdays, although that is a much more viable option these days. It's probably going to be more expensive to be paleo, though.

Grains raised for animal feed or producing ethanol are commonly unfit for human consumption. Every crop is highly optimized for its intended end use. You can't take existing corn stocks beyond what is currently used in food and convert it into food, the varieties planted are not meant to be eaten by people. The supply chain that supports these crops is also optimized with assumptions about the end purpose.

It would be possible to re-plant that land with edible crops but it is not fast or simple.

Exactly. During covid, foods destined for restaraunts couldn't even be sold to consumers since the supply chains didn't exist in many cases.

If we were faced with famine even army could provide sufficient logistical support.

The only problem during COVID was that it was not profitable. It was cheaper to dispose it than to try to sell it.

The biggest exporter of meat products is Brazil, which conversely also makes them a really big importer of feedstock. The amount of scenarios in which a European/Asian war could somehow affect trade between the Americas without also involving the apocalypse are very few.

The corn is inedible it’s mostly for biofuel and feed stock

Anti-trust measures wouldn't necessarily help with supply chain fragility.

If our markets were perfectly competitive with many participants, they'd have an even more 'efficient' supply side and the pressure to rely on the lowest cost - or highest quality - source would be even stronger. In such markets, a competitor whose source of goods is slightly cheaper that yours will almost instantly capture all of your market share, so there's little room to pick a high cost local producer (unless you have the capital buffer to sustain losses until your competitors suffer a supply chain shock).

A monopolist would accrue greater short term profits by having a hyper efficient fragile supply chain. However, it's not obvious that the profit incentive of the monopolist is higher than the survival incentive of the competitive agent.

Tariffs, quotas and local-bias regulation could help to localise supply chains in either market structure.

Monopolies can implement efficiency gains and lock-in strategies that companies with less market share can't.

For example, imagine grain being shipped across an ocean. Initially there are multiple shipping companies providing transport services, with their own models of ships and way of doing things. Over time, GrainMove Co buys out the other big players and becomes the main provider. In a bid for dominance, they buy up the ports on both sides so that competitors either have to pay exorbitant fees to dock, or build their own ports. They introduce a fleet of ships of the same model & capacity in order to streamline their logistics management. Then they start manufacturing container crates and modify the ships so that only their containers fit on them, forcing customers to also hire their containers in order to ship grain.

There are now a number of weak points making the industry less robust. An unexpected fault or parts shortage for that specific type of ship. A sudden increase in demand for containers because a toxin from a disease of the grain means they can only be used once. All these are suddenly not just inconveniences that the market can adapt to, but major disruptions to the food chain.

This was a topic of a few Asimov books.

In describing the big cities of earth, the more complicated and JIT nature of getting food where it needs to be meant that where previously an hour delay was tolerable, that minute delays could severely impact everyone with massive ripple effects.

It seems like what we are seeing WRT the supply chain is the equivalent of putting more and more traffic on a road and gradually increasing the speed limit to deal with delivery bottle necks (rather than making new roads/routes). Of course, the issue is that whenever someone cuts someone else off or whatever, you create massive shockwaves which can pull everything from 90mph to 10mph. [1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Suugn-p5C1M

In the UK we also have a government which has absolutely zero interest in rigidity and plasticity of systems. Everything is done to the lowest bidder, even if that bidder has demonstrated no credible ability to do the job. This sets the standard for the whole nation in my opinion.

A professor of law from the University of Tennessee pens an article about global economics with a lot of snide and insinuation but little in the way of anything actionable and it appears in the NY Post? Okay.

What would this professor have us do instead? They never paint an alternative solution and contrast that alternative's pros and cons with the ones we have now. It's fair to ask whether the economic sanctions are worth it but that question is never asked and certainly not analyzed.

I guess that would require too much work and so we're left with a hefty helping of snide instead.

My granny was a statistician during Soviet times. She knows a lot about food supply chain on Europe. It didn’t change a lot during last decades. Now every day during our daily call she talks about bread and coming starvation. As article mentions wheat an fertilizers come from this conflict area. If Europe will not stop a war in Ukraine in coming 2-3 weeks… then doubling energy prices will look like a funny joke. There will be no bread and everything related in European supermarkets for a long time. Sounds really apocalyptic and sadly it is.

