[Pretorian]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('paimei01', 'W')hat's your problem with what other people do with their free time ? You can do some intellectual stuff if you like.
People will find stuff to do.
http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/ ... icle/2962/
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')t was an attractive vision, and it worked. Not only did Kellogg prosper, but journalists from magazines such as Forbes and BusinessWeek reported that the great majority of company employees embraced the shorter workday. One reporter described “a lot of gardening and community beautification, athletics and hobbies . . . libraries well patronized and the mental background of these fortunate workers . . . becoming richer.”

[americandream]

Why not? Nothing like a bit of dirt to keep a tosspot rooted.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pretorian', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('paimei01', 'W')hat's your problem with what other people do with their free time ? You can do some intellectual stuff if you like.
People will find stuff to do.
http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/ ... icle/2962/
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')t was an attractive vision, and it worked. Not only did Kellogg prosper, but journalists from magazines such as Forbes and BusinessWeek reported that the great majority of company employees embraced the shorter workday. One reporter described “a lot of gardening and community beautification, athletics and hobbies . . . libraries well patronized and the mental background of these fortunate workers . . . becoming richer.”

[paimei01]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pretorian', '
')My problem is that often if not always other people's leisurely activities like the ones I mentioned before involve third parties which end up holding the bag. Intellectual stuff? Sssuuurree. I already can see crowds of " liberated" proletariat fighting for the place in line to the closest library, that they kept since the other night with numbers written on their hands. And if somebody actually CAN do intellectual stuff, why in the world he has to go to your work camp digging potatoes?

[AgentR]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('paimei01', 'A')nd the work is shared. In the end - for a large enough territory that has all the resources needed, it will be no more than 2 months of work/year, max. There will be no more hungry or homeless.

[paimei01]

You don't understand. I am not talking about a "patch of land". I am talking about a system - it produces the basics, and the machines that make the basics. For all these - we need no more than 15% of the workforce of today. Starting with the miners. So - at a certain age you join this system, work in one sector for some 3-4 years, then you are free, and get everything free. Replaced by the next ones.

https://www.cia.gov/library/publication ... os/us.html
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'a')griculture: 1.2%
industry: 21.9%
services: 76.9% (2009 est.)

[AgentR]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('paimei01', 'I') am talking about a system - it produces the basics, and the machines that make the basics.

[paimei01]

Sure. How can 3 million farmers produce enough for 2 billion then ? Where do you think we are ? The middle ages ? How many people around you see producing the basics, or stuff for the machines that make the basics ? How is it that we have enough people to build nuclear submarines ? How much food is thrown away ? How many fields are cultivated to produce junk like coca cola ?

Producing only the basics, means 10% of the oil consumption of today.

[Pretorian]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('paimei01', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pretorian', '
')My problem is that often if not always other people's leisurely activities like the ones I mentioned before involve third parties which end up holding the bag. Intellectual stuff? Sssuuurree. I already can see crowds of " liberated" proletariat fighting for the place in line to the closest library, that they kept since the other night with numbers written on their hands. And if somebody actually CAN do intellectual stuff, why in the world he has to go to your work camp digging potatoes?

[paimei01]

There are no stupid people. This system makes them.

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_q ... gatto&aq=f
and
http://www.scribd.com/doc/6128489/Again ... ylor-Gatto
http://www.scribd.com/doc/27806948/Dumb ... ylor-Gatto
http://www.scribd.com/doc/27806789/The- ... ylor-Gatto

http://www.spinninglobe.net/condunces.htm
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I') want to give you a yardstick, a gold standard, by which to measure good schooling. The Shelter Institute in Bath, Maine will teach you how to build a three thousand square-foot, multi-level Cape Cod home in three weeks' time, whatever your age. If you stay another week, it will show you how to make your own posts and beams; you'll actually cut them out and set them up. You'll learn wiring, plumbing, insulation, the works. Twenty thousand people have learned how to build a house there for about the cost of one month's tuition in public school. (Call Patsy Hennon at 207/442-7938, and she'll get you started on building your own home.) For just about the same money you can walk down the street in Bath to the Apprentice Shop at the Maine Maritime Museum [now in Rockport - ed.] and sign on for a one-year course (no vacations, forty hours a week) in traditional wooden boat building. The whole tuition is eight hundred dollars, but there's a catch: they won't accept you as a student until you volunteer for two weeks, so they can get to know you and you can judge what it is you're getting into. Now you've invested thirteen months and fifteen hundred dollars and you have a house and a boat. What else would you like to know? How to grow food, make clothes, repair a car, build furni-ture, sing?

[Pretorian]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('paimei01', 'A')gain, why do you care about what others do with their lives ?

[Pretorian]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('paimei01', 'T')here are no stupid people. This system makes them.

[AgentR]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('paimei01', 'H')ow can 3 million farmers produce enough for 2 billion then ?

