2/ my stance is: * agriculture has ALWAYS been an economy, going back as far as Rome, and certainly in the US from the 1830s through the 1840s, and this is reflected in politics (blockades of southern cotton exports in Civ War, "cross of gold" politics in 1880s"
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3/ * the FDA and USDA aren't great, but don't significantly make the problem worse. I can sell my neighbor a half pig, or I can send my entire pig to the local butcher and have it processed for less than I could butcher it myself,
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4/ so the "buy pork and beef from neighbors" argument falls down because we can ALREADY DO THAT. * economies of scale from train transportation of live animals, refrigerated transportation of cut meat, etc. was revolutionary 140 years ago. Far pre-FDA / USDA.
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5/ * Family farms are terribly inefficient, which is why they have been collapsing in number / growing in size into agribusinesses for 140 years. * Feedlots and cat 3 tractors are not diseconomies of scale, but economies of scale.
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6/ I find the entire argument frustrating because it feeds into a meta-pattern of arguments across all politics, that (a) the thing I want is natural and will arise spontaneously, absent... (b) this one bad regulation
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7/ pot-heads: if THE MAN didn't ban pot, we'd have wonderful hemp clothing and we wouldn't need weird chemical medicines libertarians: if THE MAN didn't ban free enterprise there'd be no poverty or racism because everyone would work at a fair price, and ...
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8/ new urbanists: if THE MAN didn't subsidize roads then everyone would live in dense cities with wonderful subways socialists: if THE MAN didn't favor capital so much worker coops would be very popular and and and...
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9/ hedonists: if THE MAN didn't push his Christian morality down our throats everyone would be polyamorous and children would be raised in a loving environment without sexual hangups and and and
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10/ Almost no one says "I want X, and government interferes a bit with Y, but even absent Y there are inherent structural and economic forces that interfere with X, so I acknowledge that X is a beautiful dream, and can be incrementally approached, but will never be tenable"
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11/ If you look around the world and see so many people arguing (incorrectly) "get rid of Y and my utopia X will be achieved", then as a good Bayesian you have to self criticize and really really inspect your priors that YOUR x is the one that's different.
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12/ Maybe this is a post-rationalist stance? I don't know. Maybe your one hobby horse is the exception, but I strongly doubt it. I've been having this PATTERN of argument with people for a quarter century and it's really tiresome in several different ways:
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13/ * search for confirming evidence, not disconfirming evidence * lack of citing history from before bad thing X was implemented (e.g. gold bugs who say that fiat currency creates bubbles, and disregard that there were bubbles with gold currency) * "silver bullet" thinking
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ⓘ Dogs don't have thumbs Retweeted Prometheus 2.1
ⓘ Dogs don't have thumbs added,
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End of conversation
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