> If Europe will not stop a war in Ukraine in coming 2-3 weeks

As a European (living in Poland), I have to take offense to your phrasing. How is it our war to stop?

There is one big country that can stop this war, and it is not called "Europe". Everyone here in Central/Eastern Europe is trying to mitigate the damages, with donations, hospitality, volunteering.

Of course, the possibility of a peace treaty being signed also remains, and there is a long debate whether this would be good for Ukraine, good for Europe as a whole, etc., but yet again -- this is not "Europe" that will sign it.

Europe may starve if you don't.

Not all duties are moral. Some are merely practical.

Most of the EU will probably weather it just fine; some of the neighbors not so much.

I think declaring war on Russia would have started to look fairly tempting by now, except for the fact that Russia is a nuclear power.

Perhaps some sort of red-lining might yet be possible. ("Ok, ok, you've had your fun. We frankly don't care what your actual problem is, but this needs to be over before planting season. And no contaminating the soil either. Figure it out or else").

Before you do that though, you have to figure how much pain you're willing to tolerate before you take that risk-of-nuclear-apocalypse; just because a nuclear state leader is being stupid. I don't envy the people who need to make that particular call. :-/

Europe for the most part can afford more expensive food, it's other parts of the world that will suffer as the prices get bid up.

Western Europe is very reliant on food imports. It comes from India and China. The Dutch grow glasshouse produce. Pig meat and oil are the main agricultural items.

Spain is the one of the main regions growing and exporting. But that’s mostly tomatoes. A lot of production has moved to Morocco and Tunisia. Especially olives(disease in Italy) also: Italian canned San Marzano tomato sauce? Grown and canned in China. Labeled in Italy.

Europe will starve. When America and Europe threaten sanctions upon countries like India, it’s laughable. And illiterate. And also hypocritical considering Germany has bought over billions of dollars of oil from Russia since the conflict began.

Europe does not have food self sufficiency.

I'm not sure what your point is exactly? Yes I know europe imports food, if prices rise europe will still import food (although it may import less), it'll just pay more for it and it can afford to. It won't be a cakewalk but western europe won't starve.

Modern Ag is converting fossil fuels to calories. With sanctions, everything will be disrupted. Supply chain and logistics will affect everything from feed to fuel.

China has way, way bigger food trade deficit than EU.

It’s not about trade deficits but about calories for citizens and crop land foot print+productivity

If I was in charge of a poor country whose main export was food, I might be inclined to ban the export of food in this situation: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-10/egypt-to-...

IIRC the EU has a common agricultural policy precisely to prevent food shortages, so it may be OK anyway, I don’t know.

Egypt is a massive food importer, so them banning export does not change that much.

I was suggesting that I might be tempted to copy them, not intending to claim they were the county I was hypothesising about leading.

Ukraine is the single biggest supplier of wheat to the UN food programme, which serves the poorest and most at-risk areas of the world. Trying to replace this supply from other parts of the world will be impossible.

Yes, but how exactly. Poland especially is already looking after 1M+ refugees, what else can they do.

> There is one big country that can stop this war, and it is not called "Europe".

Which country are you talking about?

I'm guessing Russia.

Or Ukraine.

what exactly do you want Ukraine to do to stop the war?

Not 'want'. Why would you assume that? But it seems obvious that Ukraine capitulating would end the war.

(Unless it's morally reprehensible for me to even suggest that the good guys might lose. /s)

This is what I guess is going on: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30723869

I don't think that's obvious at all. Ukrainians don't want to be part of Russia and Ukraine can't make every single Ukrainian stop fighting.

Ukraine capitulating would turn it from a war of state against state into a war of occupier against occupied people.

Fair enough. There's definitely an insurgency. I guess the question is if there's enough of one to sustain the guerilla warfare despite both sides wanting an end, and one of those sides wanting an end in order to feed the populace.

Also, Ukrainians have the historical experience that being conquered by Russia only makes the hunger worse.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor

Russia, who else :P Putin could order his troops to leave tomorrow and end this entire nonsense.

The US, which has nothing to do in the Russian sphere of influence.

Dude what the fuck?

Cześć! My initial thought would be humanitarian air lift operation to Ukraine. While closing space for Russian aircrafts. Will Putin Launch nukes immediately afterwards? It’s a good question. Will putin stop after taking Kraków? Or does he need Warszawa? It’s another very good question.

