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Maybe we can move the derail in the Techbros thread here. Food waste happens, but most of it happens where it's hard to deal with. France will mandate that unsold food be given away to charities by large stores. However, most food waste occurs at the consumer level. That is, people buy food then don't eat it. From the article. posted:The measures are part of wider drive to halve the amount of food waste in France by 2025. According to official estimates, the average French person throws out 20kg-30kg of food a year – 7kg of which is still in its wrapping. The combined national cost of this is up to €20bn. A study by the USDA estimated roughly the same statistics for waste in the United States. (Hat tip to Discendo Vox. Get out of probie soon, bro) quote:In the United States, 31 percent—or 133 billion pounds—of the 430 billion pounds of the available food supply at the retail and consumer levels in 2010 went uneaten. Retail-level losses represented 10 percent (43 billion pounds) and consumer-level losses 21 percent (90 billion pounds) of the available food supply. (Losses on the farm and between the farm and retailer were not estimated due to data limitations for some of the food groups.) The study estimates 31% of the available food supply in the US went uneaten - 21% at the consumer level and 10% at the retail level. That is to say, roughly 67% of food loss occurred at the consumer level. Big stores are just not that big a part of the problem, comparatively. Which makes sense if you think about it, because they have every incentive to reduce the wastage eating into their profits. However, they're easy targets for scapegoating and the easiest source of waste to regulate. ITT let's try to agree on the facts. wateroverfire fucked around with this message at 18:48 on Mar 28, 2016 |
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Mar 23, 2016 15:04
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No clue what the discussion was like in the techbro thread, but you said it yourself: these are the easiest to regulate. Stores may represent just 5% of the waste in France (how about in the US?), but what is the waste per business? Bigger or smaller than the 20-30 kg per year associated with consumers? It's a lot easier to target a few individually large problems than a bunch of decentralized individually smaller ones. Edit: it also sets precedent (and hammers out kinks) needed to target larger sources of waste, like the 26% that comes from restaurants and other shops. Grundulum fucked around with this message at 15:17 on Mar 23, 2016 |
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Mar 23, 2016 15:14
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wateroverfire posted:Big stores are just not that big a part of the problem, comparatively. Which makes sense if you think about it, because they have every incentive to reduce the wastage eating into their profits. No it doesn't, that's not how businesses work in the real world, it doesn't matter to them whether it feeds homeless/staff or goes into a bin, and breakages are an accounting feature. "If you think about it" is a terrible thought terminating cliche. The defence made by the supermarkets is also a load of poo poo. We aren't the absolute worst, but we're certainly the worst single-target ("consumers" aren't a group that can be legislated at and enforced on), so leave us alone. That, too, is a terrible argument. Well done France, now if only consumption didn't drive the world maybe we'd not all be hosed.
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Mar 23, 2016 15:20
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I know the primary reason I waste food is because it goes out of date before I can finish eating the giant gently caress-off portions that certain things come in. Unless you really focus on using everything with perfect efficiency, you'll have loss. If you're single, you either focus on eating that loaf of bread (and only the one type at any given time!) or it will go moldy or stale before you finish it. If you buy anything but the smallest, most marked-up orange juice container (which some groceries don't even stock), you'll be lucky to get halfway through it before it expires. I'd also point out that measuring waste by weight is a bit silly. If you're composting marginal old celery, carrots, potatoes, onions, etc. and using fresh, that's a lot of waste by weight but not much in terms of dollar value. A single red pepper costs more than a 1kg bag of carrots now.
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Mar 23, 2016 15:29
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wateroverfire posted:Maybe we can move the derail in the Techbros thread here. This is kind of like people who bring up cows every time somebody talks about how quickly the water table is shrinking in California, "Well, guys, I know you're blaming Almonds/Pistachios/Alfalfa/Tomatoes/Etc but the REAL water consumers are cattle ranchers!" as if cutting back water consumption with any of those crops wouldn't also help the problem. "Welp, it's not the main source of the trouble so we'd better just do nothing at all!" is very poor reasoning imo. If there's only one practical target for regulation then that is what is going to get regulated. At least 10% of the food France throws in the garbage gets saved. Surely the 10% of property that poor business owners get stolen from them (out of their garbage) by The Takers would be enough to feed the 150,000 homeless people in France.
