Retribution not enough

[Steve Furlong]

Harmon Seaver wrote:

>        Of course you're ignoring the fact that sometimes the reason that they
> are "starving on their own retched little plots of land." is because of NAFTA
> and huge multinational corporations importing so much US factory farmed corn
> and other ag products into that country that they can't compete. We've been
> thru this discussion before.
>       All else being equal, there is no logical reason in the world why they
> should be "starving on their own retched little plots of land." Peasant farmers
> have been making an adequate living on "their own retched little plots of
> land." for at least since before any recorded history, and, for that matter,
> can still do so.
>       The average size farm in the world is only 7 acres, and if you talk to
> most of those farmers, they would much rather live and work on their little
> subsistence farms than move into a city and work in a factory.
...

Then let them. A self-sufficient subsistence farmer won't be bothered by
the trade his neighbors are carrying out. [1] His farm can be a
neolithic bubble as the world progresses.

If he _isn't_ self-sufficient, then he does care about the trade going
on around him. That's been the case forever, and new trade always
disrupts someone who was making his living with the way things were.

And if he wants to make use of metal tools, then he'll have to exchange
as best he can for them. But, again, he's not self-sufficient, unless he
can dig and forge his own metals. Complaining that the world isn't the
way it was for Grandpa shouldn't get a sympathetic ear from anyone who
uses metals, plastics, or medicine, or who eats fresh produce out of
season.


[1] Assuming they don't pollute him out of raising his crops or
livestock, tax or regulate his farm out of existence.

-- 
Steve Furlong    Computer Condottiere   Have GNU, Will Travel
  617-670-3793

"Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly
while bad people will find a way around the laws." -- Plato