IMVHO are very wrong questions, like aiming at flame pinnacles instead of the base: why "putin" invade Ukraine? Perhaps because since 2014 (and so probably years before) USA formed and armed nazi militias there? Oh, of course putin is a dictator not much different than nazi, but of course he want to protect his territory.

Do remember a thing since WWII end there was Yalta agreements, violated from day zero by NATO with the air bridge to Berlin, with proposed ops like "Operation Unthinkable" and "Operation Dropshot", with Solidarność etc and those activities are still very active around Russians borders.

So how to stop the war? Well, arresting the "western puppets governments" in the eastern Europe playing the neutrality card as Finland, Sweden etc have done in the past. That immediately stop a war who advantage FAR more China, USA and UK than Russia or EU. Just try to study history and geopolitics a bit: China? They get a far more dependent Russia witch means far more cheap natural resources, far bigger hi-tech military gear, probably enough with the Chinese industrial system to being able to counter the USA in few years. For USA and UK? Their government are not hyper-contested anymore, they are not at the brink of a civil war anymore because of an outside war. Any move wanted for the Green New Deal, like skyrocketing oil and gas prices, is now justified and so on. Russia? The war is needed by them to secure their borders but it's costly. EU? Being against our own major supplier of natural resources is simply suicidal.

France could end the war if they really wanted to.

The food supply in Europe has changed gigantically in recent decades. There are massive areas under glass, huge irrigation projects and challenges, and new shipping options (containers). The subsidy and production regimes have changed

This is not to say that the food supply is secure.

You are right. More than half the world will be reliant for external food by way of imports. Ag imports is not always edible foods..as it includes produce, grains, fiber, fuel, meat, fish and dairy. West Europe’s food imports together far exceed USA. Figures as of 2017 : [..] The United States, being one of the world’s largest economies, imports a total of $133 billion USD worth of food and food products, followed by China at $105.26 billion USD, Germany at $98.90 billion USD, Japan at $68.86 billion USD, the United Kingdom at $66.54 billion USD, the Netherlands at $64.38 billion USD, France at $62.29 billion USD, Italy at $51.34 billion USD, Belgium at $40.87 billion USD, and the Russian Federation at $38.60 billion USD.[..]

The EU countries here include intra-EU imports.

When looking at EU level, trade looks fairly balanced:

https://ec.europa.eu/info/sites/default/files/food-farming-f...

> If Europe will not stop a war in Ukraine in coming 2-3 weeks… then doubling energy prices will look like a funny joke.

That's why I've been wondering if behind all this 'fog of war', Russia is planning to get what they want by creating a food shortage in Europe. Just toss a bunch of disposable soldiers and old equipment into the country, create chaos, and wait. Russia might survive the sanctions against it longer and better than Europe survives without Ukrainian wheat.

It sure sounds like Europe has a lot less leverage than Putin and might have to capitulate just to keep their people fed.

"The main destination of Wheat exports from Ukraine are: Egypt ($685M), Indonesia ($603M), Philippines ($242M), Turkey ($207M), and Tunisia ($196M)." [1]

None of these are European countries importing wheat from Ukraine. Most of my food imports come from Italy. I buy local also. Finland grows wheat, among other crops. Saw corn fields cycling cross country couple years back.

[1] https://oec.world/en/profile/bilateral-product/wheat/reporte...

My comment is based on what the parent said.

> My granny was a statistician during Soviet times. She knows a lot about food supply chain on Europe. It didn’t change a lot during last decades. Now every day during our daily call she talks about bread and coming starvation. As article mentions wheat an fertilizers come from this conflict area.

Food supply chains are definitely something to examine.

However Ukrainian wheat is exported to: Egypt ($685M), Indonesia ($603M), Philippines ($242M), Turkey ($207M), and Tunisia ($196M).

I believe Pakistan and several African countries are also on the list.

These countries are already aware and concerned.

https://oec.world/en/profile/bilateral-product/wheat/reporte...

EU grows its own wheat.

This article addresses the impact of the war very precisely:

https://oec.world/en/blog/post/affects-of-russian-invasion-o...