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Mar 23, 2016 15:49
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expiration/sell-by/use-by/consume-by dates on food are also completely non-standardized. they aren't necessarily indicative of anything there's a decent john oliver bit about this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8xwLWb0lLY
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Mar 23, 2016 15:51
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Timely distribution has been the bottleneck in food production since the beginning of agriculture.
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Mar 23, 2016 15:51
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Spangly A posted:No it doesn't, that's not how businesses work in the real world, it doesn't matter to them whether it feeds homeless/staff or goes into a bin, and breakages are an accounting feature. It does matter to them whether they're spending money on goods they can't sell. Whether they care where the unsold goods go depends. Here's an article in a series on food waste in which reporters talk to Patty Larson, executive director of Food Finders (a nonprofit that gets discarded food to charities), about why companies don't donate. quote:Patty Larson, the executive director of the "food rescue" group Food Finders explained to us why good food doesn't get to the hungry.
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Mar 23, 2016 15:53
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Yes, the Business Insider is here to tell us why the free market can't spare the food they're throwing in the 100,000 dollar industrial trash compactor they keep out back that is the size of two shipping containers stacked on top of each other and more than big enough to hold an entire week worth of food
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Mar 23, 2016 16:02
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I mean for real though please explain how the administrative costs/storage space of food for the homeless is too much but the giant, expensive trash compactors that have become ubiquitous as a way to keep out the hungry are found behind every grocery store in America
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Mar 23, 2016 16:03
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Mirthless posted:Yes, the Business Insider is here to tell us why the free market can't spare the food they're throwing in the 100,000 dollar industrial trash compactor they keep out back that is the size of two shipping containers stacked on top of each other and more than big enough to hold an entire week worth of food Actually it's the executive director of a non profit dedicated to rescuing food who is doing that.
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Mar 23, 2016 16:04
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Mirthless posted:I mean for real though please explain how the administrative costs/storage space of food for the homeless is too much but the giant, expensive trash compactors that have become ubiquitous as a way to keep out the hungry are found behind every grocery store in America Reading the articles would give you a good start.
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Mar 23, 2016 16:05
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e: nvm
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Mar 23, 2016 16:06
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I waste a lot of food because I'm single and cannot buy a lot of things in portions that won't go bad. The small containers of milk aren't enough and if I bought them I'd constantly run out. But a gallon is too big for just me and some will always go bad. There is no way I'm going to finish a whole loaf of bread myself before it molds so some slices always get thrown out. Any fruit that is not bought individually or is very large means I either have to gorge myself on fruit for the next day or two or throw some away. Buying a roast chicken means I better have chicken for dinner the next four days or throw some out. Sorry I don't want to waste food but when you are just buying food for one it's a choice between buying constantly buying small portions (so a lot of hassle and greater expense) or just buying the normal portions and wasting some. Guess which method wins out.
