Food security and the coming storm | Hacker News Reader

Food security and the coming storm

eurasiagroup.net

195 pointsrntn407 comments

I recently had a conversation with an organic farmer. While he is able to pass on at least some of his increased costs for energy and fuel through direct sales and cooperatively organized distribution channels, his conventionally farmed colleagues have a bigger problem. They have long-term purchase contracts that fix the prices for milk, meat or vegetables. In the case of milk and meat in particular, production costs, including purchased feed for the animals, now exceed the agreed purchase prices.

At the same time, however, prices for the end consumer are rising because, on the one hand, the processing companies themselves have higher energy costs, but on the other hand (without passing them on to the producers) the current climate allows price increases and thus an increase in margins. So the consumer and the farmer lose out. Only the processor, its shareholders and retailers benefit (at least in the short term). And the speculators who bet on rising prices.

Many conventional farmers see their livelihoods threatened. Which further endangers food security in the long term.

One should never make long term contracts for delivery without long term contracts for supply, or at least something to hedge against supply costs.

“The farmer is the only man in our economy who buys everything at retail, sells everything at wholesale, and pays the freight both ways.” — John F. Kennedy.

He might be our most underrated president.

I don't think he was, at least based on what he actually did in life.

He only barely beat Nixon in 1960, caused Cuban crisis through his own making by bad defense policy in the middle east, gridlocked congress.

His people turned him into a legend after he was killed.

LBJ did the real work in implementing the ideas JFK wanted (but couldn't implement). Yes JFK's death may have made some of this more possible but how much can you credit someone for dying when it wasn't even for a particular cause (other than anticommunism maybe).

You may be able to tell I've read too much Robert Caro.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/06/jfk-accomplished-lit...

> based on what he actually did in life.

Don't forget about Mimi Alford.

Not to mention Joseph Kennedy was one greasy mo-fo.

I mean LBJ was super corrupt. But he was effective.

The meat packing monopoly ties the hands of many cattle farmers.

Meat packing is a natural oligopoly, which could be disrupted any time by someone with enough bucks to do it. That's capitalism. Either live with the parasites or be ok with more intervention.

Negotiating against someone with more power than you leads to bad deals.

Or simply indexing them to inflation in some way.

I'm less pessimistic. People in the US, and increasingly the rest of the world are on a diet that just isn't good for them: lots of low quality carbs with cheap fat and artificial flavorings and not a whole lot of nutritional value. Arguably, a large part of the population is eating way more than is good for them and not enough good quality food. And it's not just a money issue: it's a skill and knowledge issue. People literally pay extra for the privilege of growing fat on expensive junk food and they don't even know the basics of taking care of themselves anymore.

So, low quality industrial food products getting more expensive isn't necessarily a bad thing. It might prompt people to spend their money more wisely. There are plenty of options for people interested in doing a bit of work to put together a healthy diet for themselves.

Buy good ingredients yourself and learn how to use them. You'll save money and eat better. And if you source a bit responsibly, you actually help out some local producers and shops that are currently struggling. It's not that hard. A lot of us here are programmers. If you can put together code that implements a complex algorithm, you can follow a recipe and figure out how making food works. It's not hard.

For example, I bake my own bread. I do that using flour that I buy online from a local mill here in Germany. Good stuff. Works out to about 1.60 euros per kg. The supermarkets here don't even sell this quality of bread flour. They mostly sell more processed flours that people use to bake cakes. The flour I bought is locally known as type 812. In the french system it would be T85 (approximately). All that means: lots of protein and other nutrients that you need to make good bread. Unlike the supermarket, I use no additives other than salt. I even make my own sourdough starter (flour + water, let nature do it's thing). So, literally the main ingredients that I have to buy are flour and salt. Works out to less than 1 euro per loaf of bread; including the power I consume to use the oven. And it tastes good. If I wanted to cut the price of this, I'm sure I could source both ingredients even cheaper. Sourdough bread works with all sorts of flour. Even with the cheap low quality stuff. You might be able to go as low as 50 cents per kg of flour. That works out to about 25 cents per loaf. And it will still taste great.

Takes a bit of skill and some time. But otherwise it's cheap.

People in poor countries tend to know a thing or two about making the most of cheap ingredients. That's why Italian food is so popular. It's quite literally what poor Italians came up with. A lot of their famous dishes are rooted in what poor peasants could do with what they could afford. Pasta is basically flour and water. You work it hard and you end up with the perfect vessel for some sort of stew. As for the stew: whatever cuts of meat cooked for ages with whatever you can pick around you. Plenty of examples around the world of great food traditions rooted in poor people making the most of what they have access to: India, Vietnam, Thailand, Cuba, etc. Almost anywhere you go, people have this rich history of doing great stuff with whatever is available to them. Mostly, it boils down to skill and time to use those skills.

Time for me is by far the limiting factor. Short of a personal chef (too expensive) all the quick options are unhealthy.

Edit:

Loads of people suggesting cooking - I know how to cook, I just don’t have the time or energy. It’s not just preparation time but also the planning aspect.

Meal prep delivery services suggestions are interesting. I have tried a few and found them expensive and low quality. Open to trying more though.

Sunday meal prep: I did this as a student but I love food and I love deciding what to eat on the day. Going back to that would remove some of the joy from life.

I think what I really want is a work canteen, but open to the public. The economies of scale could make this price competitive and there’s less delivery overhead than the meal prep subscriptions. I like the social aspect too. I would definitely pay a subscription to a canteen.

I think this is how Roman cities operated.

'All' is a bit of a stretch. I have a relatively healthy diet, and food preparation time is a non-issue. If you're fine with simple dishes (like chopping up vegetables in a simple salad and eating them raw), it doesn't take more than 20 minutes per day total. Growing up poor in the middle of nowhere helps here.

To add to this, preparing food for several days in advance is absolutely essential to eating healthy food regularly

Perhaps you should slow down.

Adam Smith warned of extreme division of labor making for humans dumber than the dumbest animal (paraphrasing).

Sticking with one career forever is an outdated story; king says someone is farmer, that’s just how it is! It would be costly to upend history, they say.

Having worked in a kitchen, built houses from foundation up, helped deliver livestock, started in tech designing power switching equipment, coding professional now since 2006; having built muscle memory for numerous “professions” comes along with living in “flow state.” I can manage structured tasks across contexts without planning, without wincing at the difficulty or time being a factor; I can make way better than packaged or fast food faster than it can be picked up or delivered.

Taking time to boot strap the habit pays off in time savings down the road.

If you have the disposable income, you can dispose of it as you please of course. But still, there are ways to get good food prepared quickly as well. All you need is a pantry stocked with the essentials and some basic knowledge.

Mostly the issue isn't necessarily time but giving into your cravings. Junk food is designed for that. People buy junk food because they like eating it and crave it. Even if the experience isn't great, the craving still drives them to eat it. Ever felt disappointed after eating at a burger chain? That's what happened. You craved something and the marketing triggered you enough to buy a burger or whatever. In the end the food is greasy, salty, not really hot, and doesn't have a whole lot of flavor. And you munch it down and forget about it.

And particularly when people have worked a long day and just want to stuff food into their mouths. For me, going to a supermarket at the end of a working day generally leads to really bad decision making. And I actually know how to cook some food.

A good way to get into cooking is to make your own junk food but do it better. This is super easy because most junk food is absolutely terrible. If you like burgers, get some meat and make some of your own. It's hard to do worse than good old McDonald's. That stuff is just really nasty. Use that as a benchmark and strive to do better. You can't fail.

Burgers are a great example because this is historically how people made the most of their cheap and off cuts of meat. So, again, great if you are on a budget.

I enjoy cooking but it's pretty silly to suggest everyone do it. Beyond the time commitment there's also equipment and space concerns and also some people just aren't good at it.

it's not silly; you can't take ownership of your own health without having at least basic cooking skills.

the "time commitment" is just another BS excuse. there are plenty of recipes that can be prepped, cooked, and served in the time it takes to order and pickup takeout. there are tons of youtube videos on this exact topic. search "but faster".

the equipment and space concerns I'll give you. there are some people who literally don't own a functioning heat source. that's a non-starter.

but if, like most americans, you do have a functioning oven/stove, you can made a wide range of tasty and healthy meals by adding just a couple cheap items to your collection. to get started, you just need a knife, cutting surface, and a sheetpan. cut things up, add a light drizzle of oil, and roast them in the oven. takes a couple minutes of prep followed by 20-30 minutes of doing something else while it cooks. bonus: add a meat thermometer to safely cook meats. or alternatively, try all the same combinations of meats, starches, and vegetables in a skillet if you want to put in a little more active time to get a finished meal faster.

Not everyone can take ownership of everything. Some people are literally children.

> Some people are literally children.

That’s the problem. They need to figure it out.

LITERALLY children.

When you order food you can do other things while you wait for the food to get to you ya dingus.

Shit a microwaved meal takes 5 minutes and requires almost zero work.

It's just unreasonable to expect everyone to do everything for themselves all the time.

I have been doing meal prep sunday for a few years, I found several recipes that keep well in the freezer and heat up pretty well.

Also modern cooking styles like Air Fryers, and Water Bath (sous vide) can also help some with the timing. As these are often ways to cook with out having to actively monitor the cooking like you would using pans and skillets

On the weekend I will prep most of my meals even if I do not cook them right then, then through out the week I drop something in the sous vide, air fyer or if it already cooked the micro.

This is the real reason people have unhealthy habits, especially with food: it takes a lot of time to source, prepare, serve and clean up after a healthy home-meal made from scratch and made with care. For better or worse, past social norms dedicated an individual (usually the mother) to stay home and tend to these tasks, but now most households have the entire family working to make ends meet and in turn externalize food production (and many other "homestead-y" operations) to companies, which are not motivated by our well-being.

> especially with food: it takes a lot of time to source, prepare, serve and clean up

Absolutely! You can't just buy a slab of chicken breast, it needs to be trimmed and put away until ready to be used. Hardest of all: planning, what to do with it, what else goes with it. Pointless to buy broccoli and kale if you don't know what makes it tastes good, and when the inspiration strikes you, there's an ugly head of broccoli you need to cut up, and a bunch of unwashed kale you need to trim. 80% of cooking is peeling, cutting, dicing, shredding, skimming, straining, pounding, deboning, deveining, and waiting. All unglamorous, time-consuming, boring, manual labor. You need to speed this up to gain efficiency. Technical and planning skills gets you probably 50% efficiency. Cooking food is labor intensive and it appears to me all attempts to commercially scale is failing.

I disagree at large, but give exception to at least the US due to how cities are built.

I am not a chef by any means or even a cook, but I learned how to cook in University due to being unbelievably poor and got tired of "low budget fast meals". Quotes because I don't think that the meals that fall into this category are at all better than their "proper" counter parts.

Prepping a quick pasta with béchamel does not take long at all, and with a common pot and pan from Ikea or even Target or Walmart and a fork and knife, you have all you need. Prepping a quick pizza by hand, some general Wok style cuisine, etc, it's all quite fast once you learn a few things about how to prepare food.

I'm sure it's cliche, but watching Good Eats with Alton Brown a few times helped me understand why certain combinations work and gave me the confidence to understand how to make different things match. In particular, watching his episodes on knife skills helped me understand how to speed up a lot of prepping (an unabashed advertisement for Shun from Alton, but let's ignore that part) [0]

When I was still in the US, long and laborious kitchen exercises were glorified; the longer and more putzy the recipe, the more most people I know fawned over the idea of the meal, but I'm here to tell you that taking the time just to understand the basics of cooking, you don't need the blogpost 2 hour narrative story for cooking, it's very basic chemistry at its best. Some meals have unavoidable time and complications, and that's fine, but you can make very tasty, very healthy meals quite fast while listening to your favorite show or some music or even just enjoying the silence of the kitchen and the sound of the cooking.

> You can't just buy a slab of chicken breast, it needs to be trimmed and put away until ready to be used. Hardest of all: planning, what to do with it, what else goes with it.

Absolutely not true IMO, but I get where you might have this if you don't have a more European style city to live in. I do not pretend to guess where you are from, but usually I heard and hear this from people I know still in the US, and it's distinctly because of how US cities are built. In Europe and in quite a few Asian countries, proper grocers are a dime a dozen and every couple hundred meters. I stock the basics (flour, salt, spices, other grains, and some slow-perishing sauces like tomato paste) and buy perishables on the way home since there's a fully stocked market no bigger than a chinese takeout shop at the base of my apartment or < 200 meters from it.

The meat and produce I get are used immediately or over the next day for another meal, and it's very nice. Half of my lunch break for work is cooking, the second half eating a freshly cooked meal.

I really feel that there is a bit of a cult around cooking that wants to overcomplicate the process because complex == classy, and I need to stress that when you're first starting, it is going to be slower because you haven't developed your technique. It's the same reason you'll probably fall a lot when first learning to ice skate or why you'll sound like a drunk playing a guitar when you first learn. The good news is that even if the end result of your first few meals is ugly, likely it still tastes pretty good.

The time is very relative -- I'm monitoring a global market so I have 10+ hour days almost every day depending on how bad certain situations get, but I made cooking part of my skillset because I didn't want to be indebted always to food delivery. It absolutely is possible even for a family without a dedicated cook, and I think the first step most people need is admitting that it's not the time sink they make it out to be. Once you get a few basics, you are some sort of wizard to most people.

[0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPZFVjrlTo8

I'm in a suburb of a large metropolitan area in the US. The grocery store is abundant, but 20 minutes away, I make one main trip to the store weekly, and a couple of side trips to other stores, eg Mexican/Asian groceries. We have different POV because of our geographic differences, I think. I do not think complicated recipes are good in and of themselves.

Pasta + bechamel is easy, you can't do this 5 nights a week. I'm moving away from carbohydrate-rich main dish, more to grains and pulses. A slow-cooked shoulder of pork, like a cassoulet, is easy, yet still takes time to roast, then the meat separated from the connective tissues, the fat, then a stock reduction, then the beans. I offer it as an example of cheap, easy, tasty, and time and labor intensive dish. You need some greens to serve with it, and you can't prep greens 5 days ahead. I also don't want to eat this 10 meals in a row.

Edited to add: I find Gordon Ramsey YouTube videos quite instructive, his menu is simple and tasty. I got a lot of mileage out of his techniques.

Get a slow cooker. This allows you to arbitrage earlier time to do prep (before work, or during a break if WFH), set it up and forget about it for a few hours. As a bonus, it tends to taste good even if you don't pre sear or saute the ingredients.

+1 for the slow cooker. You can buy a smaller 2 liter one if you are concerned about space. There's a lot of benefits:

* Prepare huge amounts of meat (in the smallest one you can prepare up to a kg of meat). * Very simple meal prep. Plop some meat, throw some salt in, add some sauce (soy sauce, spicy or whatever you prefer), add some liquid (water usually) and turn it on. 5 minutes or less. * It never boils, so the water level never rises, avoiding spills (or having to even worry about it). So you can leave it overnight for the 8+ hour cooking process. * You can transform cheap, tough cuts of meat (like Gulash soup meat) into fantastic tasting dishes.

One of the best things about a slow cooker is that the meat softens up, it uniformly absorbs all seasoning, and it makes the meat release its best fatty flavour.

Having the right set of tools and prep space really is key. A good chefs knife, a cast iron pan, a fry pan, a pot, and cutting board is all you need. Learning good knife skills and having a good chef knife drastically speeds up prep time by 2-3x.

For example take dicing an onion. If you didn't know this technique it'd likely take you more than 30secs to dice an onion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuebC0CfD8E

If anyone here is new to cooking and wanting to start on a budget, you can easily get away with a cheap knife, cheap set of diamond stones, a cutting board, and an enameled dutch oven. $60-$100 after shipping and tax, and you'll be able to cook basically everything. The knife being sharp is much more important than it being high quality (being sharp is also not essential, but it makes a big difference).

If you want to splurge, I also like a few bamboo spoons.

Honestly for someone starting out I'd just tell them to get a fibrox and a pull through sharpener. $50 and you'll be good to go for years.

The $60-$100 counted the pot and cutting board. Totally agree that fibrox or something is plenty fine enough.

What's the argument for the pull-through sharpener? A decent enough set of stones is tiny, costs $15 after shipping, and isn't that hard to use. Are we just making sharpening as easy as possible so they don't give up?

Yes. I find the enthusiasm for wet stone sharpening to be overblown for beginners. It's so far down the list of things that will matter when cooking vs using an inexpensive knife and pull through. If you like the process that's fine, I just don't like it being turned around into a "you're doing it wrong if you use a pull through" expectation, when the root problem is 99% getting people to sharpen period.

> I didn't want to be indebted always to food delivery

I'd also suggest to actually calculate how much food delivery costs. I live in a relatively cheap European country, but even here getting two good meals delivered (i.e. not pizza or McD's) is close to 25€. Over a month that adds up to a not insignificant amount of my take home pay. Plus I find cooking is a really good way to forget about work and de-stress.