For the Soviet Union certainly that pattern would hold. They were all about stupid levels of micromanagement and poorly attempted autarky while ignoring the value of trade and productivity increases beyonf mass factories.

Frankly the concept of starvation for Europe sounds like another dumb apocalypse FUD meme put out by Putin that ignores reality. It is the same exact theme as the stupider "But Europe will somehow freeze to death in March!" played prior. It is part of the same pattern of gaslighting as an abuser "But you need, me babe!" combined with "Look what you made me do!". One who knows that he is losing.

Petrochemistry is the default source of most fertilizers and Ukraine wasn't a rival to Russia in oil supply yet and there are plentiful ports in Europe. It doesn't even take any R&D cleverness to solve the alleged hypothetical problem.

Kind of tangential but there's a group called "Ecology Action" that have developed what they call GROW BIOINTENSIVE® Sustainable Mini-Farming "that when practiced correctly, nurtures healthy soil fertility, produces high yields, conserves resources and can be used successfully by almost everyone."

http://growbiointensive.org/grow_main.html

The system uses 5000ft² (465m²) per person, provides a nutritionally-complete diet, and builds topsoil volume and fertility over time.

They're selling it but there's more than enough information to grok the system w/o paying (if you're broke or just cheap.)

Quoting from the above link, the key points are:

- Double-Dug, Raised Beds

- Composting

- Intensive Planting

- Companion Planting

- Carbon Farming

- Calorie Farming

- The Use of Open-Pollinated Seeds

- A Whole-System Farming Method

> Most life in nature occurs at the interface of soil, water, air and sun. GROW BIOINTENSIVE soil preparation practices create growing beds with more surface area to maximize the effect of nature’s life processes. Double-dug beds, with soil loosened to a depth of 24 inches, aerate the soil, facilitate root growth, and improve water retention. The health and vigor of the soil are maintained through the use of compost. Close plant spacing is used to protect soil microorganisms, reduce water loss, and maximize yields. Companion planting facilitates the optimal use of nutrients, light and water, encourages beneficial insects and creates a vibrant mini-ecosystem within the garden. A focus on the production of calories for the farmer and carbon for the soil ensures that both the farmer and the soil will be adequately fed and that the farm will be sustainable. The use of open-pollinated seeds helps to preserve genetic diversity and enables gardeners to develop their own acclimatized cultivars. All of the components of this system must be used together for optimum effect and to avoid depleting the soil.

It is great opportunity for local food shops growing and supermarket stagnation. Well... Same like it was before corpo food chains. Just notice how pictures show empty supermarkets, not small shops.

Those catastrophic news are quite annoying. No water, hot and fire everywhere, plagues, nuclear threats, war, no food... Give me a break, please. We are clever enough to deal with any problems that eventually come. Just do not give me simple soulutions for living.

I don't if it's due to actual improvements in quality, or just the fact that every other media outlet is getting worse, but it seems like the quality of the reporting in the NY Post has been getting better in recent years.

My own personal theory is that they're benefit from the fact that they don't need or even appear to want, the approval of polite society.

I find it somewhat annoying that the article comes off as hostile towards "green" policies, but fails to even mention the (technically) trivial solution: stop eating meat. How much farmland and resources does it take to raise a cow again?

A grass-fed cow certainly consume fewer resources than most of the vegetables you eat, that generally requires diesel-based machines to crop, and lots of irrigation. Not to mention soil management that includes fertilizers and pesticides.

And how many percentages of all cattle are of this grass fed type that consumes less resources than "most of the vegetables you eat"? Do they feed on grass pastures all year long or do they need, say, soy from Brazil during some time of the year?

More cows could be grass-fed. Because the percentage isn’t high, it does not mean we need to stop eating meat, but demand grass-fed cows. In the Netherlands it is pretty common to grain feed cattle, but there are also 100% grass-fed operations. It’s like saying let’s stop driving cars, because the majority run on petrol. No, let’s make cars electric then.

The percentage of grass fed cows is probably low just because it's more expensive. This means it will stay low and the problem with eating meat will always be there. There simply is no way around it. Furthermore, it is intellectually more honest to focus on what is rather than what should be.

Same problem with the cars: we will run out of rare battery materials before every car is electric. If you're one of the lucky ones who can buy their conscience clean, that's great. The rest will have to keep polluting.