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Mar 23, 2016 16:21
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Chomp8645 posted:I waste a lot of food because I'm single and cannot buy a lot of things in portions that won't go bad. The biggest problem is that the food industry has figured out that sane portion sizes is a marketable trait, so they charge you extra for less product because they know people will pay more for the convenience. If you could buy a half loaf of bread people would buy half loaves of bread. The high end bread brands all sel half-loaves and seem to do just fine, but they're the only companies that do that. You can't just go to the dollar store and pay a 1.00 for half as many slices as the 1.80 white bread loaf. Instead it's $3.25 for the half of the $4 loaf of rye We desperately need smaller standard package sizes and better proportional pricing to reflect it. It's not just the waste, our packaging and pricing schemes in the US are also contributing to diabetes in a huge way and that is an epidemic that is going to kill a whole lot of people and cost our society a whole lot of money in the long term
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Mar 23, 2016 16:28
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Mirthless posted:If you could buy a half loaf of bread people would buy half loaves of bread. The high end bread brands all sel half-loaves and seem to do just fine, but they're the only companies that do that. You can't just go to the dollar store and pay a 1.00 for half as many slices as the 1.80 white bread loaf. Instead it's $3.25 for the half of the $4 loaf of rye Yeah this is the real bullshit and probably a big part of my food waste. Either stuff isn't available in a proper portion, or it suffers from clown pricing that charges 80% or more of the cost for 50% or less of the product. I would buy half loaves of bread. But I don't eat the artisanal whatever brands that provide such sizing. My local store just has their own loaves by the deli that they either bake themselves or get from some local bakery that are $2.50 for a loaf which is good for me but they only come in standard loaf size. Other issues are harder to solve. Sometimes I want a pineapple but I'm just one guy so I'm probably not gonna eat the whole pineapple myself before it gets weird. Don't know what can be done about that. Pre-sliced portions of fruit always charge an absurd premium to the point that I will pay less to buy and slice the whole pineapple myself and throw half of it away than I will buying some smaller portion of ready to eat fruit.
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Mar 23, 2016 16:44
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Mirthless posted:The biggest problem is that the food industry has figured out that sane portion sizes is a marketable trait, so they charge you extra for less product because they know people will pay more for the convenience. I don't have a cost breakdown for food and other inexpensive consumer goods but you do realize that it's not just a corporate conspiracy that companies sell items in larger quantities for a lower cost per amount and there is such a thing as an economy of scale, right? Boutique brands can sell items in smaller amounts for the same cost per amount because their profit margin is greater.
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Mar 23, 2016 17:04
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Actually I'm pretty sure most food waste is food that never even makes it to distribution because they contain cosmetic defects and some such, so even though it's a perfectly good food, it doesn't look perfect, and as such will not sell to major retailers etc.
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Mar 23, 2016 17:15
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silence_kit posted:I don't have a cost breakdown for food and other inexpensive consumer goods but you do realize that it's not just a corporate conspiracy that companies sell items in larger quantities for a lower cost per amount and there is such a thing as an economy of scale, right? Boutique brands can sell items in smaller amounts for the same cost per amount because their profit margin is greater. Yeah even I had this fallacy recently and I work with economies of scale. Basically it's not that the smaller food is more expensive, but that the larger food is cheaper. Ddraig posted:Actually I'm pretty sure most food waste is food that never even makes it to distribution because they contain cosmetic defects and some such, so even though it's a perfectly good food, it doesn't look perfect, and as such will not sell to major retailers etc. A lot of that gets used, just in a processed manner. For example, apples that don't look good but are otherwise fine turn into applesauce or apple juice.
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Mar 23, 2016 17:18
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Ddraig posted:Actually I'm pretty sure most food waste is food that never even makes it to distribution because they contain cosmetic defects and some such, so even though it's a perfectly good food, it doesn't look perfect, and as such will not sell to major retailers etc. A rather significant amount of it is a mix of that and stuff that just wasn't sold. Supermarkets, restaurants, and whatever are expected to have everything in stock all the time so they overstock by default, knowing ahead of time they'll never sell all of it. The stuff they don't sell just goes in the garbage. Some places have been selling it as compost but you'll see things like pizza places throwing away entire stacks of perfectly edible pies and contaminating it so nobody can eat it. It's really just an indicator of what America stands for; profit is more important than people. Considering how drat much food America produces there should be exactly zero hungry people but instead we've chosen to have millions of people hungry and living in poverty because "gently caress you, go back to work." If you aren't generating profit for the 1% you don't deserve to live. Even if you are they might just decide you don't get enough to eat.
