You can't feed the world.

"not having money because the stupid shitty US stole all our money so that they can be rich and act like pigs for the rest of their lives without having to do anything at all"

Perhaps you might consider a rational analysis. It's funny that someone proclaiming to be a "love spirit" could spew such vitriol. I find this the typical hypocrasy of the left.

 

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Oh and truthseeker, you said "your lack of opportunity comes comes from... blahblah".

Perhaps you've not been paying attention in class. Here is a reasonable explanation from economist.com:

"The true cost of something is what you give up to get it. This includes not only the money spent in buying (or doing) the something, but also the economic benefits (UTILITY) that you did without because you bought (or did) that particular something and thus can no longer buy (or do) something else. For example, the opportunity cost of choosing to train as a lawyer is not merely the tuition fees, PRICE of books, and so on, but also the fact that you are no longer able to spend your time holding down a salaried job or developing your skills as a footballer. These lost opportunities may represent a significant loss of utility. Going for a walk may appear to cost nothing, until you consider the opportunity forgone to use that time earning money. Everything you do has an opportunity cost (see SHADOW PRICE). ECONOMICS is primarily about the efficient use of scarce resources, and the notion of opportunity cost plays a crucial part in ensuring that resources are indeed being used efficiently."

From here: http://www.economist.com/research/Economics/alphabetic.cfm?TERM=OPPORTUNITY COST

 

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Well, I was just overacting anyways...

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We do know how to make money. But most of our money completely goes into paying those bills that we didn't generate. Well, ok... besides building Brasilia. That was dumb...

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But it seems to me that there is no way that we can have economic growth with all the money that we have to pay. Also, external investiments could be quite helpful, but unfortunately there are much speculation around how risky Brasil can be as an investiment, and those speculations are mere speculations rather then a true risk. So why there are speculations from rich countries? Well, maybe you don't want to share your riches, eh?...

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We simply can't live through our limited opportunity cost. We definetely need economic growth in order to be able to compete in the international market.

 

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Why would I? I thought I explained myself pretyy clearly...

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Yeah, I remember that from the class. Thanks for that, the examples are great.

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I can't speak for 'the country' and it's sort of silly to think like that, but one might consider common sense. Do you want to piss away all your resources on a bad investement? Where there is money to be made, there is investement. Where there is huge risk and low possibility of retunr on investment, there is none. It's common sense. Perhaps instead of complaining that "we don't want to share", you might look at "how do we make a potential investor see the profitability of what we have to offer, and then make sure we deliver". If you could do that, your purported problem is resolved.

 

That's what the governement has been doing. However, the frequent speculations scare away possible investors...

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In any case, it would be nice to get back all the money that was stolen from us...

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That is obviously mistaken, or like I said, you wouldn't have the problem. People are suckers for a sure thing.

That doesn't make any sense. "frequent speculations"? What does that mean? Do you mean that people think it's "high risk"? Well, it's then the job of the government to:

1) Make sure there is a damn good reason to invest. Basically - facilitate the sure thing.
2) Demonstrate to potential investors the "rock solid" nature of your investment. If you can determine a rock solid 20% return, people will line up around the globe to invest.

First of all which "us" do you refer to... Brazillians?

Regardless, I don't know anything about whether or not something was stolen from your country. If it was, standing around and bitching about it certainly doesn't help. Complaints are quite human for sure, but they don't get much accomplished. Act, or waste your time. If you believe so strongly in the cause of your country's economy (which I would find to be very noble), then stop pissing and moaning, get your 5 doctorates, and make investment in Brazil a sure thing. Do that, and you will resolve your complaints. Lead them to economic salvation.

 

The government have tried to resolve some of the problems. However, we simply don't have enough money for it. We raise our productivity and we have an economic growth, but this economic growth is instantly eaten up by paying bills that we shouldn't be paying. It's a vicious circle. We can even invest in education, but for doing that, we have to take money of other things, and we simply can't, because we don't have enough to spend. This would obviously be possible if we had economic growth. So the bottom-line
is: how can you expect us to have any economic growth, if there's no space for it? I think it's a little hypocrite to ask us to pay our loans to the IMF and not paying your own bills. The US has trillions of dollars in loans. Do they pay it? No. What do they do with the money? Invest it in education, healthcare and other things so that you can have economic growth. But your bills get more and more interests and it gets larger and larger, and you will probably never be able to pay. So why should we?

Btw, is the IMF an US-run organization or and international one? It says international, but really, what is the truth behind it? Where is the IMF located anyways...? (this is an obviously rhetoric question...

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)

No. I mean that people say that there is a high risk, but in reality there isn't. With an investment, we can very easily invest the money in education and techonolgy and, in return, we could have greater increases in productivity, which would eventually result in economic growth and economic independance.

Yes.

For example, Portugual stole basically all our gold...

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That's just one example....

