Post by Mark FergersonPost by R. Steve WalzPost by Mark FergersonPost by R. Steve Walzmeaning the People can run them
just as well as ignorant rich bastards by taking over and controlling
the corportation by Majority Democracy.
Yet those "ignorant bastards" are the ones that set up
those extremely productive farms, not a bunch of long-haired
Co-op ex-hippies.
Often successful production is started by family workers and people
who profited little from it out of conscience, and then it was
absconded with at their death by the unscupulous rich! Few family
farms became corporate ag combines with their original ownerships.
Do you have a little shrine containing a bust of Lenin in
your house?
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More of your irrelevant posturing crap.
I don't have a thing by him or of him.
I don't worship heroes of any kind.
Post by Mark FergersonI just love it when you use words like "often" without
supporting statistics. Yes, I've done my own research, and
the numbers don't bear your claims out.
----------------------------
You did doodley.
Post by Mark FergersonSmall family-owned farms are one of the original "small
business" enterprises that used to be the real economic
backbone of this country, not the profligate "robber-barons"
you vent so much of your spleen on. The latter speculated on
the output of the former, without whom they'd have had to go
into coal, lumber, or other speculation.
----------------------------------------
The teensy farm was a trap for rubes, stuck there with people you
didn't choose and wanting to leave if you had a brain. In Europe
it was family-as-dynasty, and you had to give away your
birth-rightful inheritance of the earth to escape family-farm
slavery. In the USA you sold your parents farm, put them in
a home, and moved to the suburbs, and STILL lost your rightful
place to land-speculators who gave you doodley and cranked up
the urban housing prices artificially to reap windfall, leaving
you a renting/mortgaged serfs paying monthly tribute for what
was rightfully yours AT BIRTH.
Post by Mark FergersonAs the output of the farms became larger than local
markets could handle, the "robber barons" got rich by
finding larger markets. Without that effort, the small
farmers couldn't have passed on their farms to latter
generations because prices would have kept dropping. That's
also how America got into the subtly destructive habit of
feeding the world rather than teaching it how to feed
itself. If that had happened (exporting knowledge instead of
its fruits), we wouldn't see the wage and other general
economic disparties between America and the rest of the
world.
------------------
So you entirely neglect the simple fact of agriculture that
3 FEET of topsoil from Vermont to the Mississipi and farther,
compared to the 2 INCHES Europe had left or the 1/2 INCH that
the middle east has on its prime farmland would not out-produce
the rest of the world easily, no matter HOW stupid and inefficient
the system running it?? How about the MILLIONS of square miles of
forest when England has left scarely a tree?? Moron, the continent
was the engine, there was no "knowledge", American farmers have
even forgotten how to rotate crops since petroleu-driven fertilizer
production!
Post by Mark FergersonThere wouldn't be slave-wage sweatshops anywhere
because the populations would be used to eating better and
living better than they have for nearly three hundred years.
--------------------------------
They would need people who actually KNEW how to do that to help
them, not stupid fucking Americans! They would need physicists and
agronomists who knew the proper uses of sheet plastic and aluminum
foil and glue and recycling of materials, and they would need a
free hand politically in those countries, because they were driven
to ruin BY THEIR RICH CLASS WHO WANTED INSTANT PROFIT AND FIGURED
ON JUST MOVING ELSEWHERE WHEN THEY WERE RICH ENOUGH, LIKE TO THE USA!
Post by Mark FergersonAnd farm ownership clearly passed into conglomeration
because of the short-term economic thinking we go into below.
---------------------
Above.
Post by Mark FergersonPost by R. Steve WalzMost major coporate farmers in California's central valley are
merely rich land speculators who bought them under-rated from
downtrodden areas and failed rural savings and loans in bad years.
Yup, because shipping food "long distances" (say, across
county lines) worked better, according to short-term
economic thinking, than carrying farmers' loans during those
bad years. That's how family farms got swept into
agribusinesses.