Some of the sister comments say you need a Dutch oven, knife sharpener, etc. This is honestly nonsense (see other comment threads about American culture over complicating recipes). The main tools I use are a knife and non-stick pan I got from a supermarket a few years ago (probably 15€ each) and they are perfectly fine. You don't need anything fancy to get started.

Frozen veggies sound like a good option for you. You can stock a wide variety, and the prep work is already done. They cook from frozen just fine. Steaming in a microwave with a closed bowl is particularly fast. Combine that with a protein you can pan fry, and you've got a decent meal in 10 minutes flat.

I also batch cook using sous vide. So I'll buy a bulk package of protein, then portion it into bags with various marinades or sauce bases. These don't have to be intricate or high effort, eg, I'll sometimes do a chicken tinga for tacos that's nothing more complex than a chicken thigh and a can of El Pato. I do a lot of variations of Thai curry that are just a thigh, some premade paste, and coconut cream, and maybe some aromatics if I feel fancy.

Anyhow, these all get batch cooked in the sous vide. It takes me around 10 minutes to process 10 lbs of chicken or such into 20 portions, usually 4 or so variations. Then into the freezer they go where they last indefinitely. I generally do about 2 to 3 batches this way per month. At any given time I have around 3 to 4 weeks of food ready to go in the freezer, with a wide variety of options, and all reflecting the nutritional balance I want.

So then how I use this on a day to day basis. Say I feel one of the Mussamum curries I made a couple months back. Even though it's not thawed I can plop it back in the sous vide to handle that. I load up the rice cooker at the same time. This takes all of 30 seconds, then I just ignore stuff for about 30 minutes. When ready I come back, pull the bag, and toss the contents into a skillet along with whatever selection of frozen veg I feel like. Adjust seasoning and then just simmer until the veg are where you want, about 5 minutes. Plate up with the rice.

So again, just because of how I've organized things, I've got a whole menu in that freezer that takes less than 15 minutes active time to get on a plate.

I wouldn't underestimate just how fast and breezy things can get once you figure out the patterns that work for you. And for me now this stuff is on auto pilot, so the active time involved doesn't feel like any particular effort. Honestly it reduces my stress levels quite a bit knowing I've got plenty of good food ready to go for weeks if I need to be a hermit for whatever reason. This whole approach particularly helped during the worst of COVID.

I saw in one of your other comments you mentioned Gordon Ramsey videos. He's very savvy as far as recipe concepts and knowing what will appeal. However a lot of his specific cooking advice is off the mark, or not particularly helpful for someone cooking at home vs in a classic french brigade kitchen.

I'd suggest checking out J Kenji Lopez-Alt's youtube channel. He's got a bunch of low key videos where he cooks various things, often using a POV camera. All his advice is grounded in modern food science vs some of the older folklore, and he has a very practical and unfussy mindset overall.

I would highly recommend https://factor75.com. A bit pricey, but the food is worth it.

(I've subscribed to Factor75 and am generally pleased with them)

Yes, the food seems a bit pricy... until I head out and eat at a restaurant. Its certainly more costly than raw ingredients and making it yourself - but in terms of "the cost vs eating out" it is rather competitive.

I'm also become a fan of Tovala ( https://www.tovala.com ). Their thing is that its a "smart toaster oven" which scans a barcode or QR code and can do a complex set of instructions at programmed times. The oven is substantially discounted, the menu is competitive with other prepared meals but its cooked rather than microwaved which provides a different set of food options. The preparation is "cut bag into aluminum tin" and "add sauce or seasoning". You then scan the QR code on the recipe and it does its thing for 15 to 20 minutes.

I don't live where Amazon has this as an option, but https://www.amazon.com/fmc/m/20190165?almBrandId=QW1hem9uIEZ... is something to look at too.

The primary advantage for me with both Factor and Tovala is that they have single serving sizes. Blue Apron appears to have added microwave meals to its menu... but its not quite the range of Factor and its non-microwave is still 2 or 4 with more meal prep than Tovala.

Also check out https://www.reddit.com/r/ReadyMeals/ for various reviews.

> I'm also become a fan of Tovala ( https://www.tovala.com ). Their thing is that its a "smart toaster oven" which scans a barcode or QR code and can do a complex set of instructions at programmed times.

Looks interesting, but for some unfathomable reason it requires WiFi access. So I assume it never disconnects and builds a giant database of everything you've ever cooked.

> So I assume it never disconnects and builds a giant database of everything you've ever cooked.

Possibly - and in today's world I'd even go with "probably." The "scan a UPC and get the 'how to cook'" needs some external access. I haven't decoded the QR code to determine if the recipe instructions is encoded in there, or if that's a lookup - I suspect its encoded rather than a lookup (and the QR code based meals appear to work without wifi).

The database, however, would only be useful/of the UPCs and raw ingredient based that you scan rather than the meal plan since with a meal subscription service, they've already got that data. And as a regular toaster oven, doing "bake 375°" isn't leaking any data about what you are eating.

I was huge fan of Factor but at least at the time (before the pandemic) their packaging was iffy and I'd often get a delivery where more than half of the meal trays where busted. I did Trifecta for a bit after, they've got robust packaging but the food wasn't nearly as good as Factor's.

Some (most) of this, I believe, is the issue of the delivery company.

As an anecdote, a few weeks ago, it was unseasonably warm (88°F at 8pm when I contacted Factor support) because the package hadn't been delivered yet. When it was delivered the next day (hadn't dropped below 80°F), and I opened it, the cold packs were completely depleted and I contacted support again and I was fully reimbursed for the meal. I haven't been disappointed by Factor, though I have been disappointed by the delivery company.

So eat a diet of mostly fruit (comes premAde from nature) and boiled potatoes. It’ll e x10 more healthy than the alternative nd save time

Meal Prep and Cooking can be a huge time sink, but it doesn't need to be. At the most basic level a meal kit service will save you substantial time.

Or just get a list of recipes you like and stick to them. Sure less meal diversity, but you can optimize your meals. For me it's generic salad (Lettuce, Tomato, Cucumber, Dressing, Cheese, Seeds), Rice Dish (Chicken, Beef, etc + Frozen Veggies), Smoothies w/Frozen Veggie and Fruit, ..etc.

I’m lazy and try to minimize food preparation time, and I don’t find it difficult. I don’t know how you define healthy, but I often just fry some steak or piece of fish in the pan with a side of frozen ready-made pre-seasoned vegetables in the microwave. It takes like ten minutes. Or a curry using a good curry paste with coconut milk and vegetables and/or meat, optionally some rice from the rice cooker, doesn’t take more than 20 minutes actual preparation time.

>I think what I really want is a work canteen, but open to the public

I think what I want is an ordinary, a set meal at a local tavern "ordained" at a time and price. I think restaurants evolved to serve a variety of dishes, where the ordinary (sometimes a bed and board place) served only one meal, but different meals on different days. I'd buy a subscription to a canteen style Bouchon, one meal a day, 30 different meals in a month, community table, water or BYOB.

By far the aspect of college life (USA) that I miss the most is this. The communal meal tables and optional community canteen subscription. I wish these kind of establishments were common across the USA.

Here in Spain this is a bit of a thing. You can get a three course meal for a fixed price of around 12 euro. Usually about 3-4 choices for each course that change each day. Pretty much every restaurant does this.

Problem is it's only for lunch time and eating the big meal of the day at lunch doesn't work for me :( I end up being hungry at night and having 2 big meals. Whereas a small lunch doesn't bother me.

Here me out: this sounds like an excuse. If you really want to solve it you could. I did.

I use a wok to cook and it's faster than going to McDonalds. It's slower than a frozen meal but not by much. I don't aim for perfection, rather, most of my meals I try and make healthy. I still love bacon.

In less than 10 minutes you can chop celery, broccoli, tofu, chicken, etc. If it takes longer then solve that problem: better knife, cutting board always handy? Chop faster, fingertips aren't that important.

Turn the wok up to 10,000 degrees and put a little avocado oil in there, throw it all in and stir. Put some low sodium soy sauce and monkfruit sweetener (if you want no sugar, otherwise brown sugar) and a little cornstarch+water too thicken. Ginger, whatever.

Anyway, you can make tons of variants of this dish. Curry, yakisoba, subgum chow mein. Almost all will be 90% vegetables. Do some rice or noodles with them.

Then solve salads. They are fast, easy, and can be delicious if you chop stuff up small and put a lot of variety. Keep trying different things. Watch YouTube videos about it. If you are thinking "I don't like salads" shut up. That's another excuse, there are an infinite number of ways to combine and prepare veggies.

Explore and solve the problem just like a crappy little software app that needs to be built. You just have to want it and be willing to learn.

You compared the cooking time to going to McDonald’s but didn’t include the time to go to the shops!

Or the cleanup afterwards, which is often the most unpleasant part of actually cooking.

If you're cooking well, almost everything is clean by the time you put food on a plate. If you immediately put leftovers away, the cleaning can be 100% done by the time you start eating

Exactly, if you know how to cook you do the cleaning while cooking.

It helps keeping things simple, like having a rice cooker, then you only need to concentrate on one pan and cleaning.

It's best to let hot foods cool a little bit before moving them to the refrigerator. They can be so hot that they'll warm up surrounding items, or in the freezer, you might end up actually thawing anything adjacent.

That really only matters if you’re putting quite a bit of food in the fridge/freezer. Think a large pot of stew. It’s more guidance for restaurants than people at home.

Most cooking shows or recipes make things too fancy. You can make many recipes with a pan, a spatula, a knife and cutting board. Prep, cook and clean in 10 minutes. Burgers, pasta with homemade sauce, chicken salad.

I can't even walk into mcdonalds and walk out with food that quick.

I agree. The complaint I don't have time seems like a very first world, and honestly very American, problem to have. There is batch prep, online food delivery, and simple one pot meals that can be either done in a slow cooker, or under 20 minutes.

Agreed. It’s like anything else, you find and make time. Meal prep is specifically designed for this.

We lived for a couple weeks in Nicaragua and we hired the sister of the guy who maintained the property to cook for us (an optional service we were quick to agree to). On the first day she cooked a big batch of black beans in a pot. She left the pot on the stove, and would briefly bring to a boil each morning and night, which eliminated the need for refrigeration. With each successive day she’d throw in a few things like green peppers, garlic, etc, and the beans also gradually broke down so the flavour just got better and better. So easy, so nutritious, super convenient…we in the developed world have forgotten so many techniques like this, to our detriment.

One pot weekly cooking. This is how i lived as a student, using only a crock pot.

very much so. i used to cook a couple times a week. big expensive protein. fancy sauces, a bottle of wine, and a nice salad.

strangely, my gall bladder needed to be removed.

while I was waiting for the surgery - it was brown rice and vegetables and maybe a little chicken. now its just brown rice (takes 30 minutes on an induction plate, edible for 48 hours), kimchi, and a little bit of this and that (tinned fish, fried egg, chicken)

I haven't gotten bored of it after 2 years. takes me about 30 minutes a week for cooking and cleaning up. i'm much more fit and I just never have to worry about food anymore.

in the US we're in some kind of highly inconvenient, expensive, and unhealthy minimum. fortunately it wont take much to bump us out into someplace more sane.

I think I am misunderstanding something, how did you cut your cooking/cleaning up time down to 4 minutes a day? And, are you eating the same food every day now?

sorry, I just eat a little bit of something and cook rice once every 2 days. yes, I eat largely the same food every day. I assumed that would drive me insane, but I just don't mind it. started squeezing half an avocado into every bowl, and that has been a big upgrade.

If it isn't balanced it can lead to health issues on the long term.

Nutrient deficiencies are associated with a longer lifespan, so I'm not sure there's a real reason for concern.

Do you mind providing a source for that as I cannot seem to find anything on a quick google search now?

is it longer lifespan or equal quality of life + longer lifespan?

Interesting, can you provide a source? I suspect you may be referring to calorie restricted and not nutrient deficient diets. The former may lead to a longer lifespan and a better health but the latter will lead to health issues or at least degrade your quality of life.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calorie_restriction#Life_exten...

Do you mean that it was always on ? To prevent bacteria you need to keep it above 65c or so to prevent bacteria. Heating it up once a day does kill bacteria but does not remove the toxic byproducts of bacteria which is what actually makes you sick.

No, they bring it up to temperature once per day. This is common practice around the world and quite safe.

Every time they heat the pot, it sterilizes it. It takes bacteria a significant time to recolonize a sterile pot, and it starts from a sterile state. As long as you re-sterilize (re-heat) it regularly, the bacteria won't have to time to colonize it in a meaningful way.

The downsides of this practice are not safety but the texture of the food, since repeated heating over many days tends to break it down into mush. On the other hand, it is well-known to improve the flavor of some dishes.

It’s true. When I cook I’m usually done faster than it takes to get delivery.

Your suggestions sound nice if you're a foodie. But as someone with zero interest in cooking it's just horrible having to think about it in the evening.

That’s what meal prep is for. You cook once or twice a week and meal prep batches for easy eating.

Understood but that doesn't solve the problem that I hate cooking :) Whether it's one big batch or not, it's still a super annoying chore.

It's just something that I'd love to outsource just like I don't do my own laundry either. Just for food there's not many healthy takeaway options.

I get it. One way you can speed things up is to have hot water on tap (either installed, or a cheap, separate hot water appliance) and then use it for dried items like miso soup packets or oatmeal. Then you can add items to it, like pre-chopped vegetables or fruit.

The time it takes to prepare the chopped veggies and fruit in advance is one thing, but think about the amount of time you are now saving for soups and breakfast items.

This is how I think about things like meal plan tacos and burritos. I spend twenty minutes preparing all the items in containers, pack them in the fridge, and then I have fresh veggie tacos and burritos for four days. All I do is microwave the tortillas.

The salsa and the beans will go bad before anything else, so I make sure to use those up in higher quantities than the other ingredients.

I also like to cook a huge pot of basmati rice, Spanish rice, and rice pilaf in advance, so I can make all sorts of dishes for about three days just by adding the other items listed above. When you get in the habit of this, you’re only really cooking for one hour every four days using the same pre-made ingredients. It’s a huge time saver, so it doesn’t feel like cooking at all.

Cooking can take a lot of time, but there are some tricks to make it more efficient.

1) Buy a large freezer. Then you can cook larger amounts, divide them into small boxes, and freeze them. That means you can have a cooked meal every day, without having to cook every day, or having to eat the same meal two days in a row.

A large freezer also allows you to buy ingredients when they are cheap, without having to consume them immediately. Peel them, cut them, freeze them. Later, take them out of the freezer and put them into boling water.

2) Be selective about the recipes. Some of them require 2 hours of work. Some of them only require 30 minutes, and 20 minutes of that is literally waiting. You can decide to only do the latter. And the waiting time can be spent doing something else.

3) While you cook, you can listen to a podcast or an audio book. Download some good stuff to your smartphone, or buy a wireless headset. Cooking for 2 hours can be fun, if you simultaneously listen to Joe Rogan.

An alternative is having someone to talk to. This may depend on how your house is organized. Sometimes the kitchen is at the opposite side from the living room; sometimes the two are connected. In the latter case, you can chat with someone while cooking.

I have found an air fryer is good to prepare meat that's juicy and doesn't take much work/skill to get it right beyond learning temperature & timing (and a bit about seasoning). Wish I had more freezer space/room for a chest freezer. I really feel you on the time/energy thing, though. It's just too damn easy to click an app and check out instead of planning a meal.

The canteens you mention already exist... in Brazil. It's called almoço por kilo (lunch by the kilogram). It's essentially a buffet where they weigh your plate. Almost everyone seems to eat lunch at a place like that.

I wish they were more common in the USA. I guess there are some things that are close, but it's just not common.

Time is always a prioritization issue, not actually a time one.

You'd prefer to do more work or watch netflix instead

> I think what I really want is a work canteen, but open to the public. The economies of scale could make this price competitive and there’s less delivery overhead than the meal prep subscriptions. I like the social aspect too. I would definitely pay a subscription to a canteen.

This would be amazing yes. I don't know why it's not a thing.

It's normal not to do your own books. To fix your own heater. To milk your own cow. In fact I don't even do my own laundry, because there's a shop around the corner that washes, dries and folds a whole bag for 10 bucks. Nobody frowns at that. But not wanting to cook is viewed as really weird.

I just really hate cooking and when I do I do it irritated and in a hurry so it turns out crap.

Not disputing any of this, but this has nothing to do with food security itself. All those cheap recipes still require grains and basic food stuffs whose supply are threatened. Whether you buy it locally or abroad, the supply is fungible enough to effect costs.

> I bake my own bread

Hear hear! I bake once a week, sourdough is my white whale, I've never made a good one, the lean crusty breads need a good commercial oven to turn out a good crust. The home ovens (even with crazy modifications for steaming) don't do as well. Alas, if anything is most anti-adapted to time-saving automation it's cooking and baking. I can spend 8+ hrs a weekend (yes, that's right, 8+) for food prep or spend that on more technical endeavors. I think about that trade-off frequently. It's not the cost, it's because the alternative is terrible nutrition.

