The corn thing
Motto: I should perhaps write to explain the entire US corn situation, seeing how I'm probably the only one that both understands it and isn't sworn to secrecy.
In order to make sense of what will be going on in this article we need to start with matters discussed in the older Of skimmed milk and skimming the milk article. In relevant part :
The theory behind it is this : without dumping, economy is a competition on operational costs. Whoever can make the product cheaper wins the market. With dumping, economy moves from an operational competition to a financial competition : whoever has the largest bank account or the best credit can sell his product for 0 for longer, thus driving everyone out of business, thus acquiring a monopoly, thus then being able to sell the item for infinity. It can be said, and I happen to think that the point of economy is to close the zero-infinity price window on everything as soon as possible. In this perspective, dumping is an antieconomic activity.
The fact of the matter is that people will compete, because that's what people do. The other fact of the matter is that if you can, you musti, and consequently people will compete in all the ways, be they globally productive or globally destructive. For this reason the competition as to "who has the deeper pockets" is never ever ever off the table. You see it poke its head at the margins. All the margins. What is patent litigation, or corporation litigation generally ? What is lobbying ? Etcetera.
Now it comes to pass that one of the needs all living creatures share is the need for food. This need will therefore be supplied.
Now it further comes to pass that there exist precisely two methods to supply this need of all living creatures : agriculture and synthesis. That's it.
Now it even further comes to pass that both farming and chemistry are large industrial fields, with their own real estate, machinery, with their own banks, with their own senators and so on and so forth. The problem however is that while chemistry has more money, agriculture has better looks.
That's all this is : we gotta pick a girl to marry, and we have to somehow decide which one shall it be. The rich ugly chick or the pretty poor chick ? So go ahead and pick!
Knowing what a sort of prick you are, I know exactly what you've picked : you've picked to marry the rich ugly chick and fuck the poor pretty one on the side. Congratulations. That's what we're doing too, exactly. Chemistry is the wife, but agriculture is kept quietly to the side, because those apples on her... oh mamita.
This basically means two things : on one hand that we'll constantly be transferring resources in a purely antieconomical fashion towards agriculture - such as for instance the retarded "feeding the world" programme, which as pretty much everyone with half a clue has figured by now only exists to give money to the farmer lobby. Such as for instance the direct purchases for "national security" and other nonsensical stockpiling, which transfers billions a year to the farmer lobby. Such as the recent fuel nonsense, which consists of trying to embed the farming process into fuel consumption at great cost and with considerable difficulty. Why ? Because we don't want her to leave, that's why.
The same thing also means that the poor mistress will be subjected to a lot of humiliation and mischief from the part of the legitimate wife. It can't for instance grow chickens without using an arsenic based chicken "medicine", it can't grow cattle without a whole array of other "medicines" and so on. What is all this ? Why, simply the pharma industry, a chief scion and integral part of the chemistry lobby, skimming the mistress' milk. So, daddy government, you want to buy your secret mistress a lovely pearl necklace ? You'll have to buy your wife's daughter a nicer diamond one or else!
What can we possibly do ? It's not our fault the pretty girl is poor any more than it's our fault the correct move is to marry the rich one. Shall we do away with apples completely and permanently ? Maybe, for the lower classes, but the people who make decisions prefer the good stuff you know, and for that matter who's to know what the future brings ? Maybe old ugly croaks unexpectedly for some unimaginable reason. You never know.
That's the whole story : chemistry has more money, and so economically it would have extinguished agriculture by now. We don't want that to happen, but definitely can't afford to tell chemistry to pack it. So we're stuck in what people could describe as the best of all possible worlds : the splendor of choice, with all the cost and inconvenience maintaining that choice imposes.
At least we're getting great apple pie as often as we can get away.
———- A concept introduced here years ago in the excellent "Why I'm against legalisation of psychoactive substances" (Romanian article). Basically the argument is that hookers, who live in a system which has legalised drugs, will be forcibly hooked (usually on heroin or meth, less commonly on coke) as a matter of course. Whether they want to or not - the cheapest way to get a new whore as a pimp is and will remain kidnapping some comely schoolgirl and injecting her a few times.
McDonalds clerks and various "journalists" live in a roughly equivalent system which however has not (yet) legalised drugs. Consequently their employers work them through various other gimmicks (promotions!) rather than on the very direct and very effectual heroin paradigm. Should drugs be legalised, employers will have to, whether they want to or not, will have to move their livestock on heroin, or whatever alternative is cheaper.
This is the meaning of "if you can you must" : if amphetamine is legal to use for truckers then you as a trucker no longer have the option to not use it, as your boss does't care why you can't compete with the other truckers, and isn't interested that amphetamine usage reduces your usable life from decades to mere years. He can just "hire" new losers when the current set croaks. [↩]
Sunday, 15 September 2013
The girls must be enjoying the ride with you all so fired up over this infrastructure thing.
Sunday, 15 September 2013
"Eat Recycled Food. It's good for the environment, and OK for you." (Judge Dredd.)
