Interesting Links for 28-09-2022

[andrewducker]

1. Most Republicans Support Declaring the United States a Christian Nation

(tags:republicans politics christianity usa )

2. *You* might say that Russia just sabotaged its own gas pipeline to Europe, but I couldn't possibly comment.

(tags:russia germany gas doom )

3. Tory donor makes huge profits from falling pound

(tags:Conservatives economics doom )

4. Did several billion people watch the Queen's funeral?

(tags:queen funeral tv FactCheck )

5. There is no "software supply chain"

(tags:software quality security )

6. Subsistence farms are soul-killing misery machines

(tags:farming history )

7. Edinburgh Ocean Terminal to be partially demolished and turned into homes (I wonder if they'll regret that once the tram goes there)

(tags:edinburgh shopping )

Comments

[cmcmck]

6. Yet they were for centuries the way the great majority of people survived.

[andrewducker]

How well they survived, and how happy they were doing it, varied a lot, of course.

[channelpenguin]

6. I can see aspects of that. I think it can be done a bit better with the use of appropriate tech. Plus jobs are often ALSO "soul-killing misery machines" for many many many people, and just as hard work.

I am aiming for the "happy grandad veg garden" scenario, personally.

[andrewducker]

Tech definitely helps a lot.

[nancylebov]

#6-- Something I wrote for a Heinlein discussion group.

****

This underlines a contrast I hadn't noticed between "The Man Who Was Too Lazy to Fail" and "The Tale of the Adopted Daughter" in Time Enough for Love.

In the former, subsistence farming is awful-- do what one must to get out of it. In the latter, we have a wonderful utopian community based on subsistence farming. What gives?

Is the latter a result of better seeds, tools, and animals? I can assume that the tools have been refined and improved even if they're low tech. Do mules make that much of a difference? Miraculously good climate?

The link makes it sound as though having smarter, more benevolent people wouldn't be enough to make the difference.

I stopped believing in New Beginnings(?) long ago-- a shirt sleeve environment on a distant planet suitable for pioneering was just too unlikely. _Farmer on Ganymede_ is closer to realistic, but not *very* realistic.

It's still an excellent story.

****

One person pointed out that Lazarus Long, the founder of the utopian community, says he lies a lot. Was this a subtle lie that most readers missed? I don't know.

[andrewducker]

Tech helps a lot.

And a decent community helps a lot.

And also being with a person you love.

[nancylebov]

They used a low-tech approach. They brought durable things that they could repair, so no computer stuff.

[bens_dad]

Two things that would make a difference:

1. How good your land is.
If your land is on the side of a hill and the soil is very thin, you will need to put in more work on each acre of land and get less out, than the guy on the flat valley bottom with much deeper soil.
OK, the flood risks of the two plots will be different too, but they are both at risk.

2. How much the "landowner" takes.
This might be as rent or tithe, or even how many sons have to give military or other service to the liege-lord.
For the latter, if service is demanded at harvest time that is a big problem; if it is requested when there is no work and no food on the farm then service becomes a sort of social security, feeding an otherwise unproductive mouth.

Another way of putting it is does the over-lord exploit the natives or act to smooth out the peaks and troughs in the economy and spread resources fairly ? I guess that this is similar to Andrew Ducker's "decent community" below.

I don't think I have read any of these stories.

[anna_wing]

6 An external source of income helps. Such as a child who goes to work as a domestic servant or factory worker, or is sold into prostitution, preferably while still a virgin.

[channelpenguin]

oh gosh. sad but oh so true

[danieldwilliam]

6) I think subsistence farming might conflate three things.

1) growing most of your own food on a family or community farm compared with market farming where all or most of the crop is sold for cash in a liquid market. I think (but may well be wrong) that this is the strict definition of subsistence farming - you provide all or most of what you subsist on.

2) growing your food with low-tech and low-capital methods - compared with using large farm machinery, industrial fertilizer, chemical or to and, eventually robots I suppose. (And I've seen some interesting suggestions in Brett Devaraux's blog that during Imperial Rome subsistence farms enjoyed greater access to capital and therefore every so slightly better and less risky output and the ability to work slightly more marginal land leading to higher per capita GDP.)

3) a Malthusian economic situation compared with family planning and outputs constrained by energy inputs rather than labour inputs. (And see also the inevitable push in to marginal land).

