this post was submitted on 01 Jan 2024
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The animating concept behind the Trump campaign will be chaos. This is what history shows us fascists do when given the chance to participate in democratic political campaigns: They create chaos. They do it because chaos works to their advantage. They revel in it, because they can see how profoundly chaos unnerves democratic-republicans—everyone, that is, whether liberal or conservative, who believes in the basic idea of a representative government that is built around neutral rules. Fascism exists to pulverize neutral rules.

So they campaign with explicit intention to instill a sense of chaos. And then comes the topper: They have the audacity to insist that the only solution to the chaos—that they themselves have either grossly exaggerated or in some cases created!—is to vote for them: “You see, there is nothing but chaos afoot, and only we can restore order!”

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[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world -3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

learn how to grow crops like a farmer

Historically, the smart move it own the land and have other people do the reaping and sowing. Even then, agricultural land has skyrocketed in cost as its been commodified. Idk if I'd consider "sharecropper" a savvy career change under and social conditions.

practice shooting

At whom? Or is the plan to just shoot everything that moves and hope for the best?

[–] agitatedpotato@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

If you have enough money to hire people to do farmwork this comment is not for you. It's about you.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world -2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

If you don't have enough money to hire people to do farmwork, you sure as hell don't have enough money to purchase productive farmland.

[–] agitatedpotato@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

No on said to buy a farm. Use what's available to you and ammend the soil, there are plenty of organic addatives that are free, low cost, or byproducts. Also make you own compost to continually add neutrients, aka grow food like a farmer not a gardener.

The point is to know how to do it cyclically, with little if any input other than what you create. Its an investment in divesting from society, and a lesson in sufficience that you may need once the fact that China and Bill Gates own the most farmland in America becomes a more pressing issue.

The guns are there because for any situation where food become that valuable, productive land anywhere becomes a target. Weather its pests, deers, boars, or humans.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world -1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Use what’s available to you and ammend the soil

A quarter acre of land in my neighborhood runs for $300k. There is nothing I can do to that soil that's going to justify a $300k upfront investment in urban agriculture. Nevermind what this prepper nonsense is going to accomplish in the event the End of The World isn't happening within the next five years.

a lesson in sufficience that you may need once the fact that China and Bill Gates own the most farmland in America becomes a more pressing issue.

The cool thing about farmland is that its only really useful if its being worked. And the realization that we're ultimately going to have to come to terms with is that the folks who "own" the land are very far removed from the folks who give the land value.

At the same time, subsistence farming isn't a particularly productive lifestyle in a post-industrial world. So telling everyone to run out to Iowa and become soybean farmers is not good financial advice.

[–] agitatedpotato@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

I find it funny that you discount learning to grow crops as something that doesn't help and can only be done on a $300k piece of land but also acknowledge the land alone isn't what gives it value. Yes that's why it's important to know how to grow food. Which is apparently only useful to know if the world ends in the next five years according to you.

It seems like you're deliberately interpreting eveything I say in a way you can argue against it instead of the way I wrote it. Never told people to move, never told them to buy a farm, never told them to buy land but you argue against all those things as if my points hinges on them. What I said was learn to grow crops, not simply a vegetable garden that relies on annual trips to buy more miracle grown. That doesn't mean you need a farm.

Also interestingly enough if we check the CPI food items are rising faster than most other costs. Also sustainable and urban agribusiness demand is growing. Posturing yourself to understand and take advantage of that is the opposite of a financial mistake.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world -1 points 10 months ago

you discount learning to grow crops as something that doesn’t help and can only be done on a $300k piece of land but also acknowledge the land alone isn’t what gives it value

You don't need to know a ton about agricultural science to understand concepts like "units per sqft of productivity". In fact, these are more business-minded questions that someone interested in investing in farmland might ask, particularly if they were sold on some modernist "Vertical Farming" application of the science and wanted to sink $300k into a quarter acre with the hopes that it could be maximally productive.

But then that's where you run into serious problems. Understanding the agriculture at a professional level is very different from understanding it abstractly from the financial perspective. Suggesting that people just get a professional education in both things becomes even more untenable than the original "buy land and make it agriculturally productive" pitch originally sounds.

if we check the CPI food items are rising faster than most other costs

Because the underlying energy, fertilizer, and water costs are rising faster than most other costs. So the real brain-buster move is to invest in these things, rather than trying to compete with Tyson in raising chickens.

Also sustainable and urban agribusiness demand is growing.

Its always growing because its routinely failing. The boom-bust cycle of agriculture technology companies tracks with the rest of the tech sector. And, like the tech sector, you're far better off investing in Cargill or Archer Daniels than going long on Eden Green Technology.