Posted on 06/11/2019 9:14:46 AM PDT by C19fan
It starts with a burger.
In 2008 a Dutch professor named Mark Post presented the proof of concept for what he called cultured meat. Five years later, in a London TV studio, Mr. Post and his colleagues ate a burger they had grown from animal cells in a laboratory. Secretly funded by Sergey Brin, a co-founder of Google, the journey from petri dish to plate had cost $325,000 making theirs the most expensive meal in history. Fortunately, the results were promising: Hanni Rützler, a nutrition scientist, concluded that the patty was close to meat but not as juicy. The next question was whether this breakthrough could be made cheaper. Much cheaper.
The first cultured beef burgers are likely to enter the market next year, at approximately $50 each. But that wont last long. Within a decade they will probably be more affordable than even the cheapest barbecue staples of today all for a product that uses fewer resources, produces negligible greenhouse gases and, remarkably, requires no animals to die.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
The problem with farm subsidies is the other side of the deal: consent to price controls, keeping profits low enough most farmers can’t build up a good cu$hion to bridge bad years.
We have no famines because the supply chain can easily transport surplus (if not direct replacement, then suitable alternatives) from one are to another. A freak orange-killing snowfall in Florida can be mitigated - to the consumer - by shipping boatloads of oranges from Brazil. Consumers barely notice a difference; any farmers broken by the blight are simply bought out by megafarms and production resumes accordingly.
A just machine to make big decisions
Programmed by fellows with compassion and vision
We’ll be clean when their work is done
We’ll be eternally free yes and eternally young
What a beautiful world this will be
What a glorious time to be free
-Donald Fagen I.G.Y.
For the record.....
“Communism is evil.”
Along with impossible and has failed everywhere it has been put in place. It’s a political theory derived from Karl Marx, advocating class war and leading to a society in which all property is publicly owned and each person works and is paid according to their abilities and needs.
And first time someone disagrees with the production efforts and wants a bigger car, they will be arrested and/or executed. Can’t have that, can we?
rwood
Communism always fails.
But it remains popular.
Among idiots and totalitarians.
“..it’s simply against human nature.”
Back 8n my college lefty days, the leaders of the pack claimed “human nature” (the instinct to compete, to acquire more, to better oneself-—iow the human instinct to survive) was nonexistent.
Instead the very idea of “human nature” was, they argued, a “cultural construct” arising out of capitalism & imposed on the masses by the “ruling class”.
Thus any notion of the existence of human nature needed to be stamped out of the masses by party leaders, ie the communist ruling class, in order to squash any desire to compete or acquire anything not benevolently bestowed upon them by the collective.
By disallowing any discussion, much less accomodation, of human nature, any possibility of the re-emergence of capitalism could be effectively circumvented.
One of the more popular ones now is socialism. Many on the left are trying to push for it. But communism and socialism do differ in some areas. The main one being ownership.
Both communism and socialism are economic and political structures that promote equality and seek to eliminate social classes. In a communist society, the working class owns everything, and everyone works toward the same communal goal. There are no wealthy or poor people — all are equal, and the community distributes what it produces based only on need. Nothing is obtained by working more than what is required. Communism frequently results in low production, mass poverty and limited advancement. Poverty spread so widely in the Soviet Union in the 1980s that its citizens revolted.
Like communism, socialisms main focus is on equality. But workers earn wages they can spend as they choose, while the government, not citizens, owns and operates the means for production. Workers receive what they need to produce and survive, but theres no incentive to achieve more, leaving little motivation while it’s lack of incentives also leaves the workers with a sense of slavery and doing hard work while others do little. The grasshopper/ant thing. And unlike the ants, humans will not be forgiving forever and will rebel against a system that punishes them for success. Kind of like the liberals are doing now with the rich footing the bill for the poor. (And the middle class the libs have reassigned to poor)
Some countries have adopted aspects of socialism. The United Kingdom provides basic needs like healthcare to everyone regardless of their time or effort at work. In the U.S., welfare and the public education system are a form of socialism. Both are the opposite of capitalism, where limitations dont exist and reward comes to those who go beyond the minimum.
It is unfortunate that so many in this country do not learn from history and walk away from socialism, the current “trend.”
rwood
Socialism is just a rest stop on the way to communism.
Tribbles taste just fine if marinated and grilled.
“Socialism is just a rest stop on the way to communism.”
Disagree. Communism fails because it has to evolve into something else because it has no leadership and no advancement. It has no enemy.
Socialism fails because it does have leadership that suppresses the human spirit from natural growth. So it has an enemy, itself. In other words, communism has no where to go and socialism has something to go from. Neither has something to stay for.
rwood
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