39 Reader Comments

1. NW on
   

   I’d like to see what you come up with on this issue of meat and feeding the whole world. Grains allowed for the expansion of the human race, so we will see. There’s nothing that wrong with the poor eating grains anyway. If they can get plumbing and less scarcity in food supply then they will live longer than hunter gathers eating paleo anyway, so what’s the big deal?

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2. mc on
   

   I don’t think sustainability is possible, with grain or otherwise. We eventually reach the carrying capacity, unless technology permits us to do some very crazy things.

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3. goodfriendsam on
   

   This is a good idea. I get worried when I see primal eaters digging in on a pound or more a day of industrial meat every day. On the other hand, choosing whole foods over processed/boxed foods must save tons of energy.

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4. thania1 on
   

   I am looking forward to it. I try to eat a meat less day/week , and red meat is limited to 3-5 max / week.

   I am curious to see , the out come. I believe you can eat healthy paleo primal , with out eating lbs of red meat daily.

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5. Alchemyguy on
   

   @mc: “Sustainable” is a word that has more than one meaning; One can look to the ancient chinese, who farmed the same terraces for thousands of years without destroying the soil. They intimately knew what it took to perform agriculture in their environment, and do it for a very, very long time.

   What sustainable means to the average Joe is “business as usual, but with solar panels.” What sustainable is more likely to mean is a lower standard of living, more manual labour on the part of society (a return to the farm, workshop) and *less* reliance on technology, not more.

   This is a big topic, and I’m very interested to see what angle Scott approaches it at.

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6. Jeff on
   

   I had one thought on this that might be useful and missed. Many times the land available for animals is limited by excluding the lawns on private properties and businesses. I live int he suburbs and have a lawn that takes me over an hour to mow. My workplace has a huge campus with rolling hills and lawns. I am not sure how much of my lawn a cow could eat, but when I used to bag I moved over 60#/wk of grass to my curb for pickup. Could that support a cow? I suspect it could. A whole cow(~600# of edible goodness) could easily support my family for a year? It would be tough to reorganize but if we gave up our lawns and the hours a week it takes to care for them couldn’t it be sustainable? If we say there isn’t enough land we should consider a portion of the lawns we all have an decide whether it is worth it to keep them around looking good while we cart off the grass produced by the sun to a landfill that does us no good from a dietary perspective.

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7. ThisPrimalLife on
   

   Americans throw away or otherwise waste something in the ballpark of 30% of the total food available for consumption. If we wasted less we might be able to use those resources to produce more nutritious food.

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8. Chuck on
   

   Guys, I really look forward to your ideas and information. At the age of 56, I have made the decision to “get back in shape.” This includes changing my way of eating (I have adopted the paleo/primal diet, eliminating most grains, all sugars, and practicing IF twice a week), beginning a body weight exercise program (slowly, and with basic moves to rebuild the body), and reading to learn as much as I can about how to achieve these goals. I have followed your blog for a while now and, backed by other research I have done, trust you as a valid source of information. I want to be able to point to how sustainable this lifestyle is going to be and will be linking your data at both http;//sweattribe.wordpress.com and my own personal transformation web site. Thanks for what you are doing with the ‘revolution.’ Chuck

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9. Greg at Live Fit on
   

   The interesting thing about this is that back in the late 1800’s, scientists believed we had reached a global carrying capacity for total human population. Then came the advent of synthetic fertilizers, which of course drastically expanded our ability to produce food. And incidentally brought a host of other issues, but that’s another topic.

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10. DR on
    

    Looking forward to this series.

    Should make for some interesting arguments…I mean discussions

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11. Fit Jerk - Flawless Fitness on
    

    Sustainable technically? I predict yes. Sustainable by an individual? Most probably not.

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12. MikeB on
    

    One thing to figure into this discussion is that Paleo/Primal folks didn’t get three squares a day. Intermittent Feeding can reduce the impact on all the areas slated for discussion.

