The Quote

[Akhlut]

In the modern US, less than 0.7% of the economy is devoted to farming, i.e., production of subsistence. That is, agriculture makes up less than $350 per person, every year. Even at minimum wage, that amounts to just a little more than 45 minutes per week. It's even less at median or average incomes. So we spend maybe half an hour, maybe fifteen minutes a week on the equivalent of subsistence living.

Except that just because someone else farms doesn't mean that the impoverished person doesn't have to do something to acquire food.

Impoverished people in the US, for instance (ie, those making $10k-14k a year) spend nearly $5,000 a year on food, which, if one is making minimum wage ($7.25/hr for federal min. wage) and assuming roughly 10% taken off the top for FICA and other assorted payroll taxes, would take ~765 hours to make, which breaks down to 14.71 hours a week merely to afford food.

However, the hunter-gatherer was often in a superior position, as they eat/ate much healthier food than the impoverished people in the US, and didn't have to spend as much time for ancillary tools for food (ie, they don't have to work so they can get to work, whereas a lot of impoverished people in the US need to spend money on a car note, gas, car repairs, or public transportation {which, if their job is 40 miles away, might necessitate spending 4-6 hours commuting daily, meaning an additional 20-30 hours a week of simple travel to get earn their food; why shouldn't THAT count towards the grand total used to sustain themselves via food?}).

Hunter-gatherers also had it better because, seemingly for most of them, work WAS play, not the soul-destroying labor that modern minimum wage work (and so much more work) is.

Plus, you seem to be forgetting that the world is more than the United States. Even if those Chinese slaves workers at Foxconn don't have to work as long to earn their food and board as a hunter-gatherer, I'm pretty sure they'd rather be living with Australian Aborigines or Papuan tribesmen rather than washing iPhone screens with xylene.

What do we do with the rest of our time? Seek sex, seek status, and seek personal fulfillment. How do we get sex or status, or much of personal fulfillment? We have to buy things to get those, and to buy things we need money, and to make money, we need to create things that other people value, i.e., that other people want to get sex, status, or personal fulfillment.

Whereas hunter-gatherers got that sort of thing through what was, essentially a lot of awesome playtime.

Man, we sure made the right decision as a species. :v

[HMS Conqueror]

Impoverished people in the US, for instance (ie, those making $10k-14k a year) spend nearly $5,000 a year on food, which

explains why they're all so damn fat.

[Akhlut]

Impoverished people in the US, for instance (ie, those making $10k-14k a year) spend nearly $5,000 a year on food, which

explains why they're all so damn fat.

That's $13 and change a day on food, jackass, often for a family of 2-4, meaning everyone's spending somewhere between $3-6 a day on food.

How about you spend two quid a day on food for a month and see how good you get at maximizing calories simply so you don't start starving to death. It's real fucking hard to eat fresh vegetables and organic meat when you'd blow your weekly food budget on just enough meat and vegetables for 2 whole days' worth of food.

[HMS Conqueror]

$13/day is a huge amount. I spend about £4/day on food, as a comfortably upper middle class person. If I actually needed to save money it could go down to £2. But then I cook for myself, don't drink cola, and have a normal BMI.

btw, leafy vegetables have next to no calorific content and "organic" is a marketing scam with minimal/no demonstrable health value.

Also, shifting goalposts. If this is now a family spend then it's $1,250 per person, which isn't much different to what he said when you factor supply chain costs.

[Akhlut]

$13/day is a huge amount. I spend about £4/day on food, as a comfortably upper middle class person. If I actually needed to save money it could go down to £2. But then I cook for myself, don't drink cola, and have a normal BMI.

That $13/day is for a family, usually of 2-4 people, often 1-3 of them children, who tend to require relatively large amounts of healthy (and therefore often more expensive) food.

Also, the way agricultural subsidies in the US work, healthier foods cost more than less healthy ones, because corn is subsidized to an absurd extent, and HFCS is found in nearly every unhealthy food on the market.

btw, leafy vegetables have next to no calorific content and "organic" is a marketing scam with minimal/no demonstrable health value.