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Mar 23, 2016 17:19
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ToxicSlurpee posted:A rather significant amount of it is a mix of that and stuff that just wasn't sold. Supermarkets, restaurants, and whatever are expected to have everything in stock all the time so they overstock by default, knowing ahead of time they'll never sell all of it. The stuff they don't sell just goes in the garbage. Some places have been selling it as compost but you'll see things like pizza places throwing away entire stacks of perfectly edible pies and contaminating it so nobody can eat it. I'd actually like to see data on this because at least for grocery stores it's a very very low margin business (about as close to even as you can get) so people throwing out stacks of anything are really bad at their jobs. Of course this probably also explains why most startup restaurants go bankrupt after 3 years.
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Mar 23, 2016 17:25
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Chomp8645 posted:There is no way I'm going to finish a whole loaf of bread myself before it molds so some slices always get thrown out You know, you could always put half the loaf of bread in your freezer and then microwave / toast it when you want a sandwich.
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Mar 23, 2016 17:28
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wateroverfire posted:Maybe we can move the derail in the Techbros thread here. It is rather impractical to legislate that consumers have to give away their waste whereas it is much easier to legislate it from suppliers, and also suppliers are rich so they should do it anyway. The law is sensible.
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Mar 23, 2016 17:33
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OwlFancier posted:It is rather impractical to legislate that consumers have to give away their waste whereas it is much easier to legislate it from suppliers, and also suppliers are rich so they should do it anyway. The law is sensible. Not to mention, how would consumer donations work? "Here, have a lovely old carrot, half a bunch of limp celery, some slimy spring onions and three slices of old bread!" I bet the lines will be around the block for that.
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Mar 23, 2016 17:39
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ToxicSlurpee posted:A rather significant amount of it is a mix of that and stuff that just wasn't sold. Supermarkets, restaurants, and whatever are expected to have everything in stock all the time so they overstock by default, knowing ahead of time they'll never sell all of it. The stuff they don't sell just goes in the garbage. Some places have been selling it as compost but you'll see things like pizza places throwing away entire stacks of perfectly edible pies and contaminating it so nobody can eat it. The majority of food waste is at the consumer level. Almost 70%. OwlFancier posted:It is rather impractical to legislate that consumers have to give away their waste whereas it is much easier to legislate it from suppliers, and also suppliers are rich so they should do it anyway. The law is sensible. The point is not that the law is sensible or not. The point is my god, D&D, please stop talking about food waste like it's a conspiracy to cackle at the poor and leave people starving, because it's not. Helsing posted:You know, you could always put half the loaf of bread in your freezer and then microwave / toast it when you want a sandwich. Look at you assuming people have freezers! 
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Mar 23, 2016 17:56
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wateroverfire posted:The majority of food waste is at the consumer level. Almost 70%. That's a stupid reason to encourage businesses to quit wasting food. Like absurdly, profoundly stupid. Well hey this potential solution won't eliminate 100% of waste so gently caress it, status quo it is! Keep throwing away pizzas that could be given to poor kids.
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Mar 23, 2016 18:24
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I kind of wonder how efficient those Order a Meal company's are? Basically they send you all the ingredients to cook a meal with multiple servings and a recipe to cook it with. I think I priced it out that 1 person buying a two person meal comes to like 4 to 5 dollars a day with a 2nd meal for Lunch which is a really good price. We just have to be more efficient with using our foods.
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Mar 23, 2016 18:29
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wateroverfire posted:The point is not that the law is sensible or not. The point is my god, D&D, please stop talking about food waste like it's a conspiracy to cackle at the poor and leave people starving, because it's not. I suppose that depends on whether you consider "conspiracy" to be relegated to active attempts to construct a state of affairs and merely perpetuating one as a series of consciously unrelated actions. That food is private property and is not simply given freely as needed, leading to people overbuying it and production being pegged to how much can be sold, not how much can be distributed, is maybe something that could change.
