Tell me about your experiences working as a farm laborer, vixnix.

I really don't like the view of Work being naturally Moral and wholesome

It should be seen as a temporary evil

We're going to have to set them aside eventually, because they'll be too expensive to run - it'll be cheaper to pay human workers. Industrialisation only displaced the human workforce because fossil fuels were abundant and cheap - they're now running out. So it will make good business sense to use human energy.

Prioritising corporate profits has made the wealth gap wider and bumped the middle classes further into debt and towards poverty. That can only last for so much longer before we recognise current corporate model as inherently flawed and begin to move towards more sustainable ones. In the future, who benefits from the production of goods or rendering of services, won't be quite so top-heavy. So falling profits won't matter as much, as long as production is steady and everyone benefits equitably from their labour. You can see it working already in a lot of places, just not the U.S., not in a widespread way, unfortunately.

But moving people out of the city, out of the projects, and onto land, where they can engage in physical labour, in a living environment, is better than any aid package you can offer the same population, while continuing to house them together in cramped apartments in the same district, with no access to natural waterways or fertile growing areas. It's an inhuman environment...basically a breeding ground for mental disturbances and generational helplessness and immaturity.

I haven't had any - but I did keep four egg-laying chickens for two years, and have attempted to grow vegetables four times in the last 8 years. It is hard work.

My husbands family on both sides run massive working farms in New Zealand - livestock. So I have seen the work ethic he inherited, coming from a farming family, and I have stayed on three of his family's working farms and witnessed the physical labour involved in running them...and the massive and healthy sense of self-esteem that comes from producing a physical product, and one that you can be proud of, because you put in a lot of hard work to produce it, and it will now return you a profit.

Food production is essential and food prices are set to rise anyway, for a multitude of reasons. We are running out of readily available, cheap fertilisers and pesticides, at the same time that sea levels are rising, and unpredictable weather patterns are increasing. This is already affecting both food prices and profitability for growers. The seasons are less straightforward - air temperatures are rising in some places, leading to an increase in different sorts of pests and diseases (fungi, moths, etc.). Sudden week long warm patches in the middle of early spring can affect a crop's development and ruin a yeares production. Extreme weather events are also likely - floods & droughts. GM giants like Monsanto have switched conventional food producers onto chemicals and monocultures that have ruined their farms for future use, once the chemicals run out. Restoring soil health and managing new agricultural conditions in an ongoing way will require the passing down of human knowledge - this was traditionally done between the older generations and the younger generations of the people who remained on the farm - now farming managers who study agricultural science tend to come in and apply that decade's trending knowledge to the land, and generally just cause more damage in the long term, for a short term gain (because that's what they're paid to do, and they have student loans to pay off, too.).

There is a tremendous amount to be gained from pre-industrial farming knowledge and practices being transmitted to younger generations, and like all practical industries, this happens best when new people work alongside more experienced ones, on the job. It would be a great thing for many depressed communities to become experts on food production, IMO. But anyway. Whatever.

Why? Work is recognised as being a positive addition to the adult lives of most humans. I think having a narrow definition of work isn't great - work shouldn't necessarily be defined as what people will pay you to do. But staying occupied in activities that require effort and mastery and which yield a contribution to the human community, is recognised as fairly essential for the mental health of most humans - how does that come across as a temporary evil, for you?

I bailed hay three Texas summers. It taught me not to be a fucking farmer.

That's....kinda like saying I did data entry in a hut in Antarctica three winters in a row, it taught me not to do data entry

None of us want to be uncomfortable, but it's persisting through discomfort and seeing the rewards that give us the biggest highs...making ourselves completely comfortable hasn't made us happier or healthier, as a species. It's actually done the opposite.

We're adapted for hard lives in a difficult, unpredictable, and often hostile environment - that's why so many shirt wearers drive home and then crave a gaming session where things are dangerous and they can get their heart rate up. But there's no accomplishment when the task is finished - the body is no healthier, the actual problems of their lives are no better solved.

They would have been better off cycling to and from work.

without reading the thread, which i don't want to do..... junk food is cheaper than healthy food, so that answers the first part of the question entirely

i mean that point has probably been covered already, but good God's fuck, why can't people grasp that?

I basically don't feel like a person when I don't work out

Nice work, vixnix. You win this round. You make a lot of good points.

The author of the article in the original post also makes the point that junk food/fast food is the only luxury that poor people can afford. That makes a lot of sense to me. Taking the kids to McDonalds or wherever as a treat is relatively cheap compared to what it would cost to take the kids to a movie.

being able to afford to cook a solid, healthy dinner more than 2 times a week is a luxury for a hell of a lot of people

what

time for sensei Trots to school the student, methinks

i want to die.

look deep within yourself, to find your hidden talents and skills. just gimme dem bootstraps, and all of my problems will be solved. along with dem bootstraps comes education, skills, the end of any race/gender-based inequality.


look deep with YOURSELF, Clarice

I totally agree with you.

i had a conversation with one of my students at school last week:

"sir, i'm so hungry man! you got any food? i always ask my dad to buy us food, but he never does".

"why not, Isaac?"

"probably can't afford it, he says paying the electricity bill is more important"



i mean, fuck :(

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tW_vdsU_Bb8

what you guise need right herr is some singing nuns. ur welcome.

Are you in Aus? My derelict brother is getting into food redistribution - I'm thinking about hosting a Christmas dinner because all the charities shut down over Christmas...he put me onto second bite:

http://secondbite.org

me? no NZ

life is humiliating. society. fuck. really, i want to die.

I think since the start of society humans have tried to make things less labor intensive.

I mean, we have a limited time before infinite non-existence, let's try to limit the time we're forced doing menial shit under a boss

so what's the plan, elphy? work hard for two years and then relax for the rest of your life?

AHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAA ROLFMAO

enjoy being a student
you'll never live long enough to ever have this much free time
you will die one week before retirement, as in all those cop movies