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13. Lauren B on
    

    I’ll be interested to see where this goes!

    “This isn’t going to be a discussion all about “going green” or limiting our toilet paper usage.”

    Hah! Love that little quip. Thank goodness.

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14. OneHealthyGirl.com on
    

    This is a FANTASTIC series of questions to explore. Kudos!! I’m a committed EnviroVegan but am always curious and open-minded to learn how the intelligent meat eaters view the problem of and the solution to the environmental devestation caused by the meat industry.

    I look forward to following your exploration!

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15. Dancinpete on
    

    One problem I have during these kind of discussions, is the underlying assumption that our current system of growing grains using petroleum based machinery and fertilizers as well as vast amounts of aquifer water that is non-renewable, is in any way sustainable. Even if we moved to a fully factory farmed meat based system, it would just be hastening the damage that is currently being done to our farmland.

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16. Eegah! on
    

    Have a look at the BBC documentary ‘A Farm for the Future’ on YouTube (it’s a five-parter); many of the issues you raise are dealt with, and despite a somewhat depressing beginning, there is some hope, or at least some pioneering individuals who offer us some hope. The wonderful Ben and Charlotte Hollins of Fordhall Farm are a highlight, as is Martin Crawford and his ‘forest garden’, particularly in view of his assertion that an acre of ‘forest garden’ can feed twice as many people as an acre of wheat. It’s quite nice to hear the presenter talk about how we need to get over our (not mine!) obsession with carbs

    Definitely worth a viewing.

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17. Alchemyguy on
    

    @dancinpete: Well, yes. What you’ve done there is define unsustainable agriculture; intensively growing grain to feed cattle (and other animals) is wildly inefficient and degrades the environment in many ways. Intensive agriculture is exactly the wrong course of action.

    In the end, the meat has to be raised in a non-intensive manner; pasture grazed on land not appropriate for agriculture.

    Maybe we’re getting ahead of Scott here and stealing his show…

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18. skustes on
    

    Hey all, glad to see such enthusiasm around this issue. Keep the ideas coming. I’m not sure we’ll come to a solid “yes/no” answer on this topic, but I think the series will kickstart some thoughts on how to improve resource utilization and health at the same time. Maybe we will…who knows? Hopefully we can keep it civil.

    Carla, we’ll see if we can bridge the vegan/meat-eater gap a little.

    Eegah, I’m going to check out that documentary. Thanks much!

    Cheers
    Scott

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19. Jeff Sherman on
    

    Love this topic. Although its unlikely we’ll be able to solve the world’s food problems, I agree that everyone should eat less processed, more real food.

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20. Grant on
    

    Reaching this goal (ie: getting everyone on earth to eat paleo) involves one major paradigm shift, and then two resultant, more specific changes:

    We need to get over the last-ditch efforts to sustain the millenia-old morality of altruism which is the real reason for the social phenomenon known as environmentalism. The earth is not an end in itself. It exists for human exploitation.

    If that were the paradigm, two things would occur:

    1. More land would be available in the industrialized, and thus more paleo food would be available.

    2. The industrialized world would stop feeding the delevoping world. The rest of the world would realize that first-worlders are not their brother’s keepers; not any more than they are their mother (earth)’s keepers.

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21. Alchemyguy on
    

    @Grant: Wow, there is a whole lot of assumption in your post. I was going to respond, but I’m pretty sure you’re either a Troll or absolutely unwilling to question your own paradigm and check to make sure that what you’re saying actually matches up with reality.

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22. Grant on
    

    @Alchemyguy: In other words: your comment was a pointless personal attack.

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23. Alchemyguy on
    

    @Grant: See, that’s the bit where you get offended by somebody asking you to look at your own beliefs and verify that they’re true and then turn that request into a personal attack on you. What you’ve done there is turn my reasonable statement (assuming you’re not trolling, check your facts and demonstrate how the prevailing paradigm isn’t true) into (Alchemyguy makes personal attack on Grant).