If you want a good crust, put a Dutch oven in your oven as it’s warming up, so that it also gets hot, then take it out, drop the dough into it (has to be low hydration to keep shape), cover with lid and put it back into oven. This will keep the steam inside the Dutch oven. In my experience, it actually makes it so crusty that I take it out of Dutch oven halfway to not overdo it.

Yes, I'm using this method. The downside is I can only bake 1 loaf at a time, limited by the size of the Dutch oven, and no baguette. :(

Did this for a while but also wanted to do two loaves at once. I started baking on a steel plate and added a tray with water soaked lava rocks in the oven. It turns out pretty much the same as baking in the Dutch oven for me.

This is why you buy a second Dutch oven :-) maybe a slightly different size, so it’s convenient for eg smaller dishes, if your first is on the big side.

And cooking requires a good amount of physical activity, like kneading dough. So it's a kind of small workout for me.

>lots of low quality carbs with cheap fat and artificial flavorings and not a whole lot of nutritional value.

> So, low quality industrial food products getting more expensive isn't necessarily a bad thing. It might prompt people to spend their money more wisely

Everything is getting more expensive, so people will focus even more on buying cheap.

My point is that buying smart actually means you get more for less. People buy the easy stuff which tends to be priced accordingly.

With respect, you don't get more for less unless you are willing to forgo meat and make your own from scratch semi-vegan options.

Before you all clamor over organics, I'm going to leave some evidence to ponder.

The food shortages in Sri Lanka are primarily due to ditching industrial agriculture in favor of organic: https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/03/05/sri-lanka-organic-farmi...

We depend on industrial food processes to create the yields necessary to support society. Organic food does NOT provide commensurate food security.

And conventional/industrial won't provide longterm, sustainable food security either. There are too many people to sustainably support.

This isn't a counter point to organic agriculture but against idiotic policies.

Everybody who has even a passing knowledge of the subject knows that yields drop in the first few years. Especially when the necessary knowledge about local resistant varieties, supporting crops, natural ways to deal with pests were lost over the years.

Just reading the setup it was clear what would happen. It was like blindfolding a formula 1 driver and telling him to go full speed. The crash would not be a surprise. I would have been stunned had it worked.

Let me provide a more scientific counter point regarding yields comparing different types of agriculture [0].

[0]: https://rodaleinstitute.org/science/farming-systems-trial/

No till farming (which isn't the same as organic farming), requires a lot of knowledge and experience. You can't just take people's synthetics away and expect them to immediately know how to improve their soil quality.

Over the short term, conventional farming will give you higher yields. Over the long term, no till farming will give you higher profits because you aren't depleting the soil and therefore won't need to move to a different location.

> You'll save money and eat better.

Yes, of course, if you're willing to trade your time into these things, you can generally end up with an output that is less expensive. The question, as always, is the amount of time required worth the trade?

> You'll save money and eat better.

The amount of my diet that is bread is so small that this really has no measurable impact on my life, and certainly wouldn't be worth the prep, cook and cleanup time required.

I just always dislike the suggestion that you have to become an "artisan chef" to be able to eat well at home. There are plenty of whole and locally made products at your local grocery that you can make great meals out of with very little time involved.

A bagged loaf of bread, some deli sliced meat and cheese, maybe some greens and you've got everything you need for great sandwiches all week that take less than 5 minutes to prepare and serve. You're not sacrificing anything by doing this.

You're right, becoming an artisan chef takes too much time for the average person. I never managed a sourdough, but I was surprised how easy it is to make simple French bread. 5-10min to prep the dough, another 5min over the next couple hours to manage the rising and baking process. Adding a little water in a tray below the bread in the over gives it a nice crust. It's actually ridiculously easy. Naan-like flatbread is really simple as well.

I agree. Tonight I went outside into the greenhouses, took a knife and cut a few leaves of different salad varieties. Went back to the kitchen to let them water a bit in the sink to remove a bit of dirt, dust and a few insects.

Took three minutes.

While the leaves were in the water I quickly did a bit of work for a client that I put off over the weekend but wanted to finish before the week started. Went back to the kitchen afterwards.

Washed the salad again, dry tumbled it, cut a tomato, put two slices of bread into the toaster and prepared the dressing from joghurt, olive oil and balsamic vinegar all bought directly from the producer. Crumbled a bit of feta over the salad, put the dressing over it and a bit of salt and had a very fresh and extremely tasty meal within less than ten minutes.

This was extremely fast food, while still matching the slow food philosophy. And I enjoyed it tremendously.

I know that this is pure luxury. Not everybody has a garden to grow their own food. And not everybody has a SO that infected them with the bug for heirloom varieties of vegetables and salads. And I also know that gardening isn't for everybody. To me it is relaxation as contrast to staring at a screen the whole day.

My SO also bakes bread but we have a great organic local bakery that we get our daily regular bread from. Baking is more for fun.

This reads like a bad attempt at comedy. There is fear of global starvation and you recommend baking your own bread and a more mindful lifestyle, even including the stereotype of poor people in poor countries living in harmony with nature.

Just to be clear: rising prices doesn't mean it gets more expensive to eat. It means it's getting more expensive to eat until it is expensive enough to no longer be affordable for some people to eat.

Yes, a lot of food is also wasted, and meat production is always wasteful. It is perfectly possible to envision a world where everyone is fed even under current conditions. But its delusional to believe this crisis will easily reshuffle everything and immediately lead to that outcome.

My family bakes our own bread. The kids really don't like store-bought bread unless it's the super expensive stuff. We prepare all of our own meals. We use relatively generic flour that comes in 5 pound bags.

The main thing I've learned is:

Get over everything having to be as yummy as prepared food, unless you're willing to hire a psychologist and a chemist, and a cardiologist. You're paying for that stuff twice: First to consume it, second, to get rid of it in the gym.

Get over the need for infinite variety. My family has a number of meals that we can prepare quickly from whatever's in the fridge. Tofu or beans figure into nearly every meal.

Figure out shortcuts and substitutions.

No knowledge worker really works productively more than about 5 hours per day. It's not like the rest of someone's time is credibly all that valuable.

> lots of low quality carbs with cheap fat and artificial flavorings and not a whole lot of nutritional value

I agree that highly processed foods are likely not an optimal diet, but this perspective is just pseudoscience. Macronutrients are macronutrients, and they don’t come in high and low quality versions. While something like eating too much sugar isn’t healthy, we don’t have a problem of food lacking sufficient nutritional value. The developed world has problems with overconsumption and sedentary lifestyles, but not with micronutrient or caloric deficiency.

Making food is not hard but to me it's boring as hell. I don't want to be spending an hour doing that (including cleanup) after a work day. Especially because I live alone. So no, I take the premade stuff.

I just wish better premade was available.

To your point, a couple+ years ago I read that internationally, more people die prematurely from consuming too much "food" than not enough.

Mind you that might now change. Nonetheless no one panicked when too much "food" was the problem.

I agree with much of your sentiment but I don't think it actually addresses food security unless you're talking about stockpiling wheat to last through a bad year. Buying wheat flour instead of wheat bread doesn't help in case of a real wheat famine. The big processors orders will be filled first, and the market shelves will be empty. Whole product lines will disappear with consolidation. Many people were completely unable to buy flour during the grocery-shock of pandemic. I had to stop baking during the pandemic.

When food security is truly tested people are going to be in for a nasty surprise. If bread runs out, people will collectively buy out the whole aisle. Then the whole baking aisle, then the rest of grocery store. Then people start eating sawdust and leather.

Those long-term purchase contracts (futures) are only one side of the hedge. We’re not getting the full story.

https://extension.missouri.edu/publications/g603

I find two things funny... it might be a local thing (i'm from slovenia) but yeah...

1) gas was ~1.5eur here, then it fell to 1.0eur during the plague, and there were zero price drops beacause of that, and when the price started rising to 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 eur, everybody (farmers, retailers) started complaining about increasing gas prices and how that will result in higher consumer prices (even before we hit the price a year before that).

2) farmers complain about low prices they get from processors (and retailers).. then you want to buy meat directly from them, and their price is usually a lot higher than in-store price (even though there are usually two or more middle-men between them and the store), and you cannot choose anything... want steaks? Want beef thigh? Hah, good luck.. you can only buy 10, 20kg+ of "mixed beef", where 90% is "meat for goulash" (hard, cheap cuts) and 10% bones for soup. So yeah... it's Aldi for me.

Also, there were farmers complaining that they had a bunch of food that they had to throw away because of the plague (eg. contract with school, school closed, a few tons of salad had to be thrown out)... noone offered for people to come buy stuff directly from them at whatever cheap price,.. in the meantime in-store prices were relatively expensive for that same salad.

Sounds like the ideal is to frame the food system after the US medical system.

You can't find out what something is going to cost until after you've eaten it. You have to have food consumption insurance to get things at reasonable cost. Food insurance companies charge astronomical rates unless you're part of some group plan.

Or regulate price transparancies... how much does the farmer get, how much the processor, how much the retailer, and how much goes to taxes.

Then the government will need to admit much of a price tag is taxes, probably 1st after taxes.

People have been waking up to this during the current gas price crisis... governments say they're doing everything they can, but they can't do more, because of the global oil prices,...

...meanwhile more than half of the gas price goes to the government, and people are notcing.

The idea of a federal gas tax holiday has apparently been floating around DC lately, but I'm pretty skeptical that they'll be able to return to full taxes without significant pushback.

How is a market price distortion (artificially lowering gas prices through tax cuts) supposed to solve the gas price crisis? You want people to use less gas, so there is more left over for the industries that actually need it. You don't want consumers to use subsidized gas wastefully.

You also want people to be able to get to work and not freeze to death in their apartments, and still be able to afford food after that.

It's not a gas crisis, there's enough gas, it's a politics crisis.

In the US, the federal gas tax has been 18.4 cents per gallon since 1993.

If anything, they are losing money with inflation and the decreased demand that higher fuel prices will create.

States also charge tax on gas.

For example, California charges both $0.539 per gallon AND sales tax. The latter varies based on city/county/district and is charged on the "after per-gallon tax" price.

The total sales tax in San Jose is 9.375%, so $6.50 at the pump includes $0.557 in sales tax. (The "at the pump" price includes sales tax.)

That's a total of $1.096/g state and local for $6.50/g at the pump.

Add in the federal $0.184/g and the total tax is $1.28/g on $6.50/g gas in San Jose.

There may also be permit fees.

This depends on the country.

In slovenia we had regulated gas prices until 2020 - https://www.gov.si/assets/ministrstva/MGRT/Dokumenti/DNT/cen... [docx]

If we look at the last price (top row), the price (without any taxes) was 0.395eur/l. Then they add (in column order) CO2 tax, "saving energy tax", excise duty ("trošarina"), "tax to help electricity production", and VAT (DDV), bringing the total price to 1.00eur. The total of taxes added is ~153% of the base price (0.395 without -> 1eur with tax).

Farmers expect you to pay extra for the inconvenience, in addition to already cutting out the middle-men. Same thing everywhere I've been in more developed countries across North America and Asia. Even Bali.

The most charitable interpretation is that farmers are simply not as optimized as grocery stores, resulting in a higher overall cost.

Well, it's also that the people with the time and mobility to drive up to farms to buy local organic produce also tend to be price insensitive, so it makes sense for the farmer to price accordingly.

This also applies to wineries: buying a bottle directly at the cellar door is almost always more expensive buying it at $LIQUOR_SUPERSTORE, but the people plonking down $100 for a bottle don't care, so this is a perfectly sensible pricing strategy.

Economies of scale strike again it seems, for #2. Cows are big. 20 kilograms is practically nothing and the efficency is low at very small scales. Consumers often operate under the delusion that cost is fixed per item in all locations, at all levels of demand and any increased prices are pure opportunism.

It's not just cows.. it's potatoes too... they pick up potatoes and have a warehouse full of them, you want to buy a sack (5, 10kg) from them, and they offer you a price, again, higher than aldi. And i'm talking about the same farmers who sell their produce to aldi and complain about how little money they get from aldi and how (relatively) high the price in aldi is.

I understand that a cow is a logistic process, where after slaughter, you have to get rid of the whole cow, not just the "best parts", but selling potatos is literally just packing a bag and weighing them, but nope...

Same with apples in the autumn, complain about low prices from companies, then not wanting to sell them at retail price (with two middlemen gone).

Whenever I buy a side of beef from a local farmer, I pay the farmer and then pay the butcher. I believe the butcher deals with the “not best parts” much more often than the farmer does, but I’m not an expert and this is an n=1 data point.

It's possible that direct buyers are subsidizing the aldi prices. It's basically a donation to keep the farm alive at that point.

Farmers aren't salespeople. They often don't want to deal with the hassle of selling a part here, a part there. You want a tenderloin? What is the farmer supposed to do with the rest of it?

Far easier, more predictable and less wasteful of the animals to sell the entire lot to processors, who then deal with butchering, packaging and distributing individual cuts for them.

I could do one off short term programming contracts, but my customers would definitely pay much more for the overhead of me making a living that way vs simply getting a salaried job.

This is how futures contracts are supposed to work. The times when these contracts made the farmers extra money at the expense of the consumer should make up for this time.

We hope these are Futures; it sounded like GPs farmer may have Forward contracts. If this is the case, it would make more sense for the Farmer to bail on the contract if prices get too far out. (a.k.a. counterparty risk) That would be bad.

If you sold futures for your outputs and didn’t buy futures for your inputs, the results are on you. These are the kind of complaints you get from people who make market bets and end up wrong. You can use futures like insurance to insulate yourself from market fluctuations or you can use them like a casino.

You're spinning it like a matter of choice, but I would doubt that it is.

The farmers probably can't sell their product any other way than as futures; and can't buy energy any other way than at the current market price.

That would mean the actual choice involved is just the choice to go into the farming business. Not exactly fair to compare that to casino betting.

Untrue on both counts. Source: generational small farmer in exile.

Does that mean this market is missing an entity that helps farmers buy energy futures?

It isn’t though this person is just guessing incorrectly that it does not exist. Like any business buying supplies, farmers can buy things ahead of time at fixed prices.

In theory, you are correct.

In practice, hedging for increases in fuel prices means buying something like oil futures.

Which requires you to be at terminal at some port city 6 months down the line to physically collect the oil/gasoline/whatever that you bought. And then store it for the months before you use it.

It really doesn’t, you don’t buy fuel on the futures market, you buy it locally from the coop or whatever local purveyor you use for future delivery, hundreds of gallons at a time.

The same for your other inputs, you have contacts to buy them well into the future, you don’t just pay the market rate when you need it.

Commodities futures are just like gold based money. The gold itself wasn't traded, it sat locked in a vault somewhere. People traded receipts for the gold. I.e. that's what banknotes literally used to be.

Eh, while there is quite a lot of speculation-only trading, unless you're dealing with cash-settled futures, if you forget to close out your position you'll be expected to, say, deliver or take delivery on 5000 bushels of corn.

Commodities futures are heavily used to arrange actual exchange of goods and aren't abstractions but real contracts.

That is true right up until the day the contract comes due. Then you need to pick up your oil, pork, OJ, etc. at the time and place specified in the contract. If you holds the contract at that point in time, you are responsible for picking it up at the place in space.

Why can't you buy cash settled futures and/or liquidate before due for delivery?

Why? Wouldn't a farmer just buy the futures contract (or an option on it), then liquidate and use the profit to offset the loss on the spot purchase? I was under the impression that hedgers never take delivery.

Hedges who sit in an office at Wall street never take delivery.

If you're a person who actually needs the future, you need to take delivery. This makes sense on an industrial mega-farm scale, but doesn't make sense at the private-farm scale.

I actually have a very specific story on this one from a friend.

In Australia, there's this stereotype of the "hard working Aussie battler farmer" and that we should all support our farmers. My friend's family business was one of these growing a type of nut. It was common for neighbouring farmers to make a good living selling their produce and using it for their own purposes and expect the government to bail them out with something like a tax break.

My friend's business wanted to prepare for water shortages and spent a huge amount of money setting up a dam or storage system of sorts. Lo and behold, a drought came some time after and they were prepared. A lot of other businesses did not prepare for this and instead spent it on other things. My friend mentioned to me that he has no sympathy for those types of people.

Disclaimer: This is a generic statement, I did not pry into the story and there could be a multitude of reasons why one didn't/couldn't prepare for such a thing

Yep. I'm from a region that grew sugarcane historically but is moving to tree crops like nuts.

Local 'big name' family is voracious in their consumption of government grants. They're not struggling by any means but they've got application writing down to a fine science.

Grants are for claiming. Why leave money on the table? Your competitors won't.

> expect the government to bail them out

…

> A lot of other businesses did not prepare for this

So did the government bail them out?

I didn't follow up with them on that. But the discussion was initially sparked because we were watching the news and the story was about how hard the farmers are doing due to the drought and were looking for government assistance.

that was my initial thought as well, but you are limited by the availability of financial instruments as you move up the chain to inputs. Outputs are easy to craft instruments around, but inputs are what a business is.

