Meanwhile, I've gotten nothing done, except for finishing Richard
Manning's far-reaching Against the Grain: How Agriculture Has
Hijacked Civiliation, and starting Gareth Porter's Perils of
Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam.
Manning stalks his subject like the hunter-gatherer he aspires to
be. Having no taste for hunting myself, I tend to start from the
assumption that agriculture is a given -- how else can six billion
people coexist? But he raises an insightful question when he asks
why one would choose a life of agriculture over hunting and gathering.
As he points out, the latter is fun, while agriculture is back-breaking
hard work. This sort of basic insight is similar to the one he revealed
in Grasslands when he described fallow farmland as a clearcut
grassland. Agriculture leads not just to more work but to worse health.
It does support more people, surpluses even, which in turn lead to
hierarchical societies, accumulation of wealth, spread of poverty, war,
and empire. But closer to home, he gets into the history of processed
food, the industrial expanse of commodities (corn, wheat, rice, sugar),
the politics of subsidies and the subsidization of politics. One of the
most striking points he makes is that the only ideas that attract any
development funding are ones that lead to selling more products. This
makes for an additive model: more fertilizers, more pesticides, more
of whatever accomplishes more growth. Makes me wonder something I've
been wondering quite a while, which is whether growth is worthwhile.
If you start to have doubts there, lots of things come into doubt --
including most of economics.
Meanwhile, I've gotten nothing done, except for finishing Richard
Manning's far-reaching Against the Grain: How Agriculture Has
Hijacked Civiliation, and starting Gareth Porter's Perils of
Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam.
Manning stalks his subject like the hunter-gatherer he aspires to
be. Having no taste for hunting myself, I tend to start from the
assumption that agriculture is a given -- how else can six billion
people coexist? But he raises an insightful question when he asks
why one would choose a life of agriculture over hunting and gathering.
As he points out, the latter is fun, while agriculture is back-breaking
hard work. This sort of basic insight is similar to the one he revealed
in Grasslands when he described fallow farmland as a clearcut
grassland. Agriculture leads not just to more work but to worse health.
It does support more people, surpluses even, which in turn lead to
hierarchical societies, accumulation of wealth, spread of poverty, war,
and empire. But closer to home, he gets into the history of processed
food, the industrial expanse of commodities (corn, wheat, rice, sugar),
the politics of subsidies and the subsidization of politics. One of the
most striking points he makes is that the only ideas that attract any
development funding are ones that lead to selling more products. This
makes for an additive model: more fertilizers, more pesticides, more
of whatever accomplishes more growth. Makes me wonder something I've
been wondering quite a while, which is whether growth is worthwhile.
If you start to have doubts there, lots of things come into doubt --
including most of economics.