    Like I said, you’re either
    1. Trolling
    or
    2. You’ve not looked at all the data collected by folks that stake their reputation and livelyhoods on getting the facts right and formulating a worldview based on that.

    I’m more than happy to debate #2 with you if you can generate some compelling arguments to support your original post.

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24. Grant on
    

    @Alchemyguy: Not offended, just bewildered. Other than your need to hide from unpleasant philosophical fundamentals behind boxed-in (but nevertheless affected), detail-soaked, mind-deadening discussions about particular topics, I couldn’t see a point as to why you would go out of your way to tell me that I’m wrong. With nothing to support your claim except that I couldn’t possibly be anything except crazy or stupid or both, no less. You’re asking me to change my paradigm to fit yours. That’s fine. I’ll do it.

    *Poof* There.

    I don’t think you realize that the end result of both of our paradigms is the same: population reduction is what we’re talking about.

    Short of extraterrestrial colonization (which I’m sure will be denounced as defiling a virgin planet the moment it becomes feasible), one way or another, human population reduction is what’s going to happen. I’m simply saying that if it must be done, at least let those who, if not for modern, unsustainable practices, wouldn’t even be alive to complain about them, do the dying. Namely, the anti-American third world and the grain-loving, equally as anti-American political left.

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25. Alchemyguy on
    

    I personally hold the view that population reduction is inevitable if unpleasant and unlikely to occur in an sort of controlled or humane manner.

    Your original post came across as out of the blue (who was talking about altruism and so on?) and inflammatory, which are hallmarks of trolling. I did give you the benefit of the doubt, though and assumed that you’ve got an ideology and are expressing that.

    The onus to demonstrate claims is on the person making the claim, not on those that challenge them on it. You made some fairly large claims (Altruism is some variety of morality and the earth exists for human exploitation) that I don’t believe to be true. I can certainly come up with lots of documented biological, evolutionary advantages to altruistic behaviour that demonstrate it’s not some maladaptive liberal-leftist-hippie-whatever pejorative one prefers-20th century psychological theory or anything; it’s evolutionary biology.

    A claim that the earth is for humans to exploit is absolutely true, as long as you give all the other species the same claim. If you’re claming that humans hold a special place and have been given this right of exploitation, I would have to ask you on what authority? Is because we’ve built better tools to out-compete everything else? If so, I think we’ve come back around to what we can do to do it all sustainably.

    Also, who was talking about America and anti-America? That’s got nothing to do with anything and just muddies the water. I’m also pretty sure (but I don’t know this) that discussing politics is out.

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26. Mike OD on
    

    ” I’m also pretty sure (but I don’t know this) that discussing politics is out.”

    Yes…lets leave the political part out as much as we can…it tends to spur too much side taking/division without looking at the issue at hand being discussed overall for all people everywhere. Good discussion is welcome from any angle…..without going down a road of personal attacks or division by nationality.

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27. Grant on
    

    @Alchemyguy: The benefit of the doubt is exactly what you did not give me. You might now back track and pay respect to ideologies as such (since there’s nothing wrong with having one – so long as it’s correct), but what you did was to dismiss my suggestion for the reason preventing everyone from going paleo as only possibly the ravings of a mad man or moron. Fine, be polite ex post facto and call them an ideology, but the fact remains that that’s what you originally implied.

    Now, it certainly is true that I did make a claim and the onus is upon me to support it to some extent, but forgive me for taking for granted that anyone who’s made it into adulthood is aware that there are other ways of behaving besides altruistically. Now, if you want to claim that altruism is genetic (which I’ll refute in a moment), that’s one thing, but to claim that becuase of that fact it is not a morality begs the question: what is a morality then? An artificial construct with nothing to do with nature of the entity practicing it? And if that is the case, then that would make being moral different than acting to preserve one’s life – a very self-sacrifical (read: altruistic) course of behavior indeed. Morality and practicality are one and the same – and both demand principled selfishness.