Instead of financial instruments they are actual contracts for purchasing a commodity in the future from a local purveyor.

Without a futures market, you don't get futures, you get forwards, don't you? Forwards don't have enforcement for when the seller goes bankrupt, which leaves the buyer out any money paid in the forward contract and needing to find another supply at market price. That's my understanding, at least.

Calling them forwards implies that they are tradable securities.

I’m talking about going to the local farmers coop and purchasing next years fertilizer, fuel, etc. months in advance for a set price to be paid and delivered in the future.

When you sell your outputs it’s a good idea to buy your inputs at the same time. The outputs are often exchange traded commodities, the inputs are often contract purchases with local dealers although you can also hedge with appropriate exchange traded commodities.

>Without a futures market, you don't get futures, you get forwards, don't you? Forwards don't have enforcement for when the seller goes bankrupt, which leaves the buyer out any money paid in the forward contract and needing to find another supply at market price. That's my understanding, at least.

Correct. You have an over the counter market with different derivatives.

> Forwards don't have enforcement for when the seller goes bankrupt, which leaves the buyer out any money paid in the forward contract and needing to find another supply at market price. That's my understanding, at least.

You're referring to counter party risk. A futures exchange seeks to eliminate this type of risk with daily settlement of positions, margins, etc.

There are futures to hedge inputs, especially for farming:

- Diesel for tractors

- Fertilizers

- The weather itself

- interest rates

- real estate

AFAIK the only inputs without derivatives are labor cost and pesticides.

A.) you are expecting farmers to be quants, B.) There are 10000 more inputs to farming than what you described. Labor being a major one.

Financier: "Well Jim, I know you were focused on digging the irrigation for your farm but with 'Free Money' in the economy, valuations for real estate and other commodities were going to rise. The Delta's on your futures were all out of wack!" Jim: "What's a delta?"

The bigger players hedge all of this in the futures markets. I think this is an understated reason why smaller players struggle to compete in modern agriculture. Maybe a cool startup idea? Managing agricultural hedging for owner operators?

Interesting idea! Reminds me of a podcast I was listening to:

>...if we want to understand the economic geography and political paths and political stability of a country, we need to understand what commodities they started out with. What this led me to do, and how I got started on the path of studying war, actually, is by realizing that some commodities are just hugely volatile in price for various circumstances, and some are not.

>So, if we wanted to understand long-term paths of development and why some places weren’t prosperous, it’s because they lost the commodity lottery, and they got a volatile commodity rather than a stable one.

https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/chris-blattman-w...

When I heard this, I immediately thought: "Why don't countries selling volatile commodities just hedge?" I wonder if "commodity hedging for the masses" could be one of those things like mobile money which has a transformative effect on the global poor.

(Of course, you could also imagine the government of a country that exports something volatile hedge that commodity and buy the production of its people in lean times in order to keep things stable)

> the current climate allows price increases and thus an increase in margins.

I just want to point out and emphasize that this is literally saying "companies can raise prices right now because they feel like it." This is not how a "free market" is supposed to work.

Free markets never work when the players get too big to fail. It happened for banks, it happened for tech and it's happening to food.

Right. And that "when" is actually "always, eventually," because free markets create concentration of wealth (in practice, not in theory, which implies the theory isn't all that useful). So, you might as well modify this to "free markets never work in the long run."

Maybe they will also go organic and stop being tied to big food though. That would be a good thing. This system sounds really skewed and the farmers will always get the short end of the stick until they get out of it.

You blamed the speculators, but when a farmer locks in long term prices, he is also speculating in futures.

If you lock in both your costs and your profits, it's the opposite of speculation.

You're speculating that the price you "lock in" will be advantageous to you in the future.

It's the same as buying options in the stock market.

Another: https://jeffreycarter.substack.com/p/no-one-is-talking-about...

Few seem to want to talk about this, they want to talk about how coming shortages will best be solved by giving them power or at the least listening to their advice.

For all the "Baby formula shortage" media coverage, how many stories have included a recipe for alternatives to commercial formula? Mostly I've seen admonitions to not try making baby food at home, which is incredibly useless for people trying to feed kids.

I'm seeing fields choked with weeds, because the Crop Production company that leases the land decided they're doing half a "no till" planting this year without herbicide; because that'll get them their crop failure insurance payment. I suspect they will bail on some of next year's leases or at least lower rates because of reduced fertility, too.

"Fertilizer export restrictions" started happening last fall; this was all visible writing on the wall well before Ukraine got invaded. It sounds "conspiracy theorist" to say there's a plan in operation; but it's hard to say that there is not.

I would be interested in reading more of what you are reading.

The fertilizer problems started with sanctions on Belarus which is 20% of the worlds potash as in potassium market, and got dire due to China, the US and Europe all messing up their natural gas markets. That's used to supply hydrogen atoms for the first step of nitrogen fertilizer, the most used by weight, in the Haber process which makes ammonia (NH3) using nitrogen from the air. A lot of entities, not just "Crop Production companies" are doing suboptimal things for the food supply due to the fertilizer crisis.

As for stores not providing baby formula recipes, I'd imagine they're worried about liability, and there are of course many other sources for them. Really, due to the Federal government's WIC program which is half the market, its import restrictions, and messed up FDA regulation it should be on them.

I say messed up because the FDA demonstrably wasn't serious about dealing with the Abbott Labs plant problem or getting it fixed quickly based on the timeline starting with the whistle blower, while they make it very hard to get into the business. Or the USDA's problem due to their policy of forcing states to grant a WIC monopoly to one formula manufacturer resulted in three companies having almost all the total US market with Abbott having the largest share, at the same time US prices being double those of Europe. Which isn't as strict about food safety but still seems to do OK.

A serious country would have done something to mitigate the shortage after they closed down Abbot's huge factory before there were bare shelves for months and it became a political problem in an election year.

Much of the regulations in the USA are mainly now used to keep the main businesses in those markets safe from competitors.

I'd strip the "now" from your statement, this goes back at least to the 1887 Interstate Commerce Commission and many subsidy attempts which generally didn't produce economically viable railways or steamship lines.

Regulatory capture is a universal problem as long as a government is involved in an economy, and it has to be if for no other reason than to collect taxes.

There's a term for this: Crony Capitalism

And before that, fascism Italian style, or national syndicalism as I see Wikipedia calls it. Hard to say we in the US aren't already there in many sectors where big companies work hand in glove with the Federal government such as much of the "surveillance state." Which the companies don't have much choice in acquiescing to unless their leaders want to end up in Federal prison like Qwest's Joseph Nacchio.

Going back to farming, the Federal government assumed near total control over a great of it in the New Deal, down to how much you could charge for selling a kosher chicken (A.L.A. Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States "the surname Schechter means "slaughter" in Yiddish, and specifically refers to a ritual slaughterer") and the two have been inextricably linked since then.

And until about now things have been a lot better, for before WWII at the same time food production was limited by diktat and there were newsreels of it being destroyed, the USDA also believed about a quarter of the nation was malnourished which was confirmed in the WWII draft. Which I've read was major factor in establishing the school lunch program.

With a century of experience with the US government policies bringing damage to the country’s food supply, I don’t understand why so many people think that FDA is somehow good now.

They could solve the baby formula immediately by just allowing import of European baby formula. Sure, it’s not been vetted by FDA, but unless you believe French or German babies are malnourished en masse, this is scarcely a good reason to prevent import in time of shortage.

Almost all (if not all) government regulatory agencies like the FDA has as their primary goal “no blame shall ever be possible to ascribe to us bureaucrats”. If they don’t emergency waiver European food then they can’t be blamed if something were to go wrong with it.

And if babies die of malnutrition that’s not their fault and won’t affect their performance review.

> There are rumors of diesel shortages and urea shortages. In order to operate a diesel engine on the road you have to use DEF fluid which is urea.

This isn't strictly true, you can remove the DEF emissions control system from most trucks for a small price and this even yields a small performance gain. In my state, this is quite common as there is no emissions testing. The emphasis on diesel/DEF shortages is greatly exaggerated and somewhat misguided, I think.

You can do a "DEF delete," but if you are caught you will be paying some major fines for EPA violations that will quickly exceed the value of the truck.

Do the DOT inspections at weigh stations not check for this? I know that older trucks are grandfathered as they never had it; generally vehicles are required to have all the original emissions controls intact.

You also will need to know how to reflash the engine computers, which will not be happy if expected emissions equipment is simply removed.

I think the point is that if there's a urea shortage, good governments would waive the DEF requirement until it ends, rather than effectively saying "sorry, it's illegal for you to drive that truck at any price".

> I think the point is that if there's a urea shortage, good governments would waive the DEF requirement until it ends,

Automotive EE here, this will ABSOLUTELY NOT happen.

Oh, I have no delusions that it will happen. I also have no delusions that our government is good.

It obvious possible to run diesel with out DEF.

And you “can” remove the def systems and cats.

But the real story is that all diesels on the road now use DEF/EGR systems and that isn’t going to change because of a shortage.

> For all the "Baby formula shortage" media coverage, how many stories have included a recipe for alternatives to commercial formula? Mostly I've seen admonitions to not try making baby food at home, which is incredibly useless for people trying to feed kids.

Thanks for pointing this out. It's like we've forgotten how to function as humans in some respect.

Baby formula isn't some magical combination of ingredients. And I get it, authorities are wary to recommend recipes because of the risk of people fucking it up. But when people are out of options they'll likely make worse decisions, like watering down formula.

Baby formula isn't some magical combination of ingredients.

Some of it is for those with metabolic problems. Abbott makes one type which very recently the government has taken action about, but each recipient has be vetted to get it, I believe it's from non-FDA regulated production in Europe.

I mean, that's fine, but how many babies need that kind of formula? And parents with babies that do need that kind of formula are probably well aware of that.

If you Google "how to make homemade baby formula", basically every article is how experts strongly recommend against it. And there are articles like "Why following TikTok influencers' baby formula recipes is a terrible idea."

No shit following TikTok baby formula recipes is a horrible idea. But if a detailed recipe for age-appropriate "standard" baby formula were published by experts, my guess is that it wouldn't contain fairy dust.

I can commiserate somewhat with these "experts", though, because this is a fairly common case where what is good advice for an individual can be bad advice for the masses. That is, if you're a reasonably intelligent person, it's probably not that hard to make your own baby formula. But if, say, at least 20% of people are not reasonably intelligent, experts will err on the side of "lowest common denominator" advice.

Exactly, babies have been eating for an extremely long time, far longer than boxes and bottles have been around and filled with the "only way to feed the babies".

In the old days, the alternative to store bought baby formula has not been a home-made one, it has rather been a wet nurse. At the time, people had more kids, so there were usually wet nurses available close by.

Goats milk

Which is associated with anemia in infants....

In the pediatrician's advice I link to in this subthread, there's a "Common mistakes to be aware of at all ages" section, and about that:

"Goat's milk contains very little folate and its use as a primary calorie source causes megaloblastic anemia."

Cows milk over 32 oz/day will cause iron deficiency, and "In children this is a hypercoagulable state and can cause cerebral venous sinus thrombosis. I have see this."

Substitutes for human milk designed for human consumption turn out not to be trivial.

Also, many kids died.

Babies have also been dying for a very long time too. I would be wary of citing it. Some people also have damned good reasons not to breastfeed like medication or diseases that would spread via milk.

When a mother doesn't want to or cannot safely breastfeed there is still actual food that a baby can eat. This isn't nearly as daunting or complicated as it may appear at first glance. People really have been doing this for a long time - safely without their babies dying.

I've seen people here say they have learned how to feed their babies on tiktok. For a place better than tiktok, there is a ton of information on WebMD showing how to quickly and safely make baby food.

google.com/search?q=webmd+baby+food+recipes

This is about babies that are ready to transition to solid foods. Not a replacement for formula.

That might be what you want to comment about, but that isn't what "the thread is about." The thread has been discussing a shortage of formula and the safety and efficacy of replacing formula with a different substance for babies to eat.

I mean your link. You seem to think that webmd article describes how to make baby formula. It does not. It describes how to transition your baby to solid foods once it is ready. They’re not the same thing. If you follow the recipes there for a young baby you will likely kill the baby.

>I mean your link. You seem to think that webmd article describes how to make baby formula.

I'm not sure what you saw, but I never posted a webmd link.

> For a place better than tiktok, there is a ton of information on WebMD showing how to quickly and safely make baby food.

> google.com/search?q=webmd+baby+food+recipes

Extremely likely that the first hit will be: https://www.webmd.com/baby/how-to-make-baby-food

Even if you’re going to pretend this isn’t what you meant, the claim that web md has a ton of information on how to make baby food is false, in the context of formula.

> Even if you’re going to pretend this isn’t what you meant, the claim that web md has a ton of information on how to make baby food is false, in the context of formula.

I'm not pretending anything. Look at what I wrote (which you actually quoted). "For a place better than tiktok, there is a ton of information on WebMD showing how to quickly and safely make baby food."

I put the link for a google search and referenced the list of results. You chose to only look at the first result to feed a baby. Did you click the button, "I'm Feeling Lucky" that automatically takes you to the first link? That's completely unreasonable and not why I posted that search.

Furthermore, I never said that WebMD shows how to make baby formula.

No, I think you’re full of shit and trying to change your story. Show me the web md link that’s shows you how to quickly and safely make baby food that you intended to demonstrate with your link. Explain how it makes sense contextually for the shortage of formula, which you yourself pointed out was the issue at hand.

A baby dying of starvation is probably much worse than the risk of giving it wrong formula. And have you ever heard a hungry baby crying? It's not something you can wait long for.

Elsewhere in this discussion there's a Reddit posting by a pediatrician https://www.reddit.com/r/medicine/comments/uvcijm/a_pediatri.... Under four months, home made formula:

"Often has a dangerously different osmolality. Infants eat whatever they are given and have dumb kidneys, so are prone to hyponatremia or hypernatremia and every pediatrician has seen a baby die this way. Don’t do it."

See that and other discussions here about the differences between infant (above) and toddler formula.

> Often has a dangerously different osmolality

That makes sense, but again, for anyone who has ever taken a chemistry class, creating a solution with a known osmolality is not difficult - basically all you need is a scale. But I also don't doubt that rando TikTok recipes are wildly dangerous.

And the age range argument doesn't really make sense if there were a standard recipe for "human breast milk replacement". I'm pretty sure human breast milk doesn't change composition as a child ages, and no one is arguing you can't breast feed toddlers because the milk is for the wrong age.

Commercial formula kinda is a magical combination of ingredients, including a substantial number of supplements that aren’t gonna be available to home cooks. It’s better to substitute homemade than water down formula, no doubt, but you can understand why newspapers don’t want to publish a recipe knowing that it will send some number of babies to the doctor with an iron deficiency.

> Commercial formula kinda is a magical combination of ingredients, including a substantial number of supplements that aren’t gonna be available to home cooks.

Do you have a citation for that? I see all these articles that just say "don't try it yourself, it's too hard", but I'd like to know which specific ingredients are impossible to obtain.

I wouldn't claim that the required supplements are literally not available on the commercial market, but the FDA requirements (https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfcfr/cfr...) include over a dozen nutrients to track, some within a relatively narrow safety range. It's not practical to expect that stressed, busy new parents are gonna buy all these supplements, much less break out their scales and carefully measure 2-7 micrograms of selenium per 100 kcal.

It's surprising our species made it the first 8 million years without the FDA...

A lot of us didn’t! Infant mortality used to be orders of magnitude higher, and malnutrition in babies who couldn’t be breastfed adequately was a big contributor.

Now imagine if they had cheap vegetables, milk and blenders.

This is very dangerous. Do not give advice on things you don’t know. It’s not just a vague nutrition profile you’re trying to hit.

Stop being ridiculous. It's not advice, it's an argument. Find your revipes elsewhere.

Well it’s a shit argument. You cannot create safe baby formula with vegetables and a blender.

> It's not practical to expect that stressed, busy new parents are gonna buy all these supplements, much less break out their scales and carefully measure 2-7 micrograms of selenium per 100 kcal.

Brown Rice contains selenium. Even when not breastfeeding, real foods contain micro and macro nutrients that are beneficial for babies.

> Brown Rice contains selenium. Even when not breastfeeding, real foods contain micro and macro nutrients that are beneficial for babies.

Slight variation in too little nutrients, or too much, or in forms that aren’t absorbed at the intended rate can be very dangerous. Throw in some rice? Ok now there’s extra sodium in there. The milk does too. Uh oh. Suddenly this is a complicated optimization problem requiring fine measurements and specific blending techniques.

I can also buy 20 proof ethanol at my local gas station. It'd kill me, but hey way is gasoline any different than gin. They're both 10% ethanol.

This writeup on Reddit has a decent breakdown of the pitfalls: https://www.reddit.com/r/medicine/comments/uvcijm/a_pediatri...

Looks like osmolality is a major concern. Good luck explaining that in a 30 second clip on CNN.