I'm not saying you should stop eating meat by the way. All I ask is accepting the facts.

This article is a right-wing/russian propaganda that checks all the right boxes:

- government spending is bad

- sanctions are bad

- china is our enemy

The New York Post is right-wing (just at the New York Times is left-wing), but it is certainly not pro-Putin.

The new york times is not left wing lmao. Liberal at most but even that is inconsistent. The american left is so weak and far from the centers of power y'all don't even know what it looks like anymore.

Agreed, NYT is a corporate puppet, and certainly not a left-wing actor.

right-wing is in love with putin. Trump openly praised putin. MTG openly criticized Biden for sending help to Ukraine. Right-wing lunatics DREAM about turning the USA to the oppressive state similar to putin's regime.

Putin in love with right-wing. Russian propaganda shows fox news on the state TV. Why didn't putin invade Ukraine when trump was the president? John Bolton says that's because Trump was a useful idiot for Putin and that's so true. Trump did a lot to weaken NATO. Right-wing means WEAK America. And putin looves it.

Blindly attacking one side or the other, further creating a rift between the left and the right (or any groups within America) is the thing that Putin really wants. So congratulations.

I'm not a right-winger, but I live in a very right-wing county, and talk to a lot of folks who are hardcore conservatives.

Aside from Tucker Carlson, nobody on Faux News is pro Russia. Most of my conservative friends have labelled Carlson a traitor to America for his pro-Russia views and have proposed boycotting Faux News until he's removed. (sad overreaction, IMO, but whatever)

They are so pro-Ukraine it's not even funny. And they point to Russia and China as the #1 reason why everyone in America should be investing in assault rifles.

As far as they're concerned, the left is responsible for: * Wrecking the supply chain (via reactionary, and overly aggressive anti-work measures during the pandemic)

* Causing rampant inflation (via ridiculous spending and quantitative easing)

* Ruining our ability to manufacture goods domestically (by making it literally impossible to manufacture many necessary components such as fertilizer)

* Driving widespread monopolization and centralization of industries (by making it impossible for small businesses to remain solvent during the pandemic (or previously))

* Making it impossible for people to defend themselves for no good reason (banning assault rifles, when they are responsible for 1/1000th of the deaths of handguns)

So according to them, Left-wing means weak America, and Putin loves it.

I think I wrapped up their current platform in a nutshell. I think most of those bullets are over simplifications, but my point is that is that both the left and the right have legitimate concerns and they both want what is best for America. It is important to remember that before blindly attacking a group of people.

I bet the folks you are talking about are going to vote for Trump in 2024 just like they did in 2020. And definitely they rooted Jan,6 rioters. And after it failed, they said that it was antifa or an FBI staged "false flag" operation.

As Dems say, “we are not perfect, but they are NUTS”.

It's nice that they put it right in the opening statements, so that you know nothing that follows can be taken entirely seriously.

Did we read the same article? Nothing in the first few paragraphs seems this way, what stood out to you?

The reasoning here is so tribal, myopic, and US politics centered.

The Chinese Communist Party (not to be confused with the 91% of Chinese humans who aren't able to join it or participate in their own governance) is allied with Russia in this war. As reported by the New York Times, the CCP met with US leadership a few months ago regarding the coming invasion of Ukraine by Russia. They immediately left the meeting and shared all of the details with Putin's deputies. That's NOT the behavior of an ally, that's what enemies do.

The CCP is helping to prop up the Russian economy as well. They have bought up massive amounts of Russian assets, offered alternative banking/financial structures to offset sanctions, and are engaged in deals to purchase Russian energy exports on the cheap that are being blocked by EU/US sanctions.

The CCP (ignore all debate about a lab leak) deliberately attempted to minimize and hide the existence and severity of COVID from its own people outside of Wuhan. That is, after all, what authoritarian governments always do when a domestic crisis emerges, until they can't hide it anymore. The side-effect of hiding it from their own people was that they hid it from the world when the spread could have been halted. Flights continued out of China all over the world, and a virus that could have been contained was not.

The well over 900 million Chinese human beings who are not part of the CCP are the biggest victims of the Chinese government, and the rest of us are collateral damage. The idea that the CCP is not an enemy is absurd to anyone who has actually travelled to or lived in China and heard the common, everyday and casual jingoism and deliberate agitprop that the CCP unleashes and fans in the everyday population towards the US specifically and the West in general.

