Quote:
Originally Posted by pittsflyer
Then I won’t work until I can move or start a business.
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With that attitude, I can see why you're unemployed.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Winterfall8324
Let me ask you this, does a farm exist for consumers or the farmer?
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The consumer.
As a farmer, you have to grow what consumers demand, and not what you want to grow.
You're certainly free to grow tarot, or sugar beets or turnips, but you will fail.
Consumers don't want tarot, or sugar beets or turnips, and if they don't want them, you can't sell them, and if you can't sell them, then you can't pay the mortgage on your farm, or your water or electric bill, or buy the things you and your family needs.
Even in your freaked-out differently twisted world where there is no money, you will still fail.
As a boot-maker, I'm not going to trade a pair of boots for a bushel of tarot that I have no need for, don't want, can't use, and don't like.
The only farmers who farm for themselves are subsistence farmers, yet oddly, the goal of every subsistence farmer is not to be a subsistence farmer, and the only way they can do that is by growing an excess of crops that consumers demand, so they can sell or trade the excess.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lincolnian
This thread makes no sense. We live in a civilized modern society. Nobody is interested in adopting outdated and laborious ways of life full of uncertainty.
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That's exactly what the OP wants, a return to Neolithic days.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Winterfall8324
What do you know about farming? Grazing, crops, what?
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I know a helluva lot more than you'll ever know.
I'm probably talking over your head, but I used to walk beans and detassle corn, cut tobacco, hang tobacco, milk cows. I still farm. I have 20 acres. I grow potatoes and corn, because that's what consumers want. I grow sugar beets, too, but only as silage for my cows. My horses like it, too. They like sweet stuff, like carrots. I don't actually do the work, since I have other people willing to do it for me. I have chickens and geese as well. I like goose eggs for breakfast.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Winterfall8324
Phenomenal job ignoring the rest of my post, you just proved me right in every way possible.
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Only a truly warped person would believe that.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Winterfall8324
You ignore why the Soviets were so poor,...
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The Soviets were poor, because they didn't allow Capitalism.
The Soviet planned economy failed. They never met their quotas. Nowhere is that more evident than the 1970s.
The Soviet planned economy had a production quota for oil,
N Million barrels per year.
A percentage of the oil quota was allocated for the export market, to sell on the world market to get cash the Soviets didn't have so they could buy and import the things they needed.
A percentage was also allocated for military use, industrial use, the transportation sector, and consumers.
The amount allocated for consumer use was always very small, so very little gasoline was produced and the Soviets always ran out of gasoline during the month, leaving the Soviet people stranded.
Because the Soviets never met their oil quotas, they had hard choices to make.
A reduction in oil quotas meant the Soviets didn't have enough oil to sell on the world market, and that reduced the amount of much needed cash, and that prevent the Soviets from buying goods on the world market for import.
To get around that, the Soviets cut oil allocations to other sectors of the economy and diverted it for export.
One of the sectors cut was transportation, specifically agricultural transportation.
From July on, there was no oil refined into diesel for use by farming equipment or the trucks that transport crops from fields to markets.
By October, US satellites were beaming photos of Millions and Millions of acres of wheat just rotting in the fields.
A lot of people thought the Soviets were hoarding oil in preparation for war, but that wasn't the case at all.
For the Soviets, it was more cost-effective to let the wheat rot in the fields, and use the oil to sell on the world market, and then buy wheat from the US, than it was to spend the money to refine that oil into diesel for farm and transportation use.
The Carter Administration approved the sale of US wheat to the Soviets.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Winterfall8324
When given less pressure, the planned economy, much like our own, gave people more security.
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What security?
They constantly ran out of food for the month; out of consumer goods for the month; out of gasoline for the month and out of many other things.
Where is the security standing in long lines to get the last of the bread for the month?
How is standing in long lines an efficient use of people's time?
The Black Market was alive and well, and all of those governments lost $Billions in revenues every year, because of the Black Markets.
Like I said, you don't know what you're talking about.
You never visited the East Bloc, never lived there, never worked there, never did business there and don't understand the pathetic lives those people had, denied most everything, because the State couldn't afford to produce it.
You wouldn't have lasted 10 minutes there, before being on your hands and knees begging to go anywhere but there.
A typical breakfast for people in the East Bloc was warm water and sugar.
That's because they didn't have anything else.
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