Leafy vegetables contain a lot of non-calorific nutrients and beneficial antioxidants, while in the US, organic meats do not contain antibiotics (a huge problem in the US), and which aren't typically raised in a factory farm environment (which, due to philosophies of large factory farms in the US, typically lead to very unhealthy meat due to high fat content, large amounts of antibiotic usage, usage of growth hormones, and unsanitary conditions for the animals prior to death, to say nothing of larger environmental concerns and general animal welfare problems).

[HMS Conqueror]

That $13/day is for a family, usually of 2-4 people, often 1-3 of them children,

Again, shifting goalposts. The US poverty line is $10,890 for a single person, and $14,710 for a 2 person household (the range your quoted). A 4 or 5 person has poverty line of $22-25k. And this is total household income, not individual income.

The original claim was that a single person to feed himself would only have to work a couple of hours a week, which is much less than any time in the past. This is true.

who tend to require relatively large amounts of healthy (and therefore often more expensive) food.

Also, the way agricultural subsidies in the US work, healthier foods cost more than less healthy ones, because corn is subsidized to an absurd extent, and HFCS is found in nearly every unhealthy food on the market.

Children require less food, for obvious reason. Healthy food isn't more expensive, depending how you define that. The reason everyone is so fat in the US is because they eat too much food, not because they don't buy organic fair trade artichokes or whatever.

Leafy vegetables contain a lot of non-calorific nutrients and beneficial antioxidants, while in the US, organic meats do not contain antibiotics (a huge problem in the US), and which aren't typically raised in a factory farm environment (which, due to philosophies of large factory farms in the US, typically lead to very unhealthy meat due to high fat content, large amounts of antibiotic usage, usage of growth hormones, and unsanitary conditions for the animals prior to death, to say nothing of larger environmental concerns and general animal welfare problems).

Yeah it's twinky health food and political stuff like that. No one ever starved to death for lack of antioxidants, and the impact on even long term mortality is scarcely detectable. Antibiotic use in industrial farming is thought to be bad by increasing disease resistance btw, not because meat produced using antibiotics is poisonous or something.

This stuff is aimed at the middle/upper middle class; poorer people have more practical worries.

[Akhlut]

That $13/day is for a family, usually of 2-4 people, often 1-3 of them children,

Again, shifting goalposts. The US poverty line is $10,890 for a single person, and $14,710 for a 2 person household (the range your quoted). A 4 or 5 person has poverty line of $22-25k. And this is total household income, not individual income.

That just makes your position look worse, as households within the $22k-$25k range only spend $16 and change a day on food (source), meaning proportionately even less is spent per person on food.

You also don't seem to understand nor care about how poverty limits access to cheaper sources of healthy food. A lot of impoverished people in urban environments usually can't afford (either due to time or monetary constraints) to go to real grocery stores and must contend with corner stores which don't sell fresh produce or much in the way of staple foods, and instead sell a lot of highly processed junk foods (chips, processed meats, ramen, etc.). Similarly, because a lot of those stores in urban areas aren't huge box stores, they don't get deals that are nearly as good on the food that they do get, meaning prices on the consumer are much, much higher than at the suburban WalMart or CostCo. Similarly, for the rural poor, they generally only have frequent access to local general stores, which have the same problems as urban areas.

These areas are called food deserts and are associated with unhealthy diets due to the fact that poor people need to spend money on whatever food's available.

The original claim was that a single person to feed himself would only have to work a couple of hours a week, which is much less than any time in the past. This is true.

Somewhere around 14 hours a week on food alone, not including time spent for maintaining a shelter, which is far, far higher in modern societies and doesn't include transportation (which is free for pre-agricultural peoples).

who tend to require relatively large amounts of healthy (and therefore often more expensive) food.

Also, the way agricultural subsidies in the US work, healthier foods cost more than less healthy ones, because corn is subsidized to an absurd extent, and HFCS is found in nearly every unhealthy food on the market.

Children require less food, for obvious reason. Healthy food isn't more expensive, depending how you define that. The reason everyone is so fat in the US is because they eat too much food, not because they don't buy organic fair trade artichokes or whatever.

Moderately active children require nearly as many calories as moderately active adults. A moderately active toddler requires between 50-75% as many calories as a moderately active adult. Moderately active pre-teen boys can eat more than moderately active adult women. And a highly active 7 year old boy can require MORE food than his middle-aged, sedentary mother.