To the myopic, inward-focused partisans in the US, all talk of this reality is labeled as racially motivated. While a minority of that sentiment is certainly racially motivated, most is not. Most are simply based on the realities of President Xi being as bad as Putin (say what you want, but banning Winnie the Pooh was not the mark of a normal human being in a position of leadership) and the CCP's control of a massive, technologically superior nation-state.

And yet 900 million people fail to overthrow their supposedly oppressive government? They're in on it.

What an on-the-nose example of victim blaming

I have such a deep love of Chinese culture and the Chinese people that it really stung to see that comment.

I suppose US Citizens are all "in on" the US gov'ts various coups in Latin America, military interventions in the middle east, overzealous surveillance state, and lets throw Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo in there because we haven't overthrown our government?

"Fail to overthrow"? Are you kidding me? Have you seen what happens to dissenters in China?

My favorite artist of my entire lifetime (I consider him to be the greatest artist of the past 100 years, hands down) is Ai Weiwei. I flew to Prague (from the US) with the express intent of making his exhibit the centerpiece of a vacation there in 2017. The man is a living treasure to all of humanity. (I'm sure others will view my opinion of him to be absurdly inflated, but that's my subjective opinion.)

For the crime of speaking out on CCP corruption and being somewhat famous, he was put under house-arrest and also directly detained for long periods of time. He's just an artist, not a soldier or revolutionary.

What are they going to use to overthrow their government? What weapons do they have access to? How can they communicate when all internet traffic is directly controlled by CCP via infrastructure?

They are not "in on it", even if many play the role of "useful idiots" the same way jingoistic Americans do when our government fans the flames of war, like Iraq in 2003.

Our Chinese brothers and sisters deserve compassion and bravery, not the typical hand-waving and continuance of a relationship of convenience where the West gets cheap goods/labor while the Chinese citizens are crushed under the boot of a government that allows them no say in their destiny.

I'm not foolish or naive enough to think that the US is remotely a true democracy/republic, but at least here we don't jail our dissenters without any form of due process. And when those forms of due process fail, we have the ability to speak out about them without getting jailed or having family members threatened. The same goes for the EU.

I had a rather naive and complacent attitude towards the CCP until I travelled there, and more recently when a close friend of mine had her father in Beijing die early in the COVID pandemic. The authorities there claimed he didn't die of COVID, but it was blatantly obvious to all involved that his symptoms matched it. But at that point in time, the CCP's official talking point was that they had successfully contained COVID in Wuhan, and therefore the realities weren't allowed to be discussed. She had to speak in code with her family members over the phone. It's very hard for westerners who have never been there to understand the oppressive atmosphere that is present there. It's a very, very odd mix, because this oppressive atmosphere is overlaid on the unyielding optimism of the booming economy and the utterly wonderful and brilliant Chinese citizenry. They deserve far, far better than their current government, in my opinion as a foreigner.

> "Fail to overthrow"? Are you kidding me? Have you seen what happens to dissenters in China?

Nothing worse than has happened to dissenters in every single country on the planet that overthrew absolute monarchy with farming implements throughout history.

Short of military intervention, now impossible due to nuclear war, it is the duty of every nation's citizens to democratize their government, or else they are complacent and enabling. And hey, I get it, rebellion is scary. Compliance is comforting, relatively speaking. But don't demand pity points if you choose to accept subjugation.

>"it is the duty of every nation's citizens to democratize their government, or else they are complacent and enabling. And hey, I get it, rebellion is scary. Compliance is comforting, relatively speaking. But don't demand pity points if you choose to accept subjugation."

How willing are you, you personally, to forfeit your possessions and livelihood? Are you willing to die for the cause? Would you accept a death that doesn't result in a victory or martyrdom? Calling on other people to start a rebellion/revolution is easy, especially when you live in a comfortable state and have nothing on the line.

>"And hey, I get it, rebellion is scary."

This is particularly arrogant and condescending. How in the world would know anything about the fears people living under an authoritarian regime have about their own government's treatment of dissenters? Yes, it is very scary to rebel against a government accused of running concentration camps and one that makes high profile people (even billionaires) disappear. But I suppose these potential dissenters just need to be reminded that they need to be more brave, like you!