    As for altruism being inborn: a bit of analogy. Undoubtedly, ants cooperate, and probably help one another out, for the good of the farm, but one thing they do not do is to demolish their own hill when they hear of another colony coming on hard times. They certainly don’t do so to make room for trees. There may be some members of the animal kingdom who are hard-wired to die so that others may live, but all that would prove is that altruism is a mongrel morality fit for animals; not men.

    Moving down the list, I’m not going to seriously address your claim that man must give credence to all claims to the Earth – it’s just too sophomoric. The moment you see or hear of any other species functioning at the level of cognition necessary to communicate and administrate such a concept, I will – but until then, that’s out. I’ll let reality be my authority there.

    And last but not least, the issue of politics (which, contrary to your assertion, I didn’t bring up): The term that I used was “anti-American”, not “anti-America.” There’s an N. One is to be opposed to a view of the universe and man’s place in it, another is to be opposed to a particular set of people inhabiting a particular part of the Earth.

    The third world, and it’s apologists the political/cultural/philosophical left, do not dislike the US (or any other Western nation) because of any one of it’s particular policies, but because of it’s very existence. An existence which is a reproach to theirs. A reminder of their failure to live up to their nature as humans and flourish. So they invent all sorts of false ideologies (environmentalism being the latest) to make themselves feel better, and expect Westerners to repent for the sin of being able to live. That they don’t realize that once we’ve repented, they’ll soon parish right after makes not one bit of difference. The vast majority of them should be thanking us daily for giving them the life they use to to denounce us – even if the caribou are dying and they’re stuck eating flour.

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28. Alchemyguy on
    

    Well, we can start at the beginning.

    The record is there to see; I claimed you were either trolling (which you are apparently not, so we can probably ignore that theory) or

    “absolutely unwilling to question your own paradigm and check to make sure that what you’re saying actually matches up with reality.”

    I certainly admit that’s a strong claim on my part, and yes, it is a denunciation of your “ideology” that the reason everybody can’t go paleo is because the industrialized world sends food aid to the developing world as well as your claims about altruism and the world’s place in man’s grasp. I made no bones about it; I suggested that I think you should check your facts. You took that poorly, starting with an attack to misdirect and haven’t really stopped. I mean, really? Characterizing my comments as calling you a mad man or moron?

    “but forgive me for taking for granted that anyone who’s made it into adulthood is aware that there are other ways of behaving besides altruistically.”

    This is what I mean; I never claimed there isn’t any other way to behave, you’re attributing that position to me. You made a claim about altruism being a morality, and I demonstrated cases where it clearly is not, unless you believe animals have a moral sense (which they may or may not). This atruism cannot be only a morality, but could include other sources. I think that refutes your original argument.

    I understand that you feel that man gets a special place because of our big brains and opposable thumbs. That’s certainly fine and I can’t really argue against that, but it hardly supports the argument that “[The Earth] exists for human exploitation.” That claim implies some power has given mankind carte blanche. I don’t think everybody agrees that there is some power that handed the Earth to man to do with as we will, and I don’t think you’ve successfully argued that case.

    As for the end bits, I again suspect that strays too close to politics for this site. I will say that I don’t necessarily disagree with some of your position, but I do disagree with how you get there.

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29. Jim Purdy on
    

    Sorry, but I just can’t get my head around the big concept of global long-term sustainability. It’s all I can do to figure out what kind of a diet is going to sustain me for a while longer.

    And, for me, that seems to be no grains or cereals or breads, and lots of low-carb veggie stuff like avocados, tomatoes, red bell peppers, and extra virgin olive oil. And maybe some occasional pecans, walnuts, and wild salmon.

    Hopefully, those choices will be the right ones for both me and the planet.