> Good luck explaining that in a 30 second clip on CNN.

That's pretty much exactly my point, as I mentioned in another comment.

I'm having a difficult time believing that the ingredients or measuring devices are so difficult to replicate at home that it would be impossible to do. I think the more likely explanation is a large portion of the population, put generously, "lacks attention to detail", and so homemade formula would be dangerous for them.

Here's a good analogy. Saline solution (not disinfecting solution, just normal saline) for contact lenses is not complicated. It's salts and water. At one point it was possible to buy salt packets and mix it with water to make contact lense saline solution. However, it was critical the water be purified, distilled water.

Of course, a decent portion of the population thought plain tap water was good enough and ended up going blind, so the FDA banned the salt packets, and you can now only buy premixed saline.

So the FDA went out and said "Mixing your own saline solution can be really dangerous, don't do it." And they're right, mixing your own saline can be really dangerous, if you can't follow directions.

Yeah, even if it's possible in theory at home (I don't know, won't research it, and think it could very well be either - I think it's very likely the "100% correct" version isn't possible), it will result in harm statistically. Thus it's not standard of care, and recommending it will result in very expensive malpractice lawsuits.

Caffeine powder is also illegal these days.

It’s crazy that in the face of health authorities saying don’t do this, it’s dangerous, your reaction is “prove it”, rather than doing some research on your own to counter your skepticism. The lack of trust in public institutions is deeply saddening.

The problem with baby formula is that it needs to contain precise balances of nutrition in specific forms that can be absorbed by the body in specific ways. Much in the way that a calorie is not a calorie is not a calorie, a nutrient is not a nutrient is not a nutrient.

Water down your baby formula? Now it’s different. Babies are sensitive. This could be dangerous.

This took such little effort to research on my own. The bar is so low.

Breast milk is unique. In the past kids had wet nurses as a backup. And when they didn’t, infant mortality was very high.

If you just tel people you can go make this shit at home, a lot of babies will likely die.

> It’s crazy that in the face of health authorities saying don’t do this, it’s dangerous, your reaction is “prove it”, rather than doing some research on your own to counter your skepticism. The lack of trust in public institutions is deeply saddening.

I 100% disagree. I'm not an idiot. I can read a recipe, even a complicated recipe. And I'm not even saying they're wrong. I'm just asking for some simple example of why, for someone capable of following the instructions exactly, this would be too difficult to do at home. Not the right equipment? Fine. Ingredients that are not readily available? Fine.

But to go with some hand wavy bullshit, basically saying "Sorry stupid peon, this is just too complicated for you", is just dumb. On a site called "Hacker News" I think it's incredibly sad that a request for a more detailed explanation is met with "I think that's crazy".

> I 100% disagree. I'm not an idiot. I can read a recipe, even a complicated recipe

This thread has shown me how many people think baby formula is just some complex recipe that requires pureeing the correct vegetables in the correct ratios.

Making infant formula is more akin to making medicine/drug than table food.

We have home drugs (meth, heroin, cocaine, etc). Yes, they can be made safely, but they often not.

Well for one, do some fucking research, as I suggested in the very passage you quoted, before you make bold assertions about what’s reasonable. The answers to your questions are easily found.

You do not have the ingredients. It’s not just foods. You cannot make safe baby formula from foods. You don’t have the equipment to produce it. It requires specific mixing and heating and what not to arrive at specific consistencies and sterility so that it is absorbable by the body correctly. You don’t have the measurement equipment to get the ratios correct to the margins needed. You don’t have the quality controls to check that they are ok for things like acidity. You don’t have the expertise to evaluate outcomes. You apparently don’t have the inclination to research it on your own either so it’s triply dangerous.

In the 20s people started using milk based formula. Babies got scurvy and rickets. They threw in orange juice. They got bacterial infections.

If you want to roll the dice with your baby’s health because you think you’re smarter than the government go ahead. Here’s Wikipedia, the simplest lowest bar of research you were unwilling to do but complain about either way. It has the basic progression. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infant_formula

Flour and milk mostly. Go nuts.

Just saw this earlier today: https://www.insider.com/tiktok-doctors-say-diy-formula-recip...

Basically there are viral recipes going around, and this supports that formula in particular is something that we cannot trust the average person to diy. Infants are extremely vulnerable and have unusual dietary requirements.

People will die due to this.

EDIT: I see this is contentious. Check the reddit post and go argue with them: https://old.reddit.com/r/nottheonion/comments/v07nh0/tiktok_...

That's all the more reason to publish and promote good instructions.

Good instructions to a lay populace aren't necessarily helpful. Babies are pretty fragile. Slightly undercooked ingredients, slightly improper ratios, or just substitutions made out of ignorance can kill them. It's not DIY chocolate milk powder. A slightly off recipe or preparation won't just taste funny while being otherwise safe.

I think people would trust the government and authorities generally more, if those authorities weren't constantly lying to them. The authorities could say "Here is a rigorous procedure for DIY formula. We strongly recommend against using this, except in an emergency, because slight deviations could result in harm or death for the baby." Instead, they seem to give the impression that DIY formula is never advisable or borderline impossible - which is probably wrong, and that misrepresentation makes people distrust authorities more generally.

A rigorous procedure involves precise measurements, ph testing, and other things many people do not understand let alone have the capability to execute.

But could easily attempt anyway and fuck up

I don't know anything about the safe DIY manufacture of baby formula, but, even if I assumed what you are saying is true, and I'm pretty confident you're wrong, that isn't even an argument. We should deny people good instructions, forcing those who want to try to use bad instructions, because some people might incorrectly follow the good instructions?

You can't provide "good instructions" for something that needs high levels of control in the manufacture. The process is as much a part of the recipe as the ingredients. It's much more rational to put resources into fixing the shortages rather than having people get their babies sick because they didn't completely sterilize a pot because it wasn't explicitly outlined in the recipe.

I see two parts to your comment.

The first part is obviously wrong. You can provide good instructions for things that need a high level of control. Baby formula is not made by magic and I doubt very much that it needs some impossible level of precision to create.

The second part of your comment is simply a false dichotomy. Releasing high quality instructions would not affect the rate at which the baby formula shortage is addressed.

There is no safe DIY manufacture of baby formula. It’s just not something you should attempt without being an expert. Step one is to become an expert.

The reason to not put out a set of instructions that people cannot follow is because they cannot follow it, and those that attempt to follow it will likely make serious mistakes. It would do more harm than good to put out a government sanctioned recipe, no matter how many warnings.

That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

That applies to assertions of fact, not reasoned arguments. There is plenty of evidence that incorrectly produced baby formula is dangerous. There are many studies showing the narrow range of nutrition and form of the baby formula that is safe.

Yes, and the claim that there are no safe DIY formula instructions is an assertion of fact. The question of whether incorrectly produced formula could be dangerous was never at issue.

Well we’ve demonstrated that the requirements are very strict, that manufacture standards are precise and include steps not available to laypeople such as ph testing, and that the outcome of a bad creation is potentially fatal. So it seems reasonable to say it follows that there are no safe DIY formula instructions because DIY implies lack of expertise which is required to understand the points listed above.

You haven't demonstrated any of that. You've asserted it, as I mentioned, without evidence.

It's amazing how people people fail to understand that making baby formula is the equivalent to making a drug. Yes, you can make coke, meth, and heroin at home.

However, it's also extremely easy to mess it up and kill yourself.

As others have said, it is impossible to verify your statement because the verification method is kept hidden because "it would be dangerous".

You can easily find a list of many steps formula producers go through.

Thank you, thank you, thank you. This is the same bullshit that happened with masks early in the pandemic. Instead of being truthful and saying "It's really important that there be enough masks for hospitals, and we just don't know if masks for the lay populace are helpful because there haven't been enough studies yet," authorities lied and said "masks don't work for the general population". Zeynep Tufekci's article on this topic got it exactly right IMO: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/opinion/coronavirus-face-...

>>It's like we've forgotten how to function as humans in some respect.

It is not that we have forgotten, the social and governmental structures have been for a long time pushing for dependence upon corporations / government and less self reliance.

Self Reliance is something that is to be socially mocked, "survivalist", "prepper", etc are seen as derogatory terms.

Even community level reliance has systemically been rejected in favor of top down corporate and/or national government level programs to provide for people.

I would mainly blame capitalism and globalization. It’s very hard to stick to your principles when you can get everything for a 10th of the price/effort from Walmart. It’s also completely impossible to be self reliant in any mid sized or bigger metro area because you just don’t have enough land to produce food and energy.

globalism sure... capitalism... that would require a more nuance explanation of what you mean by "capitalism" since that is huge subject often misused by people that do no understand that all ownership of private capital and means of production is "capitalism" under which there can be good and bad effects.

So blaming "capitalism" for anything likely means the person is ignorant on the topic of economics, or is speaking about one type of capitalism (say corporatism, or crony capitalism)

capitalism as an economic system is a foundation for liberty, one can not have a free society with out capitalism in some form.

> since that is huge subject often misused by people that do no understand that all ownership of private capital and means of production is "capitalism" under which there can be good and bad effects.

I would argue that this misses the point. Capitalism isn't just a pile of physical capital. If it was, it would be impossible to result in oppression since physical capital must be maintained and it can be reproduced. Nobody would have any right to complain. Just think about it, would you be jealous of Jeff Bezoz' maintenance bill for his mega yacht? No, you are "jealous" that he has exclusive monopoly rights that restrict your own rights and perhaps even doom you to poverty.

It would be more appropriate to call "capitalism" the obsession to put the interests of capital and its owners above all other interests. This means, capital should be allowed to override the basic needs of other humans. Capital should have the right to deny others the ability to obtain shelter or food. Because of capital it should be possible to deny others the ability to trade or be employed.

>capitalism as an economic system is a foundation for liberty, one can not have a free society with out capitalism in some form.

Now you have trapped yourself inside a network of contradictions. If capital overrides all your decisions, how can you consider yourself free? How can a society where only one special groups interests are being heard, call itself free?

No, instead of doubling down on taking ever more people's rights away, we should be doing the opposite. We should be striving to give everyone the ability to help themselves, decide for themselves and to live their lives according to the best of their abilities.

This is where the paths diverge. You are confusing market economies with capitalism, which is merely a perversion of market economies. A free market is inherently anti-capitalist because it values the freedoms of its participants over any special interest groups. A free market inherently denies capital the ability to deny other people the ability to obtain shelter or food. It inherently denies capital the ability to prevent others from trading and forcing them into unemployment.

No, a free market isn't free as in gratis. It's free as in freedom.

>>It would be more appropriate to call "capitalism" the obsession to put the interests of capital and its owners above all other interests. This means, capital should be allowed to override the basic needs of other humans. Capital should have the right to deny others the ability to obtain shelter or food.

Completely incorrect, unless you completely perverse the idea of capitalism which I suspect you are attempting with disingenuous argumentation and emotional rhetoric

Capitalism, on its own, does not result in "oppression" as that requires external non-economic factors often based around government for oppression to occur.

Also I am not jealous Jeff Bezoz, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, or any other rich person at all, in either strawman you have presented here

>>If capital overrides all your decisions, how can you consider yourself free? How can a society where only one special groups interests are being heard, call itself free?

I have not contradicted myself at all, you have massively over reached and attributed positions to me well outside that of my comment. Further you have now confused capitalism, an economic system, with government power.

The only way for "only one special groups interests are being heard" would be for government to impose that restriction upon the population, that has nothing to do with capitalism.

>>You are confusing market economies with capitalism

Market economies, including Free Market Economies are part of a capitalist economic system, so if you believe they are not I point you back to my original comment. A Free Market is capitalism, So is Crony Capitalism, but Crony Capitalism is not a Free Market.

Stated Differently, All free markets are capitalist economies, but not all capitalist economies are Free Markets.

I support free market capitalism

It isn't some vast conspiracy, it is that specialization by definition does it better. Literal cottage industry couldn't compete. That is what being able to buy better tools and outcomes gets you, industrialization. Memetically people are still pissed off about the change centuries later.

Specialization for sure is part of the equation, but I dont think it is the full picture. Also to get to a dependency problem one does not have to claim a vast conspiracy, often created as unintended consequence of well meaning government programs, or policy shifts that create incentives for corporations to act in a manner that the result is a dependency instead of self reliance.

In the context here specialization means people are not sustenance farming working 16 hours a day creating 100% of their food themselves, however the other extreme of this is total dependence of your food from outside of your region, and the ability to prep, cook, etc you food to others.

There is a balance there, where by a person may not grow all of their food, but has a garden (even in indoor garden) to grow some things... Or buys from local farms, and learns how to cook their own meals instead of total dependence on prepared meals either from the store (i.e tv dinners etc) or from restaurants / fast food...

I know a lot of people where more than 80% of their food intake is cooked prepared for them, and the 20% that is "from scratch" cooking is like bacon and eggs level cooking...

That is with out getting into direct dependency on government...

Sure. Until the MBA-ification made sure everything runs as lean as possible… and then everyone wonders where supply chain issues are getting worse.

> Memetically people are still pissed off about the change centuries later.

Because specialization gave up autonomy, with zero corresponding accountability in return, so capital holders got most of the upside with none of the downside once positioned as too big to fail, and dependent stakeholders got short-term time resource benefits while their grandchildren onwards got exposed to oligopolistic pricing power, and externalities like fragile supply chain ramifications pushed upon them. Snarking like this in shallow analyses is exactly what Soros warned about with reflexivity.

> Baby formula isn't some magical combination of ingredients. And I get it, authorities are wary to recommend recipes because of the risk of people fucking it up. But when people are out of options they'll likely make worse decisions, like watering down formula.

There was a large drop in infant mortality in the US about the time commercial baby formula caught on. Draw your own conclusions.

Source?

> Baby formula isn't some magical combination of ingredients.

This is overlooking an incredibly important piece - composition and reliability. Infants, particularly those under 6 months, have very specific nutritional needs. A subset of that population has extremely strict nutritional needs. Even in a health baby, "stretching" the formula with too much water can cause a dangerous drop in electrolyte levels.

For the average person, it's going to be extremely difficult to source, process, mix, and hydrate ingredients (and test it all) to properly feed their baby.

----

To put things in perspective, toddler formula is _extremely_ similar to infant formula, but the ratios are slightly different. This slightly difference means you cannot safely use toddler formula as a replacement for infant formula.

So, if infant formula is unavailable the course of action you recommend is simply letting the child go and making another one, because it won't be possible to guarantee that any alternative food source is 100% perfect?

That's the weird thing about these interactions. If someone's asking for an alternative to infant formula - because they can't get any - the situation is already unsafe. Starvation has a 100% fatality rate.

Infant formula isn't part of the scenario being discussed. Alternatives are to be compared against starvation, as that is part of the scenario being discussed. Do alternatives have a 100% fatality rate? No. So why all the weird 'there's just no viable alternative' comments?

I'm tempted not to respond because you're clearly not applying a good faith argument here. Nobody in this thread, besides you, is suggesting that it is preferable to let a baby die than to feed them partial nutrients. Of course, if your child is literally starving, you should look to a less than ideal, short term solution.

This thread is in the context of "why isn't the media providing alternatives". I'm refuting the point that "it's simple and easy to replace baby formula" - which supports your argument, highlighting the severe and dire consequences of this situation.

I'm making an argument that highlights the severity of this situation for parents with young infants.

>Of course, if your child is literally starving, you should look to a less than ideal, short term solution.

Yes. That's the issue we're having here. People are encountering that situation of being unable to find formula, meaning that their children are literally at risk of starving, asking for alternatives and being told 'there's just no viable alternative' by the media as though that information will make formula appear out of thin air. They are looking for that less than ideal short term solution from the media, which is responding oddly.

It is quite simple to provide short-term replacements for infant formula. Famine relief, missionary and other charities do have reliable and nutritious recipes for baby formula alternatives that can be made in bush conditions and over open fires in metal pots.

> 'there's just no viable alternative' by the media

This isn't the media's job. Their recommendation is to talk with your doctor. This is realistically the only safe suggestion since all of the alternatives are bad.

> Famine relief, missionary and other charities do have reliable and nutritious recipes for baby formula alternatives that can be made in bush conditions and over open fires in metal pots.

Please, please, please, cite your source on this. I have a really hard time believing this as simple as "this one trick from Africa". I believe what you're referring to is literally infant formula. You're simply describing the process of sanitizing water then mixing in standard, powdered infant formula.

The introduction of formula to impoverished regions was extremely controversial. As mother's used formula, their milk production decreased. This forced them into a dependency on formula manufacturers or milk-donors (wet-nurses, milk-banks, etc). This would not be a problem if there were viable solutions.

------

EDIT: Lastly, I would like to point out that this isn't an argument about "feed the baby" or nothing. If you are that desperate to feed your baby, go to a fucking hospital. They _will_ be able to help you.

> This isn't the media's job.

I think maybe this is the problem both specifically here and more widely, there's a major outbreak of 'not their jobitis' going on. The media are 'not my jobbing' this and ignoring the fact that distributing health information has very much been the job of the media in the past.