>"But don't demand pity points if you choose to accept subjugation."

Subjugation isn't a choice. Well, maybe it isn't if you consider suicide an alternative to subjugation. I suppose all those child slaves in the Congo chose to accept it and therefore deserve no pity points. I mean, they could rebel against their subjugation at any time, right?

> especially when you live in a comfortable state and have nothing on the line.

...after successfully overthrowing two competing monarchies, winning a civil war and defending against invasion? Heck yea I'm comfortable and my people bloody earned it.

To say there's nothing on the line is an absolute disregard to world politics. Have you read the news lately? Basically nothing would bring about world peace faster than a chinese democratic revolution, hopefully accompanied by a russian one.

> How in the world would know anything about the fears people

Why would you assume that I don't? Fear is a very universal human emotion. You appear to be assigning some sort of special consideration to these people, as if their particular blight is somehow exceptionally elevated beyond the understanding of mere mortals.

> But I suppose these potential dissenters just need to be reminded that they need to be more brave, like you!

Considering how littered history is with people rallying behind individuals who simply encouraged them, yes, that's incredibly actionable advice.

> child slaves in the Congo

You realize you are comparing an entire industrialized nation of people to children?

> Subjugation isn't a choice. Well, maybe it isn't if you consider suicide an alternative to subjugation.

And yet here we are, freely and openly discussing this after our ancestors succeeded in rejecting their subjugations ultimately without perishing.

You really should look up Gandhi. He freed all of India from British slavery literally by just saying "no" and taking one for the team. He was assassinated, sure, but India is now a democracy.

>"To say there's nothing on the line is an absolute disregard to world politics."

I'm saying there is nothing on the line for you. You, you personally, have nothing to loose. So it's exceedingly easy for you to expect other people to make the sacrifices you will never face.

>"somehow exceptionally elevated beyond the understanding of mere mortals"

Again, it's beyond understanding for you, someone living with a cushy job in a nice democratic country who has nothing to fear from their own government.

>"rallying behind individuals who simply encouraged them"

There is some cognitive dissonance here, do you really think they need encouragement while also claiming they are at fault if they don't start a revolution? It also seems like an oxymoron that a situation would be intolerable, but people would also need encouragement to do something about it.

>"after our ancestors succeeded in rejecting their subjugations ultimately without perishing."

This is survivorship bias, more rebellions and revolutions failed than succeeded. And still, plenty of people who participated died, regardless of outcome. You're taking credit for your ancestor's success and claiming it would be just as easy for modern folks to do the same, despite the situations being VASTLY different.

The Iranians under the Shah, Filipinos under Marcos, Romanians under Ceaușescu, and Egyptians under Mubarak figured out a way.

Why can’t the Chinese?

Because each one of those events happened under a unique set of circumstances and succeeded because of different reasons. I'd also like to add that those nations were not emerging superpowers with vast amounts of resources and manpower. They are also not the worlds most populous country and third largest nation by landmass. I don't think anyone knows what it would actually take, to "figure out a way".

Sorry, if you’re going to maintain that the majority of Chinese oppose their government, it’s on you to prove it.

Most of the Chinese I know can't even fathom opposing their government, like the act of being against or anti Xi is illegal in itself. I guess that is how the CPC maintain its 110% approval rating.

And also:

- Green elites are preventing more agricultural output in response to shortages.

My favourite part. Nothing spells edginess like blaming those damn green elites.

so open a vege garden. If everyone does their part to grow more and buy less, no shortage, no problem. Even if you have an apartment, you can grow some simple things in pots if you have a window

>If everyone does their part to grow more and buy less, no shortage, no problem.

I think that's understating the problem. Still, a very good idea. Victory gardens are always a good idea during wartime.

In the last 20 years, we've also added about four billion new people to the world, sitting at about 10b right now. 11b is the predicted max.

The UN estimates that there are about 7.9 billion people, up from about 6 billion in 1999.

https://www.un.org/en/global-issues/population

https://www.unfpa.org/data/world-population-dashboard

In the last 20 years, we've also added about two billion new people to the world, sitting at about 8B right now. 10B is the predicted max [1].

There, fixed it for you.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population

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