------------------
The small farmers often had gone to ruin because they had degraded
their soil and couldn't profit anymore, family farmers are usually
MORE stupid than even agribusiness, which has to answer to share-
holders, but a Communist govt running it has to answer to WAY MORE
PEOPLE!!
Post by Mark FergersonPost by R. Steve WalzPost by Mark FergersonWhere are the extremely productive
communes, Steve? There aren't any.
"Communes" weren't FOR that, numb-nuts.
Well then, what _were_ they for?
---------------
Which kind?
In the Sixties in the USA, they were for SEX!
In Russia, they were someplace to isolate workers and then have
the Army come in and remove the contents of their store-houses
year after year and bring them back NOTHING. This makes the
workers lean on their shovels so the army will go elsewhere.
The Politburo sold all that product abroad and socked the money
into offshore accounts, and their man Putin runs the Russian Mafia
which *IS* the govt, the re-transormation of Russia back to nearly
Tsarist times.
Post by Mark FergersonWhy couldn't they even
feed themselves? Because they refused to recognize the
_real_ economic climate they existed within, that's why. If
they had, they'd have out-competed the "big boys" to scale
by meeting the specialized market demands the big boys can't.
----------------------------------
Nonsense, niche markets are artificial and trendy. They are
like casino gambling with your retirement.
Post by Mark FergersonToday you'd be buying "organic" vegetables etc at
competitive prices from large communes instead of from
"boutique" producers at ridiculously inflated prices.
------------------------------------
They are converging lately, because agribusiness has FINALLY
picked it up. But also, the State has made inroads, forcing
them to reveal their soil amendments to the consumer.
Post by Mark FergersonPost by R. Steve WalzAnd NONSENSE, many agencies and most public utilities are publically
owned and NON-PROFIT!!!
Solely because they are legislatively required to be
non-profit. They also cannot run at breakeven.
----------------------------------
They don't require subsidy, so they COULD INDEED be profit, but instead
offer MUCH LOWER rates for water and power to locals than commercial
profit utilities!!
Post by Mark FergersonBut the financial profitability of communes, public
utilities, or any other group enterprise isn't really the
issue here; self-sustainability is, and that requires a
slightly greater output than input to make up for entropy.
But you don't get that without motivation, and threatening
the workers with death by torture for not meeting quotas
won't make it happen.
-----------------------------------
Irrelevant. No such is needed.
Pay workers fairly and equally, and if they must work to eat,
they will work fairly. If not they will be fired till they
starve or change their attitudes. What happens now on the
streets of America if someone won't work? They starve or they
beg. In my society begging is a crime of harrassment and
criminal parasitism! You don't HAVE to work, as long as you
are willing to go without food. Sign up for the next available
job you're qualified for, or training to a job, and you eat
that day. Simple. THAT'S motivation! If they do their work
they can have anything anyone else has, because pay is the SAME!!
If they wantamore interesting job, sign up to be educated, and
while you're trained THAT will be your job, as long as you DO
it and achieve competence.
Post by Mark FergersonThe proper application of the principle of "production
amplification" will, and does. The _improper_ application of
that principle is what dehumanizes these enterprises, and
puts ex-farmers into poorhouses.
Mark L. Fergerson
-----------------------------
Everyone has the right to a home, free and clear, because all of
all our ancestors built everything we see. We fairly inherit our
share of the earth and man's products from them, as our birthright!
But we do NOT have the right to live off others, and so we must
work for the collective, at work it votes that it needs done. Or
else we can live in that house and eat bugs till we die and they
hose us out! The primary motivation to work is hunger, once hunger
is sated, other interests pertain and further motivate. And so on
up the heirarchy of human needs to human wants.
-Steve
--
-Steve Walz ***@armory.com ftp://ftp.armory.com/pub/user/rstevew
Electronics Site!! 1000's of Files and Dirs!! With Schematics Galore!!
http://www.armory.com/~rstevew or http://www.armory.com/~rstevew/Public