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30. Grant on
    

    @Alchemyguy: Thank you for finally being halfway decent and actually addressing (part of) what I originally wrote. In an ironic twist, it seems that I was the one who forced you to question your own paradigm – and in doing so I got you to go from a viceral, knee-jerk need to go out of your way to call me, to use the best word I can, presumptuous (as if I would go out of my way to leave a comment here if I didn’t know what I was talking about) to actually addressing what I said. It’s obvious you have your own opinions about the “assumptions” I made; it would have been much more productive to rebut them with “yours” right off the bat.

    As for the substance of your lastest comment, before I can address it, I have to clean up the mess you made of what I originally said. Yes, I certainly did say that part of the reason why the world can’t go primal is because of food aid, but that’s not all I said. I also said mentioned environmental restrictions – and explained how they derive from the same moral paradigm. I could have listed a few other instances of how this moral paradigm prevents world-wide paleo, but it’s a rule of good writing to not say too much.

    Taxation for welfare – a epitomic instance of altruism – would have worked just as well. It’s self-sacrificial morality that created the welfare state, but it’s grain subsidies for agribusiness so they can produce food for both the poor and the overworked, short on time middle-class alike that does a huge part to sustain it. Economically, it’s insanity, but morality trumps economics every time.

    Or perhaps I could have cited our bloated military – and thus it’s contribution to digestion based upon USDA recommendations. It’s only the size it is because altruism tells Americans that they have a responsibility to spread democracy to the oppressed people’s of the world. Or the prison system, or the public schools…

    Any one of these would have sufficed – but I chose food aid and environmentalism since they were the most obviously relevant to the topic at hand.

    Moving along, you may not have claimed that altruism is not the only capacity people possess, but you certainly did claim that it was the first. The default, if you will. I reject the entire notion that men are predisposed to any sort of behavior. Left free from the effects of conceptual knowledge – either their own or their parents – infants don’t do much but die. An instinct is precisely what a human being does not possess. If a human being wishes to live, sooner or later he makes the choice to think. To look to the world for information, and to translate that information into broad principles of behavior. In other words: into a code of morality.

    I don’t consider morality inborn, but nor do I consider it imposed from outside. I am an atheist. Morality is simply another way of describing the proper use of one’s mind, coupled with the resultant action. Action in the natural environment – and thus my reason for saying that “the Earth exists for human exploitation.” The rise of conceptual beings is a phenomenon like any other. If a meteor strikes Texas and it’s effects are felt around the globe, no one decries it for acting how it’s nature commands; but if a man with a brain evolves on the planet – and he uses that power to do what his nature requires – he is cautioned that he may be setting off a “disasterous” ecological chain-reaction.

    Disasterous to whom? While some might have a foggy idea that they should ask this question, and sometimes environmentalists will grudingly manufacture and answer, ultimately altruism lets them off of the hook. When the dust finally settles, it’s about the Earth as such. Or: sacrifice for the sake of sacrifice. In that respect, it’s no different than any medieval religion.

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31. Dana on
    

    I’m sorry, my jaw’s dropping about the very first comment here. “Nothing wrong with the poor eating grains”??? What is that, a rustic version of “Let them eat cake”? I’ll tell you what’s wrong with it, it kills people. I was poor as dirt while pregnant with my younger child and was eating mostly grain foods and not only did I screw myself up, I’m pretty well convinced I did things to her developmentally too. She was diagnosed with urinary reflux at four months old and when they scanned her kidneys, one was like a third the size of the other. Then her upper front baby teeth started rotting before she’d even had them six months. That’s not genetic and it is no accident. I had an inflammatory episode while pregnant with her, then I got swollen ankles early that were ameliorated with B vitamins and animal protein, then I ballooned out after she was born, and in the last three years I have suffered from reproductive health problems that turned out to be connected to my vitamin A (not beta carotene) intake. All of that could have been headed off at the pass had I been eating primally. I had never even heard of primal eating at that point. (My daughter was born in late 2004.) Now we’ve both been messed up by this and if I deserved it in some way, she certainly didn’t.

