OT: Apple's New xServe - 1U Rackmount Server/off topic

[Eric D.]

on 16/5/02 12:27, Robert Brandtjen at rob@prometheusmedia.com wrote:

> Of course we do, there are no shortages of these "resources" - if you studied
> economic histories, you would know that these same ideas were put forth
> during the great Potato famines of Ireland - then to justify NOT stepping to
> help the Irish - the idea was then, as you are indicating, that world simply
> didn't have the resources to feed that "many" people. It was hogwash then and
> it is now. My God, the US government pays farmers billions NOT to plant food.

& Ironically the US (& European (& from what I gather, to a lesser extent
Canadian)) gov't also pays farmers billions to plant crops, thereby helping
keep the third world poor (by keeping prices unnaturally low).

The potato famine in Ireland was as much a political issue as it was
agricultural. They were exporting food while local people were starving.

(much like the 3rd world today -- cash crops are great for int'l
conglomerates since bananas (& poppies ;) sell well in the developed nations
(+ you get trade wars b/t European & US producers of bananas (& probably b/t
Afghani and Brazilian poppy producers ;)) but they do very little to feed
people in the producing countries. Profits are siphoned back to Europe + US
+ Japan (& a few other smaller financiers) but the locals don't have any
local food supply to eat (bananas are nutritionally about as bad as it
gets)).

Food isn't as much of a limiting factor as is everything else relating to
human activity -- food & land consumption (*luxury* meat consumption (#1
external factor in S American deforestation is McDonalds & co.)), oil & gas
consumption (& CO2 production). We already are seeing the results of global
climate change & yet people still fail to see the "public good" of the
atmosphere (as a sink) as a *finite* resource.

Oh well, I'll be dead in 70 or 80 years so I won't be dramatically affected
but my kids & future generations will.

on 16/5/02 12:27, Robert Brandtjen at rob@prometheusmedia.com wrote:

> If these countries become "developed" they will stop doing things like hating
> everyone who is wealthier then they are, they will, for instance, stop
> cutting down the rain forests to provide more poorly managed farm land, and,
> heaven help us, stop using the trees for fuel for their fledgling steel
> mills. Trees are very poor fuel source as the west learned long ago. They
> will also stop having 10 to 15 children each, as happened in the West, when

There's that too. Problems aren't simple nor are the solutions.