That is certainly very tempting. However, that is just one thing to accomplish, and me all by myelf would probably not be able to do it.
Why do you say 5 doctorates?

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Just to remind you, before we can have an economic growth, we need a raise in the productivity. But to raise the productivity, we need a series of other things. We need, for example, education. We also need food, shelter, clothes, healthcare, etc. But our resources are carce. That's when the opportunity cot come to play. The problem with 3<up>rd</sup> wolrd countries is that we don't have enough resources to cause an economic growth. We have only enough resources to keep us alive. And in order to increase our productivity, we need either increase our work hours (which are already from about 7:00am to 10:00pm) or increase our techonology, which would result in faster and more accurate production. But we don't have neither the money, nor the proper education to do so. The reult is that we live in a viciou circle, where we only produce enough to consume. That is what is called "hands-to-mouth"... or at least how my teacher call it...

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We need food, shelter, and safety. Without those things we cannot survive. And we only have enough opportunity cost to cover those things, resulting in obvious lack of economic growth.

 

Yes and no matter where that grain is, that's in the supply chain... along with all the exchanges along the way to the end user.

I don't know why you say that. If money is part of the resources required to procure other resources, then as far as I'm concerned, that's part of the supply chain.

Please support that statement. I have no idea how you reach your conclusion. I think you're dismissing the value of trade.

Yes and if air were only used for breathing where wouldn't be any pollution. Fortunatley, air has a number of uses. Oh and the idea of "all food being simply used to feed people" is pure idealism. If I have two twix and you have a clark bar, what if you want a twix and I want a clark bar?

"profit is a problem"? A government's mandate is to "profit" for it's people, regardless of economic policy. Maybe I don't see what you mean, but it seems like you've latched onto some socialist rhetoric. I admit that said rhetoric is enticing, as it 'sounds good' and right and pure. It is unfortunately however, dangerously idealistic. The "problem" as I see it in that context, is clash of value.

So what?

It sounds like you might have a point in there, but I'm not sure exactly what it is. What precedent, what abuse? Are you sure it's abuse? By what standard?

LOL. That is a very noble thought, but I don't think it has any merit, as with no profit, or reward for the efforts undertaken to grow it, and the opportunity cost of using it for food, I don't see how you would motivate anyone to do it. More pertinently, an economy is dependent on the fair trade of goods.

Yes (as long as the jack boot wasn't stepping on them), because someone would trade their food for it. Get it? Just because you think desire shouldn't be considered as demand - that doesn't make it stop being demand. If I really really want to do heroin and I have some extra food, and someone else really wants that extra food, they will probably meet my demand such that I can meet theirs, or vice versa. Barter, trade, whatever. If I desire what you have, there are a number of ways I can go about procuring it.

LOL. But he has food right? Isn't that what you just said? If he has enough to eat, what is your complaint?

From my perspective, it looks like you say that blindly. I find that uncharacteristic of you, but I don't see the analysis to support your demands. Forget about the supply chain? It's not an issue of logistics? Call me whatever you must, but IMO, economics is mainly about logistics and 'feeding the world' directly follows suit.

Well I don't know much about farming, but that sounds plausible to me.

Because your sentence made no sense to me. I think your example below clarifies what you were trying to say.

Poorly. That's a good point, but doesn't that place the problem of the government of the south american country, or perhaps the consumers that fail to "buy south american"? If a country's market cannot compete - get into a market where you can. Otherwise you're wasting everyone's time. Get out of the game in that case. For instance, if said south american government finds your specified issue to be problematic - place large tarrifs on the american goods, to allow fair competition. Well either that or like I said, find a new game. Turning challenge into opportunity, that's the ticket.

It really depends on who you ask.

 

Speaking in absolutisms, like Wes seems to start off doing, of course you cant feed the world.
But, like everyone else, I say you can start by making sure people have land to grow their own food, and suchlike.

AS for Brazil, I have an interesting old book that demonstrates how Brazil effectively lost capital over much of the early 20th century, ie it was extracted by foreign companies and gvts, in the form of remitted profits and raw materials etc.

 

Imagine this: A thread is started that offers up an idea and the thread starter asks for feedback. Almost immediately, the thread is threadjacked into a forum to bullshit about why it is the fault of the U.S. that the excess amounts of grain grown in the world aren't distributed efficiently to the places of greatest need.

For the love of Porfiry, can you guys have one single fucking discussion that doesn't become a circular argument that leads back to the U.S.? Are you that fucking narrow minded?

Regarding the distribution of food...: If you are willfully naive enough to believe that the internal politics of any region don't play the most significant role in the distribution of resources then I really don't think you should interject your input into a discussion that is clearly over your head. Ignorance is no excuse for being wrong.

Farm subsidies. The governments way of trying to level the playing field for those that are "less than efficient" in their methods. Funny that liberals would bitch about the very policies they advocate every single day.

 

Indeed, this thread is a blatant example of discrimination against the EU. We throw away heaps of good food too.