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Mar 23, 2016 18:29
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OwlFancier posted:I suppose that depends on whether you consider "conspiracy" to be relegated to active attempts to construct a state of affairs and merely perpetuating one as a series of consciously unrelated actions. One is a conspiracy and the other isn't, yes. OwlFancier posted:That food is private property and is not simply given freely as needed, leading to people overbuying it and production being pegged to how much can be sold, not how much can be distributed, is maybe something that could change. I don't know what this means. You could cut down on waste by eliminating consumer choice and limiting individuals to X calories of pre-selected staples a week or something but holy poo poo is that not a place that anyone wants to go.
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Mar 23, 2016 18:37
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One of the funny things about this topic is that for all of the flak frozen TV dinners get for being a sign of some cultural deficiency in modern society (because there isn't a The ones I buy come in paper trays or thin plastic bags, too, so plastic waste isn't as much of an issue. Just another piece of evidence for my growing belief that the sanctity of household cooking is an invention of people who were/are rich enough to have others do it for them.
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Mar 23, 2016 18:49
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OwlFancier posted:I suppose that depends on whether you consider "conspiracy" to be relegated to active attempts to construct a state of affairs and merely perpetuating one as a series of consciously unrelated actions. I don't have a huge problem with food as private property; it's one of those cases where I won't bitch about the free market, because that state of affairs does encourage the availability of a wide variety of food that you get to pick and choose from, instead of like a more fixed menu of "ration packages" or whatever a government agency would come up with. My problem comes from the issue of food waste, on a lot of levels as noted in the OP. Food, like water, is different from other exploitable natural resources in that it's fundamentally necessary for the existence of human life. I think it's fine to make people pay for the food that they want, but I think we also shouldn't begrudge the less fortunate the option to be given what food they can get. The massive margin of wasted food from multiple points on the supply chain is, in my opinion, a humanitarian disaster in the face of people both here and abroad who face scarce or nonexistent food availability. It's clear that the US produces more than enough food to feed its own population, including the people who aren't buying said food, but so much of it just winds up in a landfill, for example. Why is that acceptable? It's not a business's or a citizen's personal responsibility to feed the poor, but the sheer wastefulness is just a grotesque oversight. It's not a private party's responsibility, but it should, in my opinion, be the government's responsibility. There's no solution that you can just elevator pitch that doesn't miss major logistical breakpoints. In the techbro thread, I proposed a "food recycling" program involving insulated food bins, in which the burden of redistribution was placed primarily on charity organizations that collect those bins. However, as was pointed out, that still places a responsibility on a store or restaurant to store that food until a collection day if they are to fully participate in said program. You can't force a farm to dial back its production, really; they'll try to sell the blemished produce for processing, but you still end up with rejected material. Is the government allowed to decide what happens to that rejected material? Is it feasible to dis-incentivize food waste by imposing a system of fines, thereby pushing the market to reduce waste, while still not really helping solve the problem of poverty-related hunger? At what point or points along the supply chain should this fine be applied? Note that the fine is probably a bad solution because its effects would ultimately just be passed down to consumers and doesn't address the issue that we have people reduced to scrounging through the garbage for anything to eat, due to the fact that they are still hungry in a society where we throw said food into the garbage in the first place.
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Mar 23, 2016 18:52
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Liberal_L33t posted:One of the funny things about this topic is that for all of the flak frozen TV dinners get for being a sign of some cultural deficiency in modern society (because there isn't a One of the reasons frozen dinners get grief is actually because they can be very, very unhealthy. A lot of them are primarily made of corn and salt. People also automatically think of the cheapest kinds of frozen foods and associate the frozen aisle with those people. Part of it is because those people might not be able to afford more trips to the store than once a month when food stamps come out so they need to buy for the whole month. Suburbanites that can afford to go whenever they feel like it can get fresh produce all the time so they typically will. Granted the other side of it is just not wanting to be viewed as lazy. Frozen food just has a nasty reputation all around that it doesn't deserve. It also doesn't help that somebody decided that freezing something ruins every nutrient it has, which is absolute bullshit. Frozen vegetables are just as good as fresh.