Maybe a similar issue with the FDA who 'not my jobbed' the inspections of the facility and 'not my jobbed' the reopening inspections of the facility and 'not my jobbed' other things they could have been doing, such as distributing safe formula-replacement recipes.

Maybe - to take a tangent - a similar issue with the Uvalde police who 'not my jobbed' actually interacting with a scenario. Seems to be a whole rash of people forgetting you have to actually interact with the world and take actions if you want things to happen, not just observe and write reports.

> Their recommendation is to talk with your doctor.

That's purely because of liability.

> This is realistically the only safe suggestion

No, that's point of the contention here.

> Please, please, please, cite your source on this.

The recipes for infant milk start on page 93.

https://oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10...

> This isn't the media's job. Their recommendation is to talk with your doctor. This is realistically the only safe suggestion since all of the alternatives are bad.

I wish people would lay this blanket advice to rest, unless they are doctors themselves and can give relevant advice immediately. I live in Germany, a country that everyone praises for its healtcare system and it is incredibly hard to get a doctor's appointment here that is not months down the road. Sure there are emergency options, like the hospitals that you mention, but imagine what happens if millions of deperate people try to tap into the strategic formula reserves of hospitals...

During a catastrophic event, I absolutely expect the media to spread ideas for creative solutions. You can always say that talking to an expert is the best option, but what is plan B if plan A is no realistic option?

“…talk with your doctor. This is realistically the only safe suggestion since all of the alternatives are bad.“

What exactly do you think we did before baby formula even existed? Or doctors, for that matter? This absolute dependence on systems is disheartening. We need a drastic reconnection with nature.

> What exactly do you think we did before baby formula even existed?

Well, we breastfed.

Problem is that isn't actually a reliable solution since not all mothers produce milk at the quantities their child needs. This is particular true as a child grows, many mothers grow tired of breastfeeding and look to formula as an alternative. Problem is this deteriorates their milk production since the child is eating less breastmilk.

-----

The reality is this situation is primarily dangerous for mother's who cannot breastfeed or lack sufficient production - and require formula. There is no go, safe, reliable option because Option A (Breastmilk) is gone and Option B (Formula) is as well.

People keep acting like there _should_ be a backup to formula, without understanding that humans are the only animals on earth that have created an alternative to their naturally produced milk.

>People keep acting like there _should_ be a backup to formula

There are backups, which are safer than the alternative of starvation, which has a 100% fatality rate.

A homemade formula which killed 25% of children would still be 400% safer than the alternative of giving them nothing and having them all die.

>you cannot safely use toddler formula as a replacement for infant formula.

This needs to be repeated. Do not swap them.

My wife and I were trying to help a family by buying them formula - and we bought the wrong age range. It makes a big difference. Don't do it.

On a side note, we are going to donate the formula we can't use to a stranger. So. There's that.

I mean, that makes sense, but on the other hand, I'm pretty sure human breast milk doesn't change composition as a child ages. If it's possible to develop a formula that is "close to human breast milk as possible", the age range really shouldn't matter.

Actually, it changes a LOT over time. I'm a little removed from the breast feeding days, so I had to look it up. Here is a cool article [0].

I'll summarize some of the cool points. Breast milk changes to respond to 3 distinct ages of the baby. Newborn to 3ish days. 3ish days to 1 year. 1 year to "the end".

Milk changes to respond to growth spurts of your baby!

Milk changes to provide antibodies. Not covered in this article: it is hypothesized that kissing your baby can give the mom bacteria on the baby - and then the mom makes the antibodies for bacteria the baby was exposed to.

Milk changes throughout the day!

Milk changes in the middle of breast feeding

That's it. Those are the ones I enjoyed. Here is the link!!

[0] https://www.todaysparent.com/baby/breastfeeding/magical-ways...

Regardless of whether the formula changes/doesn't change is essentially irrelevant. As a baby grows, their diet grows as well. A toddler can get by on infant formula (though less than optimal).

This situation primarily impacts 0 to 4 months olds and secondarily 4 to 6 months old. It's less than ideal fora 6 to 12 month old to use a sub-par diet, but it's much less critical than in a newborn.

Basically, the newborn range is growing so quickly that small deficiency can have huge cascading effects. Old babies are a bit more resilient because they're growing a bit slower (relatively) and have more buffer in their reserves for certain things.

In my opinion, what you're arguing is equivalent to saying "children should be allowed to drink alcohol. If it's safe for adults, it's safe for children".

>It's like we've forgotten how to function as humans

I like to bring it up whenever I run out of dishwasher soap: "I ran out of dishwasher soap so I used some liquid dish soap." I do it because it's always followed up with "Did it make a giant mess in your kitchen?" "No, I put a few drops of it in with a bunch of baking soda, worked like a charm!"

I had wondered what I would MacGyver for baby formula, if it were at all relevant to my life right now.

It's hard to take any food shortage articles seriously when we feed >40% of the calories we grow to cattle alone.

Sure, more people might go hungry because we do not allocate food well.

But we are so far from actually running out of calories that the idea is ridiculous.

40% of corn grown goes to produce ethanol. [1] The silage by product is then sent to feed cattle.

[1] https://civileats.com/2022/02/14/how-corn-ethanol-for-biofue...

Sure but thinking that the American people don’t implode if the stores are empty and you’re sent a bag of corn every month for your calories is also not realistic.

You can grow other calories on the land you're growing corn for ethenol and livestock feed.

With the massive efficiency of corn its actually kinda hard to do that to the level you expect. Corn is very effective at turning space into starch.

What massive efficiency? You're feeding it to animals. 80% of the calories are immediately pooped out.

Which is why you could just feed it to people instead - or grow something else.

Solar panels destroy corn in terms of converting solar power to energy. Ethanol is geopolitical and special interests, definitely not efficient.

One way of looking at the fodder for cattle is that the human palatable parts of it are reserves. We can "downshift," downsize our herds and redirect that without redisman's "send you a bag of corn every month" (plus calcium hydroxide for nixtamalization) extreme which more belongs to something like a post-nuclear war scenario.

The big problem is going to be the places that don't have reserves of most anything including money, like the parts of the Middle East and thereabouts that normally get their wheat from Russia and the Ukraine, the latter long called "the breadbasket of the world."

> For all the "Baby formula shortage" media coverage, how many stories have included a recipe for alternatives to commercial formula?

Well, the reality is there isn't a good one. If there was, this issues wouldn't be so serious. Infant formula is truly a modern marvel - an accurate enough representation of breast milk. It lacks certain things (like antibodies), but can absolutely provide an infant correct nutrition. Too put things in perspective, toddler formula - which is very, very similar is considered a dangerous substitute since it does not contain the exact correct ratios and can lead to health issues.

To answer you question, the media does not have a recommendation because there simply isn't a good, safe recommendation.

Interesting quote:

Amid the mounting signs of distress, a series of policies could help to minimize human suffering. However, most would require a considerable degree of international cooperation, which might be difficult to achieve in the current environment.

I'm really wondering if Orwell's prediction from almost a century ago, that the world would devolve into three major blocks continually at war with each other, each exercising authoritarian control over their domestic populations, isn't on the verge of becoming a reality. It appears that both Russian and American political leaders view the conflict in Ukraine as beneficial to their own domestic political interests, for example - and China is not yet involved, but what if there's a war in Asia, i.e. Taiwan? The global South sits outside this picture, so maybe there's some hope there.

As far as practical matters, there are a lot of approaches to ensuring local food supplies. Victory gardens were a thing in WWII for example. Also, there are several known vegetarian mixtures that give full amino acid profiles, such as the corn-beans-squash mix of pre-Colombian agriculture in NAmerica, or rice-bean bases of SAsia, etc. Recycling nutrients via effective composting also reduces the need for fertilizer imports.

Avoiding reliance on global supply chains is going to become very important if current trends continue, in any case.

This is why, in normal times, food waste is a good thing. It means there's some slack in the system for when times get worse.

Not that that helps people in poorer countries, unfortunately.

Soon we might face the choice of stopping aid or starving ourselves which doesn't help them either.

Such a short sighted comment, no, it would be best to have an efficient system where excess food could either be stored or delivered to those with food insecurities.

No, your comment is short-sighted. Ideally, you'd have a system that would massively over-produce food (and feed everybody and store some) so that localised disruptions / crop failures wouldn't bring the whole system down.

I'm pretty sure that's what they meant.

Perfect efficiency is how you end up with small disruptions turning into big problems. Compensating for lost production in one place by ramping it up elsewhere is not as quick as flipping a switch. Especially when your food needs a season to grow.

Excess food is being stored, but it can't be stored indefinitely.

Others have explained again why excess food is a good thing.

One thing in favor of your point is that we can still improve the system: avoid excess production of processed food, and find optimal uses for excess food that isn't eaten (compost, biofuels, etc.).

We might agree -- because it's not excess if people still aren't having their needs met. But producing exactly enough is a recipe for not enough when something unexpected happens. There should be waste (or unused capacity, that can hopefully be somehow reclaimed as compost/bio-char/chemical feedstock/fuel/etc) in such an essential system.

This seems to imply that food waste will be lessened. Instead, prices will simply be raised, until we hit some unsustainable point and there is no extra food to waste. Lessening food waste now would require planning for the future and changes to existing systems.

>This seems to imply that food waste will be lessened. Instead, prices will simply be raised,

Why not both? There's isn't some magical point where everybody goes "oh shit" and then scrambles to reduce food waste. Instead, there's always people on the margins that only need a little push (from the rising prices) to enact food waste saving measures.

I keep seeing articles referencing that Russia is blockading Ukraine's ports.

As far as I can tell, that is completely untrue. Russia still allows shipping in the Black Sea in what they call a humanitarian corridor which is "a safe lane south-west of Ukraine's territorial sea, 80 nautical miles long and 3 nautical miles wide, from 08:00 to 19:00"

The reason ships can not dock at Ukrainian ports is "Ukraine’s ports are at MARSEC (maritime security) level 3 and remain closed for entry and exit. Sea mines have been laid in port approaches and some port exits are blocked by sunken barges and cranes."

This comes from the The International Maritime Organization (IMO)

https://www.imo.org/en/MediaCentre/HotTopics/Pages/MaritimeS...

Russia is doing enough evil that we don't have a shortage of stuff to denounce it for. And while misinformation has its place in war, I don't like it here and think it could make the food crisis worse.

> "Ukraine’s ports are at MARSEC (maritime security) level 3 and remain closed for entry and exit. Sea mines have been laid in port approaches and some port exits are blocked by sunken barges and cranes."

So yeah, this quote literally says that ports are blocked because of war Putin wages on Ukraine.

Putin just loves this logic. "I'm not blockading anyone! Feel free to pass to a war-ravaged occupied region with active warfare going on. Everyone who is saying otherwise is a gay Nazi and should look at both sides".

This might mean new waves of immigration from Middle East and Africa to Europe.

The last ones caused some stirring. I expect a new wave will cause, too. So we can see some pressure from European governments for finding solutions to end the war.

In the last wave, only one country (Hungary) handled the problem sensible (building a wall, encouraging locals having more kids). The rest of the governments mostly pretended the problem doesn't exist.

I expect this to change with any future waves. It's hard to be a trendsetter, but easy to be a follower.

> In the last wave, only one country (Hungary) handled the problem sensible (building a wall, encouraging locals having more kids).

You left out the part about turning to fascism. Anyway, none of what you mentioned helped immigrants nor resolved the reason for their immigration, so it seems more like the least sensible being that it was a complete failure.

> The rest of the governments mostly pretended the problem doesn't exist.

Excuse me? This isn't remotely true. It was the main topic for half a decade. We housed, clothed, fed and educated millions of people in need of our help and it was an amazing success!

"You left out the part about turning to fascism."

Why do you think people "turn to fascism" in the first place??

Because they are racist natioanlist authoritarians and they perceive it as benefiting them.

Or they feel threatened.

> Why do you think people "turn to fascism" in the first place??

Seems to me it is often a combination of dissatisfaction with some problems and a charismatic leader that promises an easy fix (if you only give him a lot of power and allow him to silence the opponents).

Sometimes the original problem isn't fixed at all and may even increase, sometimes it is replaced by more serious problems. But at the beginning it seems like things have improved, because the criticism has been silenced. Later, people who perceive the problems are afraid to speak up.

This may seem like an advice for democracies to avoid letting problems grow too large, otherwise you risk fascism. While solving problems is generally a good advice, it is not necessarily a question of letting a problem grow too large. Sometimes the problem can be relatively small, but the timing is unfortunate and it happens right before the election. It is also a question of whether you have a charismatic wannabe fascist leader who is well prepared at the right moment. Two or three smaller problems appearing at the right moment can bring a disaster that wouldn't happen if those problems appeared a few months apart.

"Sometimes the problem can be relatively small, but the timing is unfortunate and it happens right before the election."

Ummm, can you provide one or more example of this? The "Two or three smaller problems appearing at the right moment can bring a disaster" sounds plausible but just one small one?

>Sometimes the original problem isn't fixed at all and may even increase, sometimes it is replaced by more serious problems. But at the beginning it seems like things have improved, because the criticism has been silenced. Later, people who perceive the problems are afraid to speak up.

Sounds like what is happening now in most of the Western world.

> You left out the part about turning to fascism

"Everyone I disagree with is a Nazi." [1] In the real world, Orban was just reelected with overwhelming majority (increasing his vote share). He didn't contribute to the causes of said migration and didn't set out to solve the problem either, he just made sure his country and the people that elected him were minimally impacted.

> We housed, clothed, fed and educated millions of people in need of our help and it was an amazing success!

This is precisely the problem. In Europe, we maintain a high standard of living, and a social safety net. That simply isn't logically compatible with unrestricted illegal immigration (because the resources with which we run the social safety net aren't infinite). We need different solutions, preferably solving these problems (food, housing, ...) where they happen (would also be much cheaper!)

[1] https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/021/818/hit...

"Everyone who calls someone is a Nazi just disagrees with them." It couldn't possibly be that they are actually racist nationalist traditionalist authoritarian capitalists who don't even bother hiding that fact from anyone and who literally blame Jews for the worlds problems.

> In the real world, Orban was just reelected with overwhelming majority (increasing his vote share)

You do realize Hitler was elected with an overwhelming majority too, right?

> and the people that elected him were minimally impacted.

Right, by letting people at their doorstep die. That's the problem.

> This is precisely the problem.

No, it was the solution to the actual existing problem.

> unrestricted illegal immigration

First, we weren't talking about "illegal immigration", we were talking about millions of refugees. Second, nothing about it was unrestricted.

"You do realize Hitler was elected with an overwhelming majority too, right?"

Hitler or rather the Nazi party infamously didn't win "with an overwhelming majority" in November 1932. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/November_1932_German_federal_e... reminds me they "lost 34 seats and again failed to form a coalition government in the Reichstag" (emphasis added). They gained power by non-electoral means after this, starting with a deal where President Hindenburg made Hitler chancellor and they had "a short-lived coalition government formed by the NSDAP and the German National People's Party (DNVP)." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler%27s_rise_to_power...)

Okay, fair point, I went too far with that one.

> solving these problems... where they happen (would also be much cheaper)

You assert that it's much cheaper to solve these problems without moving the people. It is not nearly so cut-and-dry.

When someone seeks to flee their homeland for Europe or America, it's generally because something is very wrong where they are coming from. Often, the problem includes some sort of kleptocratic, warmongering, authoritarian, or incompetent government. (Sometimes it is not strictly government — e.g. terrorism, cartels.)

It's often much easier to move people than reform institutions, and open migration worldwide would be a reform worth about $78 trilllllllllllllion. https://www.economist.com/the-world-if/2017/07/13/a-world-of...

There's 1.2 billion people in Africa. Good luck moving all of them.

The only realistic solution is reforming institutions where the people are.

Just curious, did you read the article before responding? Then I'm wondering, why do you expect all 1.2 billion Africans to flee Africa? That seems very unrealistic.

With virtually all Hungarian mass media owned by Orban and his cronies he still had to resort to straight up burning opposition votes to win.

The only interests this wannabe dictator will secure are his own.

Go move to Hungary if you find autocracy so appealing.

> In the real world, Orban was just reelected with overwhelming majority

His election results were so good, they were downright Putinesque. Not a lot of comments on hackernews made me laugh as intensively as yours.

That should be no problem: stop them at the border.

Which would kill them and cause massive suffering, so... no? I don't understand how people can be both this cruel and want to propagate such a norm: What happens when it's your turn to starve outside the gate? This kind of rhetoric is _not_ in your self-interest. Nobody is immune to the potential to need to migrate.

> Nobody is immune to the potential to need to migrate.

People in wealthy, food-secure countries are. (immune to the potential to need to migrate)

Until the sea rises, or until it gets too hot, or until the water runs out.

It will happen here too.

All empires fall. Climate change and wars happen.

That didn't help against the floods in Germany.