Good old petrofood. You're on target except for one detail. Agriculture as a whole is subsidized for the very simple reason that, from the perspective of certain people whose desires have plenty of weight:
It simply "wouldn't do" to have certain technologies around.
Consider the case of the "pure fusion" nuke, a perfectly-feasible beast according to those in the know. No fallout, and no rare materials required...
In the case of petrofood, there is the very serious risk of upsetting the "arable land == national wealth" apple cart. Imagine if the USSR hadn't been forced to send a convoy of gold bullion across the pond every year in exchange for 60+% of the grain it consumed. Or if Japan could go full-tilt autarkik by switching to chemburgers. Simply wouldn't do, no?
Sunday, 15 September 2013
There has not yet been a case in the long history of human technology of anything whatsoever being supressed. Ever. Anything. At all.
The tech supression theory is homologuous to the person supression theory : all sorts of idiots explain their social marginality by some sort of general supression conspiracy on the part of "the man". Nothing could be further than the truth. The man is in the business of scraping the barrel as close as it can possibly be scraped. Consider this : http://www.youtube.com/embed/NgoyVRO0A0E
Now, what is it ? It is a desperate, last ditch attempt to reclaim marginally functioning retards, 70-80 iq, for some sort of economically viable activity. Marginal. It is a class for mentally retarded girls so they may participate in the rap economy in the us. So they may get a jerb, and live "productive" lives. This is the McDonalds of education, aiming to recover bits otherwise thrown away for consumption. "Human" consumption.
That's what "the man" does. Not involved in any sort of grandiose scheme of supressing idiots but quite au contraire, baby, deeply involved in schemes to try and recycle chicken bone and chicken feet into edible anything.
And the same thing that goes for people goes for tech : nothing was EVER wasted, lost, locked away. Not ever, and certainly not recently. The Franks invented iron armor ? Everyone got iron armor. The Venetians had glass ? Colbert kidnapped people so it may be spread to France. Anything, any trickery, any clever ruse, and underhanded device. Silkworm eggs in hollowed out walking sticks, you name it.
The torrents aren't some sort of recent thing kids today invented, torrents are the fundamental mode of human behaviour since day zero. All of these upset the statu quo, nobody cared, nobody cares, nobody will ever care. If there's one thing humans intrinsically hate, it's any sort of statu quo.
In short : the reason we don't have a pure nuke is because we can't make one. The reason we don't eat good chemofood is because we can't make good chemofood, not because we don't want to. And on this topic : the excellent 1970s film on the disputes between Mssrs Tricatel and Duchemin.
Sunday, 15 September 2013
Granted re: "let's suppress", but what we have is more of a case of "don't prioritize funding."
The Zimbabwean H-bomb might be inevitable, but few wish to hasten the day.
Sunday, 15 September 2013
Except the "if you can you must" part also applies to funding.
Actually... it specifically starts with the funding.
Sunday, 15 September 2013
Got to agree with MP here: the reason Zimbabwe does not have the bomb is exactly that Zimbabwe can't afford the bomb- and not by just money. The reason Iran is struggling with getting the bomb is that it marginally can't quite afford it, not any sort of skulduggery on the part of the G8. If Iran could afford it it would have it already, with or without a ream of nonproliferation agreements. For that matter, Zimbabwe also doesn't have good universities. Also because it can not afford them, and this in spite of the same G8 trying to make them exist just as much as they're trying to make the bomb not exist. The G8 could perhaps be more irrelevant in all this, but I scarcely see how.
Sunday, 15 September 2013
Anon: we were talking about a very different bomb. Laser-initiated fusion. (No fissiles, no $billion gas centrifuges. Just a little clever math, which nobody in a position to make it happen particularly wants to happen.)
Sunday, 15 September 2013
Not an expert, but as far as I vaguely recall a bunch of measurements made right before the end of USSR showed inertial confinement to be rather inefficient. Leaving aside the various failed attempts by the US, I know for a fact the glorious French tech created a MJ laser for the purpose that managed to do about as much as the famous Ronald Richter as far as nuclear energy is concerned.
Sunday, 15 September 2013
MP, civilian fusion - a very different problem domain.
There is some tantalizingly-solid material on the subject in the public domain, but AFAIK 100% of it is Russian (А. Б. Прищепенко et al.)
Sunday, 15 September 2013
Well then I must say I dunno.
Sunday, 15 September 2013
http://www.gurevich-publications.com/conspectus/developments.html
http://rutracker.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1035402
http://science.howstuffworks.com/e-bomb.htm
?
Sunday, 15 September 2013
Vex: Link #2 is the ticket. AFAIK none of the material therein exists in the Anglo public press, certainly not under one cover.
Sunday, 15 September 2013
Maybe my Russian is rusty, but
doesn't sound too promising at all.
Monday, 16 September 2013
MP, your Russian is correct, but the comment in question was written by an idiot troll; denounced, correctly, as such in one of the comments below it. Mr. P is a world-class master of his art. And his writing style is very similar to yours.
Monday, 16 September 2013
Well I definitely lack the ability to ascertain these points.
Monday, 16 September 2013
He makes historical references from gutenberg books or wikipedia?