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Mar 23, 2016 18:57
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wateroverfire posted:One is a conspiracy and the other isn't, yes. As in, it is really only a construct of our society that food isn't just produced and handed out for the asking, and that food production is not expanded to meet any increase in demand that would cause. The problem is not really that food is wasted as much as food is wasted while others go hungry, because food is private property.
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Mar 23, 2016 19:01
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silence_kit posted:I don't have a cost breakdown for food and other inexpensive consumer goods but you do realize that it's not just a corporate conspiracy that companies sell items in larger quantities for a lower cost per amount and there is such a thing as an economy of scale, right? Boutique brands can sell items in smaller amounts for the same cost per amount because their profit margin is greater. computer parts posted:Yeah even I had this fallacy recently and I work with economies of scale. Basically it's not that the smaller food is more expensive, but that the larger food is cheaper. Being a little obtuse here, guys. You're right in some (many!) cases. For example, tiny cans of soda - of course those are expensive, Aluminum isn't cheap. But you can't seriously tell me that Wonderbread can't afford to take one loaf of bread, split it down the middle and put it in a second bag. The profit margins at grocery stores aren't so thin that they couldn't make up the quarter of a cent worth of increased cost per unit. A half a loaf of bread in two bags takes up exactly the same space on a truck as one loaf of bread. Convenience products are often priced higher because yes, it is more expensive to produce, package and sell a smaller portion. But the proportional increases in price don't always make sense and there are total absences, like the aforementioned loaf of bread. Why is the only half loaf of bread in the grocery store the 4 dollar premium loaf? (Because it's way easier to just sell the full loaf of white bread to a consumer, since they'll pay the full price, needing bread regardless, and the grocery store doesn't care if the excess gets thrown away) This isn't going to be applicable in every scenario, of course, but there are still plenty of things in your supermarket that could be smaller at a reasonable price and aren't. (Why do I have to buy 8 hot dogs? Why do I have to buy 8 ounces of cheese? Will creating 4 dog/4 oz cheese packs make it impossible to sell the 8oz equivalents? Will they sell fewer overall hot dogs and less overall cheese if people aren't wasting excess product? And if that's the case, can't you make up the difference in the margins without it still being proportionally lopsided? Or in the extra things people are going to be able to buy now that they're not being forced to buy 12 extra slices of bread, 4 extra ounces of cheese and 4 extra hot dogs every time they want to make chilidogs? The problem with looking at hunger and food waste as a singular problem is that the issue is complicated and there are a lot of individual components, but any improvement at this point is better than nothing. Will half loaves of wonderbread end world hunger and food waste? No. But it might result in a few thousand fewer loaves of bread a year ending up in the garbage. ToxicSlurpee posted:One of the reasons frozen dinners get grief is actually because they can be very, very unhealthy. A lot of them are primarily made of corn and salt. People also automatically think of the cheapest kinds of frozen foods and associate the frozen aisle with those people. Agricultural subsidies make TV dinners and other convenience food artificially cheap, IMO, and are part of the problem. You'd think farm subsidies would have a positive impact on hunger, but it just encourages waste and overproduction (hence why corn is in loving everything) and masks the actual problem of "real" food being completely unaffordable for some people. It is a problem if it's legitimately cheaper (and sadly these days it often is) to feed your family a product that someone had to research and develop and package and market than it is to just feed them fruits, vegetables and a protein It's like we force poor people to make bad choices by limiting the available options and then crucify them for taking the only choices we made available to them. Mirthless fucked around with this message at 19:23 on Mar 23, 2016 |
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Mar 23, 2016 19:12