So, no, it isn't "obvious" at all that children require less food; in scenarios that aren't preposterous at all, a 7 year old boy can require more food than his middle aged mother (if she's an office worker who doesn't work out and he's highly active and on a youth sports team). The only instances where an adult would require a great deal more food than a child would be a very active adult male versus a sedentary elementary school girl (3000 calories versus 1200 calories), whereas a moderately active parent generally only requires a little under half as much food as a moderately active child.

Leafy vegetables contain a lot of non-calorific nutrients and beneficial antioxidants, while in the US, organic meats do not contain antibiotics (a huge problem in the US), and which aren't typically raised in a factory farm environment (which, due to philosophies of large factory farms in the US, typically lead to very unhealthy meat due to high fat content, large amounts of antibiotic usage, usage of growth hormones, and unsanitary conditions for the animals prior to death, to say nothing of larger environmental concerns and general animal welfare problems).

Yeah it's twinky health food and political stuff like that. No one ever starved to death for lack of antioxidants, and the impact on even long term mortality is scarcely detectable. Antibiotic use in industrial farming is thought to be bad by increasing disease resistance btw, not because meat produced using antibiotics is poisonous or something.

Preventing resistance among zoonotic diseases is not a foolhardy idea, as many of the worst diseases on earth to humans are zoonosis.

This stuff is aimed at the middle/upper middle class; poorer people have more practical worries.

And you were complaining about how so much money being spent on food was making Americans fat; turns out the cheaper and more available foods are the least healthy.

Correlation? What's that?

[Thanas]

I'm not free to fly, for example. But gravity isn't coercing me.

Maybe I should amend my definition to remove "without dying." Coercion is just the imposition of extra costs on some possible futures, and death is a possible cost.

Torture does not result in death all the time.

And I find it disingenious how you say "gravity" in response to my definition of "absent man-made force". Last I checked, gravity is not man-made.

This is a crazy broad definition. For instance, under your definition the employer is equally unfree, because he is being coerced to pay you a salary in order to retain your labour.

Yes? So? What do you mean here?

[HMS Conqueror]

That just makes your position look worse, as households within the $22k-$25k range only spend $16 and change a day on food (source), meaning proportionately even less is spent per person on food.

Like as if the proportion should stay the same or keep increasing regardless of income? That's the sort of thinking that got America into its obesity mess to start with. My/his whole point is that people don't need to spend much as a % of their income on food.

You also don't seem to understand nor care about how poverty limits access to cheaper sources of healthy food.

It doesn't; US's major dietary health problem is obesity and being obese only increases food costs. At the very worst - you kept buying the same food but ate less of it - they would stay the same.

The other stuff is middle class handwringing, and while some of it has some scientific backing, a lot of it doesn't and none of it causes major health problems.

The original claim was that a single person to feed himself would only have to work a couple of hours a week, which is much less than any time in the past. This is true.

Somewhere around 14 hours a week on food alone, not including time spent for maintaining a shelter, which is far, far higher in modern societies and doesn't include transportation (which is free for pre-agricultural peoples).

No, it's 14 hours a week to feed yourself and 3-4 unemployed dependents. Transport isn't free for pre-agricultural peoples, it just doesn't exist.

Children require less food, for obvious reason. Healthy food isn't more expensive, depending how you define that. The reason everyone is so fat in the US is because they eat too much food, not because they don't buy organic fair trade artichokes or whatever.

Moderately active children require nearly as many calories as moderately active adults.

Nearly as many being less than as many, not more.

Yeah it's twinky health food and political stuff like that. No one ever starved to death for lack of antioxidants, and the impact on even long term mortality is scarcely detectable. Antibiotic use in industrial farming is thought to be bad by increasing disease resistance btw, not because meat produced using antibiotics is poisonous or something.

Preventing resistance among zoonotic diseases is not a foolhardy idea, as many of the worst diseases on earth to humans are zoonosis.

I didn't say it wasn't a bad to decrease antibiotic use in agriculture in general just that there's no private benefit to doing so. It's only beneficial if everyone does it.

This stuff is aimed at the middle/upper middle class; poorer people have more practical worries.

And you were complaining about how so much money being spent on food was making Americans fat; turns out the cheaper and more available foods are the least healthy.

Correlation? What's that?