    “Let them eat grains…” I’m sure. Then when all the poor people get fat and diabetic it’ll be “I’m not letting them use my tax money to pay for their poor dietary choices.” After Medicaid kills them they’ll be lucky to get a spot in potter’s field–does any city even still do that anymore?

    ARGH. I HATE it when people talk about me like I’m not there and like what happens to me is no big deal anyway since it’s not *them.* I know the commenter didn’t mean me specifically, but then again, he did too, without knowing it.

    That said, I’m realistic. Most human beings living today will not adopt anything resembling a primal diet. Most of them, if they live long enough, will wind up with chronic disease. If we had had more time to switch over to sustainable and *localized* animal husbandry I might be more optimistic. I suppose it is just as well the government and medical establishment and mainstream media are lulling most people to sleep, regardless of their economic status, with lies about what’s “healthy.” I want to run out and yell at everyone that we’re all killing ourselves but it’s like opening an umbrella in the direction of a hurricane.

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32. Dana on
    

    “The third world, and it’s apologists the political/cultural/philosophical left, do not dislike the US (or any other Western nation) because of any one of it’s particular policies, but because of it’s very existence. An existence which is a reproach to theirs. A reminder of their failure to live up to their nature as humans and flourish.”

    Oh geez.

    I know a full-on political discussion is verboten here so let me just pose this as a philosophical question, one for you to consider *for yourself.* Why in the world would an arbitrary political entity with arbitrary national borders on an arbitrary spot on the planet be hated merely for existing? An existence in and of itself cannot be a reproach. Only behavior of some kind or a verbal admonition can do that. So could it be that someone or other in a developing country, or someone helping that person in the developing country, is angry at the United States for something we did or said? I think possibly. Therefore the anger WOULD be directed at policy, and not at existence.

    Really, I promise you, people in other countries exist for their own purposes and to their own ends. Even in “the third world”, they worry a tad bit more about survival than about whether America thinks electric cars are a good idea this week. They’re not stupid.

    I’m not sure what to say to your remark about failing to live up to our nature as humans and flourish other than to comment that I have seen plenty of such failures here in the U.S., and not all of them are in the lower classes.

    And that’s about all I can say without being mean about it. It occurs to me that some people avoid making lifestyle changes such as advocated in this blog not because they’re lazy or afraid but because they don’t like to associate with mean people. Nobody likes being told they’re a failure all the time, especially when their life circumstances derive directly from a history of their people being subjugated and harmed by the very country, ethnic group, religious group or philosophical group insulting them today.

    Not asking for kid gloves. But losing the boxing gloves would be nice.

    Hm. Going back to my previous comment about grains for the poor, and tying it in with developing countries: It would take just a little bit of the right education for them to figure out that by way of our grain assistance we have been responsible for countless epidemics of nutritional deficiency diseases in various “third-world” countries. Mainly because we send them foods their bodies are not accustomed to, and which they are not accustomed to preparing, and then we don’t tell them how to prepare those foods for greatest benefit. I’m reminded of the pellagra epidemic that broke out in Europe after the introduction of maize. Considering that we began sending food to, say for instance, Africa, well after we understood the right ways and wrong ways of preparing such foods, there was no excuse.

    Or how about our habit of getting mothers in developing countries hooked on baby formula, dooming infants under one year of age to drink dirty water.

    You know… stuff like that. If it were me I’d be angry too. And that’s not even getting into the complex political and economic stuff–my interest lies more in the concrete and the everyday.

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33. Grant on
    

    @Dana: You don’t think the rest of the world would hate America regardless of whether or not we left them alone? I don’t know… In the neighborhood I live in, there is a new apartment building going up and, surrounding the construction site is a fence, and on that fence is some promotional material featuring smiling families doing things like eating breakfast together in their new apartment home, playing in the nearby park, etc…

    It’s a beautiful ad, really. A strange thing has happened though: because it’s at street level, a number of passersby have defaced it – drawing moustaches on the women, darkening out their front teeth to make them look silly, things like that. I just can’t understand why someone would look at something so beautiful and feel, not admiration, but hatred and contempt.