 

Why not feed the dolphins or whales? We actually TAKE food AWAY from them. If there is excess food left over obviously they should be getting it.
The whole premise of feeding the world relies on the zany outlandish assumption that society a is responsible for society b's well being.
If somehow this was the case, there still wouldn't be a case for society a sending food to society b. Because that merely prolongs the amount of time the problem will persist.
Also I hear people saying people need land, right there already that is contradictory to the system that is life on earth. If there are people without land they should not exist. Having land to survive off of is the pre-requisite for living. Its not a matter of finding or creating land to accomodate for earths homo-sapiens, we should be allowing earth to decide how many homo-sapiens it can support. If people are living somewhere they can't survive, then let them die. There actually is a solution to these problems and they require no effort. Making an effort in fact fuels the problem.
You might think I'm heartless, but lets face reality, in 100 years if my plan(which is do nothing) was in place, there would be no more starving people living in areas unable to support human life. In 100 years with your plan in place there would be, they would occassionally be getting some tepid gruel but they would still be living unbearable lives full of suffering.
Good intentions are a bitch, history has proven this time and time again, by righteously trying to help these people you are prolonging the suffering and creating future suffering. Really think about it. You are ensuring that in a hundred years people will still be being born purely to die horrible slow painfull deaths.
The only difference between me and you is I'm proposing 1 or 2 generations of suffering, you are proposing to have as many generations of suffering as we can afford to maintain.
Thats the reality.

 

I once read someone complaining that the seabirds, dolphins etc all together rob us from an equal amount of food as we take out of the oceans each year.

What a bunch of wankers.

 

Maybe the fact that at least 2/3 of the american population is overlyfed and overweight, contrasting with the 2/3 of the world population that starve is a better argument?

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Maybe is not much of narrow-mindness. If all is blamed in te US, then there must be some truth behind all the arguments, right?
Why would the US be blamed if it isn't the US's fault? That would be dumb, wouldn't it?

O-k... so when manufacturing companies stabilish factories on 3rd world countries and pay them mierable wages, and then sell the final product back to them for a much bigger price; I assume that, by your view, that is correct and don't influence the internal economy, right?

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How is weight relevant? Since the US has a lot of food, they should ship it elsewhere? Why? What if it would be rotten before it got there? What if it would be stolen along the way? What if they don't like our food? Why, after the discussion thus far in this thread, do you still not see that your generalization is false? At least honestly question your own assertions. You say that 2/3 of the world is STARVING? How then is it that they survive? If they aren't dead then are you still sure they're starving? Please provide some evidence of your claims. 2/3 of the world starving sounds like a pile of horseshit to me.

What the hell are you on?

Okay you simply can't be serious. You seem to honestly hate the US, so this seems like a sincere comment. How about if I blame you for the death of my great aunt? Would it be dumb for you not to think you are at fault?

Okay they don't have to work, nor do they have to buy the shit. If they do, then their government sold them out and they should get a new one.

 

You can't just subsidize your own food production and then ship it to countries in need. You will destroy their agricultural economy.

You need to make things more fair and give structural help.


I can remember once seeing a program about dutch farmers going to third world countries not to give them grain but to see if they could give them some expertise.

 

I have some questions:

Who, which country first send a large amount of free food as help?
To whom?
When?

What was the motivation for this act?
Were there any conditions bound to that?
What was the outlook -- did the giving country set a deadline by which the receiving country should recover or something like that?

I am aware that this is a political question, but to give away large amounts of free food is in the end a political decision.
What benefit did the giving country hope for from that act?

 

Americans eat and consume more then they should. That's a fact.

So what.

I don't think that's an issue for an starving person. Have you ever starved.

Generalization? Well, maybe you see it as a generalization because you live in a rich country, and all people that you see around you is pretty well off, certainly compared to the 3rd world. Still, it's a very small amount of the population.

Just because they are starving, that does'nt mean they will die immediately. People can live a long time without food and still not totally die of starvation. It is a process. Starvation is not something that happens in one day. Chances are that they will eat something, but they will have a very bad nutrition. You don't know that do you?

The only rich people in the planet live, basically, in North America and Europe (with a few little exceptions). They represent about 1/3 of the wolrd (or maybe even less then that, if my memory doesn't fail me). The rest is the third world, and in the third world people either almost starve or do definetely starve. It's not a great exageration to say that 2/3 of the world starve, because 2/3 of the world live in poverty. Still, the amount of people in the third world that doesn't starve is quite small compared to the ones that do starve, so I totally ignore the ones that are not really starving and round it to 2/3. Big deal.

Oxygen, food, and no brainwashing. I guess the "no brainwashing" part is the one that we have different, eh?

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Ah? First, I don't hate the US. Second, what are you talking about?

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Yes, indeed. It's interesting how people are priced much lower nowdays... maybe we should have slaves again...?

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