If you are at the wrong end of 1, 2 and 3 you are a peasant farmer during Antiquiety or the Middle Ages. If you are at the best possible end of 1, 2 and 3 you are Jean Luc Picard's next door neighbour in Star Trek.

There are also questions about de-risking the process - which we largely achieve at the moment through long-distance liquid markets and mass preservation of food. One of the factors driving down overall yields in classic subsistence farming is that you had to manage your own risk by diversifying your own crop rather than concentrating on things your farm and your family were particularly good at. In a world with social security, insurance, preserving of food and long-distance markets you can farm differently even if you are mostly not farming for markets.

[armiphlage]

"outputs constrained by energy inputs rather than labour inputs"

My grandfather said that electricity was the cheapest farmhand he ever hired.

[dewline]

1. This is an obscene proposal. To see the US become a theocracy would indeed harm a great many people.

2. I wonder about that. You could make cases in either direction, yes. Putin has a particularly nihilistic and narcissistic streak in his character, of course.

3. Horrible people do horrible things.

4. I will not be surprised to learn of a maximum, all-technologies-available audience of at least a billion people.

[lilysea]

One of the main problems with subsistence farming is that as most fruit/vegetable crops don't keep for more than 12 months,

you're only ever one bad harvest or one accident that leaves you unable to work away from disaster.

There's little or no ability to stockpile against flood, drought, or a broken leg.

[channelpenguin]

Much can actually be effectively preserved by dehydration to last many years. Fermentation of fruit into alcohol makes it last years too. Beans and grains keep a long time if properly dried. Pressure canning is another effective medium-tech method of preservation that can last many years.

Get your own power generation going (solar, wind, hydro) and run freezers and a pump for your well to water things in dry times.

[andrewducker]

Nitpick: turning fruit into alcohol does not preserve fruit!

[cmcmck]

Although pickling fruit in it does! :o)

[andrewducker]

Absolutely!

[channelpenguin]

True: but alcohol is quite an efficient source of energy, can be easily produced with very little equipment (just labour) and easy to store. Your fruit does have to have at least as much sugar as apples and a decent yeast kicking around your "terroir". But apples ferment on their own in low temperatures which is extremely handy.

I don't drink but my friends and neighbours do.

Can also waterbath can the juice or just use a steam juicer over a hob/fire right into glass jars which sterilises the juice and stops it turning into alcohol.

Distillation into harder spirits is also medium-tech.

[bens_dad]

6. I am reminded of a reality show where several couples (or possibly families) had to live for a year as 19th century US settlers, possibly in the mid-west.

All but one group were pulled out after the summer because they had not collect and chopped as much firewood as the experts had told them they would need to survive the winter.

Although the man in the final couple *had* collected sufficient firewood, they were also pulled because, the show producers said, the marriage would fail in the harsh winter. The wife had been stuck inside all summer and had a terrible time cooking and cleaning with very little technological help, whilst the husband had had a great summer outdoors, planting, harvesting and cutting wood.
A follow-up segment suggested that TV people were right. The couple went home to the city, but the husband then left and found similar work on the land in a rural area.
(Do Americans call it the countryside ?)

[mtbc]

I didn't ordinarily hear the term "countryside" there, city and rural were very much the terms.

[andrewducker]

That all sounds pretty catastrophic! Must remember not to take my marriage onto TV!

[autopope]

Oh, I dunno: we're about 5 years away from "1970s Middle Class household" the reality show, in which you could commute to an office wearing a suit and tie and bash out COBOL on a 23270 terminal while dreaming about being able to buy an impossibly expensive Apple II with 16K of RAM ... while at home there are rolling power cuts, you're all using candles for lighting, the house smells of stale cigarettes, and the neighbours vote National Front.

I'm getting deja vu already and it was horrible the first time around!

[conuly]

I think the show was scheduled to end after summer anyway, but yes, that's how the producers summed it up after the fact - three out of four families did not do the ONE THING they were told to do, which is CHOP WOOD INCESSANTLY, and the fourth was clearly heading towards divorce.

[conuly]

But that's truth in television for nearly all US homesteaders who tried to go it alone. The idea of the rugged individualist out west is a myth. Almost the only settlers who survived are those who went as part of a community and immediately built a community.

People have this image of the Ingalls family in their little cabin, but they were close to starvation 95% of the time, and constantly on the run from debt collectors to boot.

[channelpenguin]

Community is vital.

Note to self: speak to neighbours more. Sigh. Wish we had a pub.

[andrewducker]

Build a decent-sized shed, invite neighbours over :-)