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Edited on Sat May-08-10 10:35 AM by 90-percent
I'm extremely not an expert on the subject, but I use American history with farming to illustrate a point related to manufacturing. In about 1850 or so, like 80 or 90% of the population was directly engaged in farming. That many people were needed to produce food for everybody.
Then the industrial revolution came, and machines were invented that did the farming work of scores of people. That allowed people to "pursue other interests", like work in the factories in the cities.
The point I try to illustrate has to do with modern CNC machine tools, a business I was in for thirty years so far. In order to have economic growth, productivity needs to constantly increase. There was some factoid I read where in 1900, it took 100 minutes to precisely remove metal on a round piece of steel in a manual lathe. Nowadays, a modern CNC lathe can get the same amount of material removed - with higher accuracy and surface finish, in around 30 seconds.
However, the current state of the American diet is very poor due to all our processed foods and HFCS and other pernicious ingredients. So Big Agriculture has been perverted - it no longer serves a healthy diet so much as serve the corporate owners to make big big money while hurting America's health.
Kind of like the public works projects in the Thirties New Deal with all the dams and levees were well intentioned, but new science has shown that many of this stuff was ill conceived and makes the problems they were trying to fix even worse. Like Katrina in New Orleans worse.
So, the public health aspects of Big Agriculture has to be modified by educated American Consumers so they can make their money and we can lead healthier lives, like we use to until the processed food boom of post WW2 America.
-90% Jimmy, specializing in spontaneous internet message board essays that may or may not be beneficial to the reader.
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