[Pretorian]

great post Agent, mind me asking why do you think these 3 million farmers are feeding these 2 billion? There is no way whatsoever 1 farmer gets to have any kind of goods or services from all 700 people that he is feeding. So why bother? Is he a hostage of these 700 people? Slave? May be its charity?

[Tyler_JC]

The marginal cost of producing grain is very low. Farmers are providing a generic bushel of grain. No one cares if Farmer Joe or Farmer Jane produced the bushel so long as that bushel is produced. So farmers have zero market power. They have to compete against every single other farmer to sell their product, greatly reducing the profitability of their business.

Moreover, the start up costs for farming are high. It can cost hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars to build a large, successful farm. Most farms are heavily mortgaged to pay for the equipment required to farm. The real reason American farmers are so productive is the HUGE amount of capital that goes into farming.

There is also a huge amount of risk in the business. If it doesn't rain or it rains too much, if it's too cloudy or too hot, if pests eat your crops, etc, etc.

Moreover, the average person only spends a small portion of his income on food, much of that money doesn't even go to actual farmers but to advertisers, fertilizer companies, tractor makers, taxes, etc.

Once you strip out all of the value added activities of the food industry, the average American is only really spending a couple hundred bucks a year on calories. That's why farmers aren't rich despite feeding 700 people. (Don't forget a lot of those calories are fed to animals, a high value added activity that reduces the total amount of calories available to society so 3 million aren't really feeding 2 billion)

[Pretorian]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Tyler_JC', 'T')he marginal cost of producing grain is very low. Farmers are providing a generic bushel of grain. No one cares if Farmer Joe or Farmer Jane produced the bushel so long as that bushel is produced. So farmers have zero market power. They have to compete against every single other farmer to sell their product, greatly reducing the profitability of their business.

Moreover, the start up costs for farming are high. It can cost hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars to build a large, successful farm. Most farms are heavily mortgaged to pay for the equipment required to farm. The real reason American farmers are so productive is the HUGE amount of capital that goes into farming.

There is also a huge amount of risk in the business. If it doesn't rain or it rains too much, if it's too cloudy or too hot, if pests eat your crops, etc, etc.

Moreover, the average person only spends a small portion of his income on food, much of that money doesn't even go to actual farmers but to advertisers, fertilizer companies, tractor makers, taxes, etc.

Once you strip out all of the value added activities of the food industry, the average American is only really spending a couple hundred bucks a year on calories. That's why farmers aren't rich despite feeding 700 people. (Don't forget a lot of those calories are fed to animals, a high value added activity that reduces the total amount of calories available to society so 3 million aren't really feeding 2 billion)

[Tyler_JC]

But they are doing an exchange.

Example:

1000 people each spend $1000 on calories (the rest of their food dollars go to the various value added activities of the food industry like turning raw oats into name brand cereal).

That's a $1,000,000 that goes to an oat farmer.

But he spends $950,000 of that producing the raw calories. Trucks, equipment, fertilizer, pesticides, harvesting, hired help, etc.

He only keeps $50,000 for himself to live on.

That's how a thousand people get fed by one person.

[Tyler_JC]

A bushel of wheat costs only around $4.70 (as of 5/27/10).

That's enough wheat to produce 90 pounds of bread.

The value of the wheat in a loaf of bread is only 5 cents. You pay 2 dollars for the loaf.

The growing of the actual grain itself is not where most of the costs are in the food industry.

[Pretorian]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Tyler_JC', 'B')ut they are doing an exchange.

Example:

1000 people each spend $1000 on calories (the rest of their food dollars go to the various value added activities of the food industry like turning raw oats into name brand cereal).

That's a $1,000,000 that goes to an oat farmer.

But he spends $950,000 of that producing the raw calories. Trucks, equipment, fertilizer, pesticides, harvesting, hired help, etc.

He only keeps $50,000 for himself to live on.

That's how a thousand people get fed by one person.

[davep]

Have you never heard of Joel Salatin and the direct marketing approach combined with value added processing?

[Tyler_JC]

Some people worked in the flour mill which turned the wheat into flour. Others worked at the bakery that made the bread. Others put the bread in bags, shipped it to the grocery store, worked as a clerk at the store, cleaned the floor, made the broom to clean the floor, cut down the tree to provide timber to make the broom. Some people made tractors, sold tractors, repaired tractors, advertised tractors, made the steel that makes tractors, mined the iron that makes the steel that makes tractors, etc.

All of these people need medical services, educations, law enforcement officers, military protection, state health inspectors to make sure the flour is safe.

And so on.

It's all one giant web.

They earned the money to buy their bread by providing their labor to others. If you want to use Farmer Joe as the start of the web, feel free to do so. But you could just as easily use the President of the United States or Tom Hanks or Montequest. Basically, everyone works for everyone else.