    I guess that’s my Eurocentrism speaking…

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34. Eve on
    

    I don’t hate Amercians, but I bet you invented most of these unsustainable practices

    Re flogging baby formula to the third world – I agree that’s wrong if the underlying motive was profit (as I suspect it was), but was there an alternative? As for the dirty water, how many years have Oxfam been teaching the third world to build clean water systems, but the people keep messing them up. Surely there comes a point at which some countries’ leaders should take more ownership of their health issues, where possible of course. Poor education, poor hygeine, and lack of hope, not to mention power-hungry war lords, all contribute to the problems in the third world – there’s only so much help the West can offer. But we cannot allow people to starve. Mistakes are often made on the road to learning. Most of what the West has done for the third world has been positive and good, eg smallpox vaccines etc. If these situations were ignored then Americans and the rest of us would get blasted for that also. It’s a ‘no win’.

    One of the current health drives in England is trying to educate people on good nutrition. Admittedly it’s based on the usual food pyramid, five a day fruit/veg, seven a day grains, but it seems that people just do not know how to cook anymore – and this lack of knowledge is being passed down to their children. Although it’s still grain heavy by Primal standards, the emphasis is on one-quarter plate protein, one-quarter plate grain/carb (inc potato), and one-half plate veg. It’s a step in the right direction. However, you can still buy a dozen doughnuts for £1. In fact, we have the new craze over here of Pound Shops. You go in one of these and you can buy all sorts of cr*p for £1 – cakes, biscuits, sweets, chocolate, crisps, etc etc – total rubbish – but the shops are luring in those people who are short of money and just exacerbating the problems. A lot of primary schools have banned sweets and fatty snacks from the lunch boxes but it’s still going to take time to sort out our problems.

    I don’t know about the Amercan tax system, but here we all pay Council Tax – if you are in employment. The average 3 bed house in London suburbs pays around £150 a month. Maybe they should reimburse people who can demonstrate sustainability/green living, eg growing your own veg, having a compost heap, growing veg for your neighbours, even?! In fact, maybe all communities should have a communal veg/fruit plot, that we are all obliged to work on each week. But there are no incentives – none! Why is this? What influence do the supermarkets etc have on policy in this respect? They advertise good food, and do demos on TV on how to cook it, but they still lure you into buying the dozen doughnuts.

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35. Eve on
    

    Grant – your local poster of smiling families eating breakfast; maybe it was defaced by young people who don’t know what a smiling family is. I’d say half the people I know from my home and work life are living in broken families and, thinking about it now, I’d say the majority of these are from the lower half of the social pecking order. And, most of the smiling families I do know, don’t walk past posters because they drive everywhere in their ‘people carriers’.

    But that’s a whole different issue, I just wanted to offer a reason for the defacement.

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36. mc on
    

    @alchemyguy:

    I tend to think it’s completely unrealistic to expect the number of jobs in the agricultural sector to grow relative to the rest of the economy, and use less technology. It reminds me of my dismissal of the anarcho-primitivist movement – if people really went “back to basics” and eschewed technology, eventually someone will say, “Hey, Steve is dying, does anyone remember how to make pennicilin?” and things would begin again.

    Society naturally tends towards building up rather than breaking down. This isn’t always a good thing. Maybe people going back to agrarian life would be a good thing…but it’s not the direction I see the world moving in.

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37. mc on
    

    @Eve:

    Developing countries don’t necessarily have dirty water…and water that is dirty by our standards isn’t necessarily dirty by human immunological standards.

    Marketing things at the developing world is a good thing. Currently, most products produced are marketed at the richest 14% of the world – more trade traffic with the developing world means they’re closer to joining the *developed* world, assuming responsible governance and a certain amount of economic freedom.

    [Reply]
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