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Mirthless posted:Agricultural subsidies make TV dinners and other convenience food artificially cheap, IMO, and are part of the problem. You'd think farm subsidies would have a positive impact on hunger, but it just encourages waste and overproduction (hence why corn is in loving everything) and masks the actual problem of "real" food being completely unaffordable for some people. It is a problem if it's legitimately cheaper (and sadly these days it often is) to feed your family a product that someone had to research and develop and package and market than it is to just feed them fruits, vegetables and a protein There may be a grain of truth to this, but you are also discounting the considerable (and, to the working poor and the hectic middle class, extremely unpalatable) time costs of shopping for, buying and preparing 2 or 3 meals consisting entirely of fresh produce every day. I am actually quite sympathetic to the unspoken argument that these peoples' time would be better used watching television, or whatever other sedentary entertainment which the tsk-tsking advocates of "slow food" would sneer at. If, hypothetically speaking, someone obsessively spends 2 hours a day cooking for themselves with fresh, healthy ingredients but takes up smoking cigarettes as a side effect of the increased stress and time pressure, are they actually better off? I feel like the stigma and negative connotations attached to the term "convenience food" aren't particularly helpful, least of all for the working poor. Is the frozen broccoli with cheese sauce that I eat as a staple too high in sodium and artificially cheap due to agricultural subsidies? Perhaps - but good luck convincing me that I'll be better off devoting an extra 1000+ hours a year to shopping, cooking and cleaning because I'll get less sodium and fat in my diet (and also less enjoyable food and probably more getting thrown in the trash because so much more can go wrong and ruin the entire batch when cooking from scratch).
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Mar 23, 2016 20:09
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OwlFancier posted:As in, it is really only a construct of our society that food isn't just produced and handed out for the asking, and that food production is not expanded to meet any increase in demand that would cause. Oooooooookay.
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Mar 23, 2016 20:10
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Liberal_L33t posted:There may be a grain of truth to this, but you are also discounting the considerable (and, to the working poor and the hectic middle class, extremely unpalatable) time costs of shopping for, buying and preparing 2 or 3 meals consisting entirely of fresh produce every day. I am actually quite sympathetic to the unspoken argument that these peoples' time would be better used watching television, or whatever other sedentary entertainment which the tsk-tsking advocates of "slow food" would sneer at. If, hypothetically speaking, someone obsessively spends 2 hours a day cooking for themselves with fresh, healthy ingredients but takes up smoking cigarettes as a side effect of the increased stress and time pressure, are they actually better off? It's not that hard to spend an hour cooking twice a week and have tasty food through the week with a little planning, though. Like...cooking does not have to be this big stressful time drain even if you don't enjoy it.
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Mar 23, 2016 20:12
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wateroverfire posted:Oooooooookay. Currently, you work, you receive a portion of the product of your work as money, and that money is traded in exchagne for food so you can work. Instead, perhaps it would work better if you were given food, and a portion of the product of the work you do after being fed goes to produce more food. Then you can eat regardless.
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Mar 23, 2016 20:14
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OwlFancier posted:Currently, you work, you receive a portion of the product of your work as money, and that money is traded in exchagne for food so you can work. How is that not merely a semantic difference?
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Mar 23, 2016 20:20
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Liberal_L33t posted:There may be a grain of truth to this, but you are also discounting the considerable (and, to the working poor and the hectic middle class, extremely unpalatable) time costs of shopping for, buying and preparing 2 or 3 meals consisting entirely of fresh produce every day. I am actually quite sympathetic to the unspoken argument that these peoples' time would be better used watching television, or whatever other sedentary entertainment which the tsk-tsking advocates of "slow food" would sneer at. If, hypothetically speaking, someone obsessively spends 2 hours a day cooking for themselves with fresh, healthy ingredients but takes up smoking cigarettes as a side effect of the increased stress and time pressure, are they actually better off? I'm honestly pretty confident that after some transition costs you and just about anyone would be better off watching less TV and eating more meals they prepared themselves with fresh produce. There's something supremely goony about a post that amounts to "maybe I'm better off eating disgusting cheesy poo poo because it gives me more time to also watch television." You can cook a big big meal and keep it frozen or in your fridge for many days. Food prepared with fresh produce can last a long time if you actually learn how to cook.
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Mar 23, 2016 20:22
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