They wouldn’t come if they knew they would be stopped. We can (and do) send aid when needed, even though our countries are under no obligation to do so.

Sometimes the aid needed is a place. I have no idea what you mean by obligation or what axioms you base that conclusion on but it seems somewhere in all of that we disagree. I think we should provide people a place if they need it when we can afford to. I think, for one, it's cruel not to do so, but secondly it's good to promote a norm of doing so. We may be in need of a place some day (think war, climate change, economic crisis, etc.) We can't do more than we can do but I think we should do what we can to help.

They don't mind dying by the hundreds in crappy boats crossing the Mediterranean Sea.

We have a first responsibility to our own people. Furthermore if we don't take care of them everyone else will just export their unsustainable configuration to us and everyone will starve.

Our people are doing pretty well here in northern Europe. We've taken good care of them and of course we can always do better and I'm sure we will do so in the future. In the meantime, I think we should also help other people when we can afford to do so. I think it's cruel not to do so and I think it's in everyone's self-interest to promote the helping of others when we can afford to do so because we may some day need such help (because of war, plague, famine, climate change, economic crises, etc.) Promotion of such a norm is insurance.

It's possible that these policies are a large part of why Northern Europe is doing so well.

The best thing you can do for people in other countries is help them clean up their own countries. People keep calling it colonialism though.

It's not possible. 1/11th of our population in Sweden has an immigrant background and we have a far higher standard of living than most of the planet, including the US.

> The best thing you can do for people in other countries is help them clean up their own countries

What do you live in hole or something? They're coming because they cannot survive in their own countries due to war, genocide, famine and other very serious problems that cannot be solved anytime soon. Get real.

The majority of those immigrants are likely from other European countries with similar cultures and backgrounds. If you take in too many immigrants you'll just destabilize Switzerland and then Everywhere has the same problem.

> The majority of those immigrants are likely from other European countries with similar cultures and backgrounds.

Nope. Please stop guessing. Only 35.4% were born in Europe. It's no wonder you come to your terrible conclusions if you just make things up and don't bother to look up trivial facts.

> If you take in too many immigrants you'll just destabilize Switzerland

This is just racism.

> Switzerland

Why should anyone listen to your racism when you're confounding Sweden and Switzerland when it's written right in front of your face?

>> If you take in too many immigrants you'll just destabilize Switzerland

>This is just racism.

It's not in fact, it's well known that if the immigration rate is too high (and this limit gets lower the more incompatible the cultures and people are) in any country you get political instability.

>Confounding Sweden and Switzerland

Sorry, I'm an American. Everything in Northern/Western Europe that isn't France, Britain, or Germany kind of blends together. It shouldn't matter anyway though right?

> It's not in fact, it's well known that if the immigration rate is too high (and this limit gets lower the more incompatible the cultures and people are) in any country you get political instability.

It really is because you're missing the part about where we all have massive immigration and don't have "political instability" (quite the opposite really.) Total first and second generation immigrants here are 25%. Every 16th person is a first generation immigrant originating from outside of Europe. We're still number 7 on the Human Development Index in the world (the US is at 18), and within the top 5 for standard of living. Our murder rate is 1.08, while yours is 4.96! What's this magical threshold that we need to pass in order to get the food riots? Where do you get these ideas?

You're not going to change your mind even a little after what I'm telling you?

If you're going to compare homicide and demographic statistics in the US then you should remember that:

1/10 black people here are first generation immigrants which is extremely destabilizing to their communities. Remember that these communities account for the majority of homicides here (according to the federal government.)

While 75% (really closer to 85%) of your population is native or White only ~60-50% of the US is now (depending on how you count.)

So you're not going to answer any of my questions and drag up more debunked racist talking points?

Poor people commit murder. Black people in America are poor (because history but also because America is still extremely racist and won't lift a finger to make up for that history.)

> 1/10 black people here are first generation immigrants which is extremely destabilizing to their communities

You're not thinking this through. 1/3 of our non-European immigrants are first generation, so your racist theory would predict that we would have an even higher murder rate than you have.

Actually, only 2.8% of your population is native.

>1/3 of our non-European immigrants are first generation

Ok, so that's about the same as what's going on in the Black communities. Maybe have a look at the homicide statistics for the places these immigrants go and I'd bet you'll find a very similar picture.

>Your racist theory would predict that we would have an even higher murder rate than you have.

No, again these nations are more racially homogeneous. They're able to absorb much more of this right now than we can.

>Poor people commit murder.

That's not the whole picture, you can compare poor Black communities and equivalently poor White communities and the Black ones have a much higher rate of crime. Whether that's due to institutional racism or things like this (which I would argue is essentially just another kind of institutional racism) is up to your interpretation.

>Make up for the history

What do you want us to do? We already net negative on the average Black person due to social programs. We're legally barred from discriminating against them in any meaningful way (to the point that many are starting to ask to bring discrimination back.) Should we burn the country down again for them this year? None of the living people were involved and if you look carefully you'll find it was largely the Jewish population doing that. Should we go down that rabbit hole?

>Actually, only 2.8% of your population is native.

Because the nations that used to exist here were overrun by foreigners. Those ended up driving the population out of their lands and tried to eradicate their culture. This kind of thing is what I'm arguing against but you're hung up on skin color and not seeing it.

Putin's media will go into a frenzy. You will have Petersburg trolls posting all over the Reddit "spiteful gay Europeans leave refugees to death, so much for European tolerance!"

On the other hand if you let them in, Putin's media will go out of its way to stage provocations or pay some of the refugees to wreak havoc. "Your governments are letting in rapists, so much for European tolerance!"

They'll love it either way. The only way around it is to sink Black Sea fleet and prevent the whole famine from happening.

I can definitely agree with that.

Putin already hinted that in exchange of lifting sanctions he will ship grain from occupied Ukraine. I'm pretty sure that Western politicans will scream "no way" initially but will quietly give in later. Just they way they gave in to Putin's demands to pay for gas in rubles.

Whole rush on occopying south Ukraine (and levelling cities like Mariupol) was for Putin to have grains shortage as yet another leverage on European politicians.

Not to mention that sanctions hadn't made any significant dent anyway. Russian economy is booming unfortunately. Yes import is limited, but local prices cratered due to strong ruble. It's around 60-70 RUB per USD both in banks and on the street compared to 78 pre-war.

These sanctions are a shame while Germans are sponsoring war by pumping billions into Russian economy and drag their feet on promised weapons to Ukraine.

So much blood on Germans once again. Only last time they were explicit about it.

I dunno. Mariupol doesn't look that flattened to me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1I8SZeXGFo

Plese don't spread Russian propaganda. Graham Philips worked a token "pro-Putin Westerner" on RT and Zvezda, which is literally Russian army's TV channel. He's as shilly as it gets.

Yeah, I guess all those ethnic Russians that live in Mariupol are all payed actors. And those concrete buildings that are all in actuality flattened. Elaborate actors, the whole lot.

Yep, saying this as a Russian, Russian media will show you a small part of the city with a staged crowd carrying Russian flags and tell you it's the whole city.

They've done it for years. It's a shame some people in the West are fooled by these cynical lies.

For others reading it, just google areal videos of Mariupol from The Guardian or BBC. It's shocking how West allowed this to happen in 21st century.

What's a shame is that people are so distrustful of the news and government here that they think that anything that says the opposite of what they hear from those sources must be the actual truth.

It is a shame. It's some kind of good guy fallacy. Sometimes there just isn't one and everyone is lying to you about everything.

RT was actually grown by Kremlin as a brand that "tells truth your government wants to hide". Conspriacy theories and Oliver Stone interviews interspersed with footage of Kremlin-backed European extremists protesting and pepper-sprayed.

Thank God, they lacked subtlety and were not suave enough to build this vision. Now they're taking a second shot at it by spinning off its reporters and affilates as "independent bloggers"

Also Kremlin's psyops campaigns on social media are never as explicit as "Putin good". They're more like "while Russia is doing bad things in Ukraine, I am an American and I am ashamed of Iraq/treatment of black people/Arab Springs/NATO enlargement". The person writing sits in St. Petersburg suburbs, is paid $600 per month and takes a shuttle bus to his depressive town every night. But it's enough to spark a thread on Reddit.

Easily. I wouldn't put it past Putin to bus in the crowd from Russia just for this specific occasion. They've been doing it for years, why not again?

Just like they film Putin's meetups with "factory workers" or "wounded soldiers". If you follow the news for long enough, the faces of those "soldiers", "workers", and "miners" start repeating.

Absolutely.

They've been doing it a lot pre-war. When protests erupted and were crushed in Moscow and in major Russian cities Putin's media scrambled to show that "regular hard working people oppose gay rich Muscovite hipsters who sold their country".

A hilarious example was when they even staged a "worker" from Uralvagonzavod (a major tank factory) before Putin who promised to "gather guys and show them"[1]. Of course PR director for the factory was a famous Putin's media manager Alexey Zharich.

They staged tons of provocations at protests to film it and show on repeat on TV.

RT and Russian state media used the same tactics after 2014 occupation.

While staged and fake this propaganda works if you show it 24/7 on TV. We were shoved it down our throats for years and now they feed it to the West.

[1] https://newtimes.ru/articles/detail/49031/

All that's available form "official" sources is propaganda; might as well look at both sides. There's not likely to be any truth there, but one may have more hope of discerning truth by looking at things, than by refusing to do so.

This in itself is Kremlin's propaganda 101.

Kremlin's most effective propagandist media and influencers are never as blunt as "Putin is good".

It's more like "we never know the truth". "One side says that, another says that", "we don't know who's credible". "Truth is somewhere in the middle". "Politicians are dirty everywhere". "Everything is propaganda".

It's effectively the leutmotif of Russian media that aims to disorient and pacify domestic audience and they use it a lot on Western audience as well.

A great example was their media strategy on MH17 downing.

First they made sure their network of influencers spat out dozens of theories, no matter how contradicting or bizarre they are. "The plane was already filled with corpses". "Ukrainian jet fighter shot it down" (look up their military briefing on it, it's absolutely hilarious with disproportionally huge fake jet fighter pasted on a satellite image). "Spanish dispatcher saw it". "Ukrainian Buk shot it down". "There was no plane".

Afterwards give airtime to all the theories by saying "we're not claiming it's truth, but sources say this". Make your head spin, make you doubt everything. With such overload you have no other option but to just tune out, turn it off. There is no truth. Any voice is propaganda.

Peter Pomerantes had a great book "This Is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality"[1] on their tactics, a recommended read.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/This-Not-Propaganda-Adventures-Agains...

If you don't know that everything is propaganda, I think you're rather naive (and must have missed the first half of the war somehow.) Nobody's "informing" you out of the goodness of their heart. Capitalists and states own media because it benefits their interests and will tell you whatever is profitable for them.[1]

You're still not addressing the fact that large portions of the city are still standing, as shown in the propagandists video. Trust me, I saw the large portions that were destroyed by Russia which in my view is terrorism and very sad, but you don't lend yourself any credibility bitching about the truth not being in the middle when it clearly is in this particular case.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_model

> You're still not addressing the fact that large portions of the city are still standing.

Thank you Putin for leaving some parts of bombed cities intact!

Thank you Putin and his army for not murdering all families in gas chambers, only selectively raping women, executing men and looting their houses!

Such a low bar to clear.

This is moving the goal post and dismissive. The point is that the view many have been presented is actually biased. As I said, we do not make ourselves credible and build trust by lying and diverting attention.

Wow I didn't realize the ruble has been strengthening despite the sanctions, but it is true.[1]

1: https://www.google.com/finance/quote/RUB-USD?window=6M

I was shocked to learn that most Westerners (especially Americans) believe that sanctions actually worked.

Most believe that SWIFT was cut for Russian banks (most are working fine). That you can't buy USD in Russia (it's absolutely available both in banks and on the street, actually there's overabundance of hard currency due to gas and oil prices).

Yes, McDonald's took down its logo. But it's already opening under new name with same operations and franchise intact.

Yes, no official iPhones. So what, ruble is so strong now it's hard to feel a thing, you can get them via Kazakhstan or Dubai.

Americans bought Biden's "crushing sanctions" rhethoric and cheap pledges of "support" to Ukraine and looked the other way.

McDonald's and iPhones and other branded crap are not strategic. Who really gives a fuck about their existence. Russians could always get cheaper Android phone from China and do just fine. They would not loose their sleep over McBurger being replaced with something else either.

Ability to produce advanced microchips, high end machinery etc on the other hand is. When the existing stock (all bought from the West) is depleted / wears down Russia might start to really feel the sanctions. This has a chance of permanently damaging Russia.

If however over the time Russia can manage to restart the ability to manufacture those things (possibly by banding with non Western world initially) then yes - it could then show middle finger to the West and get on with its business.

Putin's bet seems to be that sanctions will erode and be lifted before microchip, oil technology embargo actually hits Russian economy.

Medvedev explicitly said this two days before invasion. Yes, Western reaction will be loud but short-lived. Once European customer will feel prices hike or refugee influx, governments will be under immense preasure to resolve conflict ASAP.

This is martial arts 101, which Putin seems to be a big fan of. You engage with opponent, lock with them and apply pain on any possible surface until they submit and let go.

North African instability and revolts due to widespread hunger is yet another ankle that he can twist in this lock. Another one is Syria which is under his control and can destabilize Israeli border.

Try to board a plane to Moscow then?

Actually a lot of Moscow tech workers came back after fleeing initialy to Yerevan, Tbilisi, Baku and Istanbul.

Most bought Bloomberg propaganda and were expecting a crash. It never came. On the other hand Moscow feels great, restaurants are packed and most of people I know are back to their consumerist habits (sans some Western clothing brands).

Russian consumer exhaled and watches Ukrainian war like a soap opera on Telegram that they discuss with coworkers or on Patriarchy Ponds.

Nobody will learn a lesson.

I don't understand, please read the comment, do not just press "next 100 words" on a Markov chain.

I don't know what reply did you expect me to give to "try to board a plane to Moscow then".

Which part is confusing, it made sense to me

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2022/04/05/1090920442/how...

Important to note that this article is alread almost two months old.

Since then there was even more recovery. Interest rates while spiked briefly to 20% now lowered.

There was a brief capital control but now it's not neccessary: ordinary Russians can withdraw their dollars and even send them abroad (up to $50000 per month).

You don't need any kind of special financial magic when you've got billions from gas.

The Russian government has extremely limited avenues to trade Rubles publicly, and exercises dictatorial control over those within its borders who attempt to do so.

The rate is essentially fictional - you theoretical seller, cannot get that rate. [1]

[1] https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/russias-rouble-rebo...

That article is really outdated (from before Russia forced payment in rubles), many capital controls were lifted, foreign exchange is allowed up to a limit. I've seen people still making the claim but much more of the opposite. A lot of people on Bloomberg have contradicted precisely this on air. Most of the evidence in the two month old article is anecdotal and unsourced anyway.

They have an 18.5% interest rate compared to 0% in EU, and compared to ~5% in Russia pre-war.

If not for an absurdly high interest rate and capital controls - the Ruble would not be doing well.

11%. Slashed three days ago from 14%. It will be back to single-digits pretty soon.

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/05/26/business/russia-economy-r...

We'll see how that goes when their oil exports drop from 7.8M to 4.3M - and their natural gas exports decline similarly.

That's ~15% of the economy.

Russia itself is predicting that the unemployment rate will double to 9%. That's about the highest unemployment has gone in Western countries at the absolute peak of recessions.

The idea that the Russian economy is doing well or better than pre-war is absurd.

There's more to an economy than the value of your currency which governments and central banks have a lot of power to easily manipulate.

>If not for an absurdly high interest rate and capital controls

It also helps that imports are also way down (due to sanctions/boycotts) but exports are slightly up (due to increased oil prices).

Comments like this are incredibly useful. A simple statement, backed up by a link with graph that verifies it. I’m not being sarcastic, I know it kind of reads that way. Comments like this teach me more about the world than 1,000 word rambling news articles.

> Whole rush on occopying south Ukraine (and levelling cities like Mariupol) was for Putin to have grains shortage as yet another leverage on European politicians.

This is an insane oversimplificaiton. There are many reasons the south is strategic, not least of which is that it's not only coastal but contains major port cities. That allows for both the strangling Ukraine, the securing of supply to Russia and the domination of the local sea, including complete control of the Sea of Azov. It also forms a land bridge between Crimea and the Donbas, which is critical for supplying and reinforcing Crimea. Then of course it was also useful in order to restore fresh water supply to Crimea, which Ukraine had cut off. It also buffers the Volgograd gap which Russia considers critical for their security. Don't forget all the other natural resources and industry that the area is rich in. Then of course, one of the best reasons which might be too obvious to even notice: It's the closest to Russia! They can accomplish their undermining of Ukraine without going as far as they would have to otherwise or having Belarus intermediate. Don't forget that the defeat of actual neo-Nazis in Mariupul (That was always Azov Battalion's stronghold.) was probably seen as a big propaganda win at home too.

