Neil wrote
>>HARRY: If we run out of something, we'll use something else. We are
>>a small species spread thinly across an enormous planet.
>
>
>Mr. Pollard, what planet is it that you are talking about? Out species
>consumes an immense fraction of the total biomass of Earth. (I could look
>up a more precise figure, but you can as easily.) A small example, off the
>top of my head: about half the total land area of the United States is used
>to raise beef for the extravagant American diet.
I'm talking about the only planet I have experienced - Earth.
But, you've made my point. Apparently - you say - given a need for more and
cheaper food, we have half the US available to plant broccoli - should we
decide we're getting hungry for veg.
You'll recall Ed's magnificent an eloquent description of the Brazilian
favalas. I replied with a description of the empty land in Brazil. You may
remember I wrote of the peasant occupation of an 86,400 acre farm which was
fully occupied supporting 110 cattle.
The evil conditions of the favelas seem to spring from the (as Marx put it)
the "expropriation of the peasant from the soil".
As a lot of 'futureworkers' are sympathetic to Marxist ideas, it would
behove them to read Volume III of Das Kapital. They'll find such tidbits as
his assertion that 'surplus value' disappears into the Rent of land. Also
the point that the accumulations of wealth that financed capitalism came
from the landlords.
Instead of trying to overturn capitalism, perhaps it would be better to
collect Land Rent (and therefore 'surplus value') and stop the continuing
accumulations that go to the landlords.
If this were done in Brazil - along with a heavy program of land
resettlement, which means providing sufficient space for families to
produce - food production would increase enormously. Also, perhaps, the
favelas would empty.
In Taiwan, in the early 50's, a similar policy, which collected Land Rent
which bore no relationship to actual individual production led to
tremendous increases in harvests. Most peasants grew as many as five crops
from the same 5 hectares. At one point, the island with a population
density on the way to 1,400 to the square mile, had a net export of food.
Could the Brazilians do something similar? I think they could. Yet the
only, somewhat oblique, answer to my post detailing the emptiness of Brazil
came from Elizabeth who quoted the failure of government settlement of
peasants in the rain forest.
Which reference had nothing to so with my post.
So, you can look at the crowded favelas for evidence of overpopulation - or
raise your eyes to the real Brazil in all its vastness.
Of course stupidity can kill the lot of us and our leaders are good at it.
But, replacing their stupidity with another stupidity won't get us off the
hook. The red herrings of Global Warming, Bio diversity, and the rest of
the environmental playbook, can send us to Hades as quickly as can the
existing scenario.
Harry