No need to give in, if they can just tell him his whole Black Sea fleet will be immediately sunk if he tries to stop any ship with grain from Ukrainian ports. Putin only understands such language, nothing else. Let's say Ukraine will get at least 20-50 Harpoons and NSMs with option to resupply. Putin will immediately shut up about the blockade because his ships won't have anywhere to hide. Problem solved.

> Not to mention that sanctions hadn't made any significant dent anyway. Russian economy is booming unfortunately.

This is false. Sanctions are biting Putin clearly strong enough if he is using blackmailing with famine for their lifting. If anything, sanctions have to become stronger. Oil and gas trade with Russia has to be banned, since it's the main source of funding the war for Putin.

Doesn't seem to factor in that cheap solar will make desalination much cheaper, but an interesting article for sure.

A large issue is where do you put the brackish or super-salted water? Desalination is great as long as you have the waste impacts managed.

Extremely not an expert, but I wonder if dehydrating it out doesn’t make sense? Solid-form salts are easier to dispose of.

The process can also be used to generate construction materials.

You pump it back out into the ocean.

Probably fine for small-scale use, but on a planetary scale increased salinity could dramatically influence marine biodiversity, not to mention climate from thermohaline circulation disruption [1]

https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/education/tutorial_currents/05...

It's not possible to change ocean salinity by any measurable amount by desalination. Except maybe for some very closed off seas, which are already less saline than the ocean.

To expand on this. There's ~321M cubic MILES of water in the ocean.

Total US water usage is about 2 cubic miles per week - which is not even a 100 millionth of the water in the ocean.

I imagine similar things were said about burning oil and gas at one time.

That aside I think the more pressing concern is the local environment, turning the area around your station into a brackish dead zone.

It is in the water cycle anyway, so yes globally really makes no difference. But the localized levels of salinity certainly can be effected and be detrimental.

Sounds expensive to pump it to wide enough area for not to cause issues to marine life. The total amount in context isn't an issue, but the spikes in concentration is.

Sea salt prices are about to be negative one dollar per pound

> A large issue is where do you put the brackish or super-salted water? Desalination is great as long as you have the waste impacts managed.

We designed a whole thing to store nuclear waste (Yucca Mountain[1], couldn't you put brackish water in something similar but wayyyy less expensive since it's not radioactive?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_r...

I think you're underestimating how much waste water is produced by orders of magnitude. Any inland reservoir will be filled within months of completion.

Desalination plants and solar at scale are not cheap. Spend billions and get some drinking water for a city. Supplying industry and agriculture though, it is cheaper to move production somewhere else and truck the produce in.

LOL. The article says that to fix the issue we need some international efforts and blah blah blah. Bullshit. All we need is to sink down russian ships in Black sea. Even better will be to help with the liberation of both Kherson and Crimea regions. Zaporizhzhya and Donbas can be liberated later, but Bastion rockets in Crimea endanger ports in Odesa and Yuzhne.

This is the easiest way to provide food to emerging markets. By the way, there are chemical (fertilizer) plants in Ukraine. Today they are not working or occupied. One in Yuzhne is intact, but shut down temporarily. There's also Sumykhimprom plant in Sumy, that's right on the border with russia. The plant is intact, but I think it's not working as well due to war.

If we chase russians off from Ukraine, food prices will return to normal.

> All we need is to sink down russian ships in Black sea.

Yeah, I'm sure nuclear war will be good for food pirces.

Nato could have marched in at the beginning, with the justification that Russian aggression in Ukraine was a security threat to Europe.

Russians only respect strength. The situation could have been escalated much further without tipping over into nuclear exchange. Nato failed, and now we have a multitude of security issues.

NATO is a defense pact. It only acts when its members are attacked.

Good point! Then replace 'Nato' with 'Europe'.

Sadly, Germany, Austria, and Hungary have forgotten just how bad Russians are. I wonder what the oldest generation (especially women) think of the current crisis.

Putin will always push further by saying "cave in to my demands or I'll nuke you".

Most of it is bluff. Which like any bluff is scary to call bluff. Russian army is in corrupt disarray and even tacticals nukes are not guranteed to work. He will probably be disobeyed by his staff.

Speaking of ships, the flaghsip of Black Sea Fleet Moskva was sunk by Ukrainians. Putin was reportedly enraged but didn't do a thing besides all atrocities he's already doing. Russian media covered it up for domestic audience.

They can sink all of them. He won't nuke anyone. He knows it's a bet on his system he can not afford.

> Most of it is bluff.

You don't know that and I don't want to risk that. Don't be arrogant. Everyone said his buildup on Ukraine a bluff. It wasn't. I don't think we should ever trust people like you again.

> Russian army is in corrupt disarray and even tacticals nukes are not guranteed to work. He will probably be disobeyed by his staff.

Yet still winning...

> Speaking of ships, the flaghsip of Black Sea Fleet Moskva was sunk by Ukrainians. Putin was reportedly enraged but didn't do a thing besides all atrocities he's already doing. Russian media covered it up for domestic audience.

Ukraine doing that and the US doing that are drastically different. If you don't understand that then you're definitely not worth listening to on this.

> Yet still winning..

Because Germans do not provide weapons they've promised. In fact if they drag their feet more, war may change its course.

> Ukraine doing that and the US doing that are drastically different

Of course Ukrainians can do that if they're equipped with enough modern weapons and intelligence.

The problem is stated above. Germans do not provide weapons, Biden is slow to push them. Additionally because of its energy and political dependence on Russia Germany is pushing Ukraine to surrender territory (along with wheat and ports) to Russia.

We don't need direct US involvement, we need strong and decisive leadership.

I think it's complicated why they're not winning. Russia has a lot of resources, despite any incompetence. The US is not providing targeting data, nor long range weapons and the US doesn't want Ukraine striking inside of Russia (DoD just said so in the FT yesterday.) There's also the problem with sanctions not being very effective and having serious blowback globally making it difficult to apply more sanctions (EU disagreement on new sanctions was also in the FT yesterday.) I'm sure there are many other reasons we don't even know about... It's not easy.

> You don't know that and I don't want to risk that. Don't be arrogant. Everyone said his buildup on Ukraine a bluff. It wasn't. I don't think we should ever trust people like you again.

No, most Western intelligence services were saying the invasion is going to happen. It was Putin-supporters like you, who claimed that it is Western warmongering and nothing will happen.

> It was Putin-supporters like you,

Can you stop with these accusations? Not everyone that disagrees with your warmongering supports the other warmongers.

You are hitting all the Russian propaganda points - Russia is winning, sanctions don't work, Kyiv was a feint, it is all NATO's fault, Russia will nuke everyone, people who want help Ukraine defend itself are "warmongers", etc etc.

On top of that, you're accusing people of being arrogant and dismissive and whatever else.

> Kyiv was a feint

I didn't say this or believe this.

> it is all NATO's fault

I didn't say this or believe this.

> People who want help Ukraine defend itself are "warmongers"

I didn't say this or believe this.

As for the rest, I'm not sure what problem you have with the truth and someone who has a different risk assessment than you. And yeah, you're literally dismissing facts with references with ad hominem attacks.

There’s also submarines

If that happens, so be it.

But the Russians are bullies and cowards. They will not dare touch anything NATO.

Also, the whole Black Sea Fleet is in hiding behind Crimea ever since Ukraine showed Neptune missiles work well, and got bunch of Harpoons to back it up.

> If that happens, so be it.

Easy for you to say (presumably either because you're not in danger of getting nuked, or don't care about getting nuked), but I doubt most people hold that view.

Who is "we" in this context?

Ukrainans equipped with modern weapons and intelligence. They already notoriously sank a Russian flagship.

In reality though Germans drag their feet by not providing weapons they've already promised.

Seems like Putin's policy of buying Schroder's and betting on German politicians pays off.

> If we chase russians off from Ukraine, food prices will return to normal.

What's normal? As a farmer, I started seeing the price of my products go up abnormally in 2020. In fall of 2021 were we already starting to grow concerned about fertilizer availability. Russia hasn't helped matters, but things were already very strange before Russia was in the news.

> Over the last three months, Russia's invasion of Ukraine has shocked agricultural markets

Did Washington's illegal invasions of Iraq, Libya, or Syria shock global energy and food markets, leading to global crises?

No, because a large part of the global economy did not attempt to cut off USA from the global economy following those blatant violations of sovereignty. This real lede is buried deep in the article.

The fact is that the current economic crisis could be partially mitigated by the West undoing its economic punitive measures intended to destabilize Russia and force regime change. While Russia is arguably engaging in a military crisis of choice, Washington (and Brussels) are engaging the world in an economic crisis of choice; primarily because a unaccountable cabal of aging Cold War neocons are fixated on overthrowing Vladimir Putin "at any cost".

Anyways, most of the analysis is correct and useful, but it always bugs me when the causality is obfuscated in the name of pushing a political agenda.

>> Did Washington's illegal invasions of Iraq, Libya, or Syria shock global energy and food markets, leading to global crises?

Not a good comparison in terms of food. Ukraine produces 6% of the world's wheat. Russia produces 17%. The former is unable to export its stockpiles due to the Black Sea blockade by the latter, and the latter is not going to be exporting what it produces because they recognize that they can use it as leverage.

Russia and Ukraine got very little from being major food exporters. For Russia it meant that wheat profits are just a dent of oil&gas profits, and for Ukraine it meant perennial poverty and international aid seeking.

Both were getting scolded for slacking economically.

If both countries were to be compensated 'fairly' for the wheat, maybe there would be no war right now. Food prices may never 'recover' to those unsustainable levels.

> If both countries were to be compensated 'fairly' for the wheat, maybe there would be no war right now.

Wow. Now this is the Putin apologist take I've never heard before, and I've heard a lot of them watching Russian TV.

Ukraine has failed to become economically solvent - it did not even grow to 1991 levels. So it had to cling to somebody else and eventually it tore apart (in 2014)

Ukraine did not "tore apart" in 2014.

Putin's army and mercenaries invaded its eastern regions, downed a passenger jet, weaponized criminal gangs, occupied cities and turned them into criminal neo-Stalinist enclaves with executions and torture.

He did it to teach Ukrainians a lesson after they've overthrown a corrupt pro-Putin president who built himself outrageously lavish palaces with golden toilets and private zoos.[1] In the end Yanukovich blocked Ukraine's integration with EU which sparked mass protests. Yanukovich or FSB snipers opened fire on protesters and he fled the country to Russia on a private jet.

[1] https://theworld.org/stories/2014-02-22/26-things-found-yanu...

Ukraine's eastern regions did not want to be a part of post-Euromaidan Ukraine, and one of the reasons is the poverty of Ukraine.

It's not like Putin is holding crimeans at a gunpoint for 8 years.

Russia created humanitarian corridors for Ukraine to get wheat out. That 6% will be impacted either way, but is not going to 0%.

Of course Iraq is not a major food exporter. You didn't explain why major global energy crises didn't start after Washington illegally invaded major producers.

The bottom line: this is an economic crisis of Washington's designs.

I tend to agree but I want to add some reasons.

First is that it's clearly ineffective. As much propaganda as we hear, Russia's still getting what it wants. Russia pulled out of most of the country the day after Zelensky announced they might not go in NATO after all [1]. The south (which is strategic to Russia - see my other comment[2]) is theirs. The ruble is better than it was before the war even with lifted capital controls and lowered interest rates. Most Russians don't seem to be too effected either.

Second, even if it were effective, it seems like somewhat of a major contradiction to claim that the Russian people are powerless victims of a violent authoritarian regime while at the same time expecting them to go to war with their overclass in order to stop this after starving them into it. It also ignores the fact that they did not do so in nearly a century of brutal repression and, at times, starvation. Are we supposed to wait another 69 years for sanctions to take effect, recalling that the fall of the USSR wasn't even violent regime change or capitulation but rather a decision that benefited the overclass itself?

1. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/zelensky-ukr...

2. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31549358

> As much propaganda as we hear, Russia's still getting what it wants. Russia pulled out of most of the country the day after Zelensky announced they might not go in NATO after all.

This is Russian propaganda.

First, NATO does not accept new members while they are in the middle of a military conflict. And Russia is occupying parts of Ukraine since 2014. So it's not like Zelensky's words changed something; he just commented on the obvious.

Second, nope, Russia absolutely didn't get what Putin wants. You may want to read his essay "On the historical units of Russians and Ukrainians". He wants the entire Ukraine to become a part of Russia.

In reality, the Russian army was near Kiev trying to capture it, failed, was pushed back. To save face, Putin now says that this is exactly what he wanted. Except, yesterday he said something different, and no doubt tomorrow he will say something different again.

> This is Russian propaganda.

Oh are Zelensky and The Independent Russian propaganda now? [1] Sorry, I can't keep up with you people. What about The Hill and AP[2]?

> Second, nope, Russia absolutely didn't get what Putin wants. You may want to read his essay "On the historical units of Russians and Ukrainians". He wants the entire Ukraine to become a part of Russia.

So now you buy into Russian propaganda instead of political science. Interesting.

> In reality, the Russian army was near Kiev trying to capture it, failed, was pushed back. To save face, Putin now says that this is exactly what he wanted. Except, yesterday he said something different, and no doubt tomorrow he will say something different again.

Sure thing, buddy, just coincidentally the day after Zelensky announced Ukraine won't go in NATO.

1. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/zelensky-ukr...

2. https://thehill.com/policy/international/598335-zelensky-con...

> So now you buy into Russian propaganda instead of political science. Interesting.

There is a difference between believing propaganda and drawing conclusions from the fact that the propaganda exists.

As an example, imagine that there is a guy called Hitler, who writes a book saying "Jews are trying to destroy the world, but I am going to save the world by destroying them". If you read the book and conclude "this Hitler guy is going to save the world", you are believing the propaganda. If you read the book and conclude "this Hitler guy seems to hate Jews", you are drawing a conclusion. In both cases you have read the book and came to a conclusion, but the process was quite different.

Similarly, if a guy called Putin writes a book saying "Ukrainians are not a real nation, they are actually a part of my nation and it's a shame that they have a separate country", then if you conclude "the Ukrainians are not a real nation", you are believing the propaganda, but if you conclude "this Putin guy will probably try to annex Ukraine", you are drawing a conclusion.

Anyway, it's not just the book, it's also the fact that Russian tanks were already approaching Kiev (before they ran out of gas, and were destroyed or stolen by tractors), the news articles celebrating the capture of Kiev that were written in advance and accidentally published, etc. A large part of reality would need to be different to make "actually, Putin never wanted to conquer Ukraine" a plausible hypothesis.

> Russia pulled out of most of the country the day after Zelensky announced they might not go in NATO after all

They didn't.

The only time they made a major retreat was when they overstretched and Kyiv offensive that was expected to be quick failed.

They've moved batallions to regroup for Donbas offensive leaving behind Bucha and other horrors.

No connection to anything related to NATO. If anything "NATO enlargement" rhethoric is just a coverup. Estonia is part of the NATO and it's bordering Russia with travel distance of 210 km to St. Petersburg.

> The only time they made a major retreat was when they overstretched and Kyiv offensive that was expected to be quick failed.

Yeah, that's false. Google is your friend on this one. Next time pay attention to the war you want to comment on.

> No connection to anything related to NATO. If anything "NATO enlargement" rhethoric is just a coverup. Estonia is part of the NATO and it's bordering Russia with travel distance of 210 km to St. Petersburg.

Also false. Nobody in IR actually believe this propaganda. But yeah, there are many other things Russia also wants. I linked the comment where I outlined some of them.

> Google is your friend on this one.

Petersburg shills are lazy these days.

"Everyone I disagree with is a Russian troll."

No I don't support Putin, the fascist, the Russian overclass or any of their fans. At the same time, it's pretty easy to verify what I said. I believe in you, you can do it. It doesn't lend us any credibility to lie or be ignorant about what's actually been happening. We can do our best to present the truth and oppose the Russian state, it's propaganda and it's invasion at the same time. You don't need to choose between the two.

No mention of the amount of food diverted to biofuels, such as corn being converted to ethanol. Stopping doing that would be the easiest way to increase food production.

Maybe this omission has something to do with their ritual invocation (on no evidence) of climate change as a cause of the food shortfall. Not mentioning biofuels may be a matter of solidarity with other climate alarmists. Even though biofuels are a total scam, that damage the environment rather than help, pointing that out might lead people to ask whether other aspects of the climate agenda are also dubious.

Carbohydrates are the real feed stock in corn (maize) used to make ethanol. Left over are "distillers grains" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distillers_grains as in "protein, fibre, fat" which is used as animal fodder, especially for ruminants who can digest the fiber.

The real total loss is in biodiesel made from vegetable fats. I can't remember the numbers now, but I read the German use of them is a substantial fraction of the sunflower oil that's no longer available from the Ukraine.

People need calories. The carbohydrates going to make ethanol could have provided those needed calories.

I hope the Germans are just giving up on biodiesel if they can't get sunflower oil from Ukraine, rather than buying up other food oils...

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