You made twinky/wrong/no health claims depending. The overwhelmingly largest benefit from a dietary intervention the American poor can make is to eat less of whatever they're eating now.

Yes? So? What do you mean here?

The definition is useless. Practically everything anyone does would be considered coercive, including a lot of things that aren't considered coercive.

[Thanas]

Yes? So? What do you mean here?

The definition is useless. Practically everything anyone does would be considered coercive, including a lot of things that aren't considered coercive.

A) We are talking about true freedom here. Of course we are not free in a lot of things that we do - that is not a bad thing in itself, but we are simply not free.
B) The rest of your post is just "but I do not consider it coercive". It is not a logical criticism of my point at all, nor do you offer a counter-definition.

[Thanas]

HMS Dinghy: You are also required to reply to dalton in that gay comics character thread. Either do so or face the consequences. Just a litte reminder.

[HMS Conqueror]

Not I, but anyone. How many people think workers coerce salaries out of employers, for instance?

What this really does it make the whole concept attached to the word "freedom" meaningless. No one has it, no one can have it, and no one would want it anyway. So who cares? Then we define a new word that means "absense of unprovoked physical violence," and call it something else, and everyone talks about that instead.

HMS Dinghy: You are also required to reply to dalton in that gay comics character thread. Either do so or face the consequences. Just a litte reminder.

Explain to him why I think comic book superheroes/villains come across as gay? Nope, I think it's pretty obvious. Maybe he disagrees, but as an aesthetic opinion it's not really subject to some kind of objective standard of proof.

This isn't the first time you have threatened to <something> me because you do not agree with my opinions or whatever; I don't see somewhere in the rules every comment must be spun out to infinity, so if you're going to ban me for that reason then just go ahead and do it.

[Surlethe]

And I find it disingenious how you say "gravity" in response to my definition of "absent man-made force". Last I checked, gravity is not man-made.

You defined "freedom" as the absence of "anything with negative consequences as dictated by an outside, man-made force." I think it's wrong to distinguish between man-made and not-man-made costs, and I think it's wrong to not distinguish between high costs and low costs. Hence the example of gravity, toward the first point.

[Akhlut]

Like as if the proportion should stay the same or keep increasing regardless of income? That's the sort of thinking that got America into its obesity mess to start with. My/his whole point is that people don't need to spend much as a % of their income on food.

Not infinitely proportional, but higher quality food costs more; quality meat, vegetables, and so forth cost more per calorie than potato chips and foods chock-full of HFCS.

You also don't seem to understand nor care about how poverty limits access to cheaper sources of healthy food.

It doesn't; US's major dietary health problem is obesity and being obese only increases food costs. At the very worst - you kept buying the same food but ate less of it - they would stay the same.

Actually, you dumbshit, 1-in-6 Americans are having trouble feeding themselves. So your "hur-hur-hur, Murican fatties" spiel is both misguided and fucking stupid.

And, again, you totally fucking ignore the real consequences of food deserts.

Big surprise there, Her Majesty's Shithead.

The other stuff is middle class handwringing, and while some of it has some scientific backing, a lot of it doesn't and none of it causes major health problems.

Zoonosis have killed an enormous number of people, while the fertilizer used to grow the food for all those cows, pigs, and chickens has created an enormous dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico. Factory farms also kill off local ecosystems in riparian areas and otherwise cause enormous ecological concerns (source).

So, no, this is rather important shit.

No, it's 14 hours a week to feed yourself and 3-4 unemployed dependents. Transport isn't free for pre-agricultural peoples, it just doesn't exist.

Turns out when you only have to walk 3-4 miles to get anywhere you need to go, transportation is free because you can just walk there.

Nearly as many being less than as many, not more.

50-75% is a very significant percentage.

I didn't say it wasn't a bad to decrease antibiotic use in agriculture in general just that there's no private benefit to doing so. It's only beneficial if everyone does it.

So, Mr. Capitalism doesn't want to have people use market principles to create better outcomes for everyone?

You made twinky/wrong/no health claims depending. The overwhelmingly largest benefit from a dietary intervention the American poor can make is to eat less of whatever they're eating now.

Which they can't do because the healthier stuff is either not available or priced out of reach for the impoverished.

[Surlethe]

Let me add that when I call a definition "wrong" I just mean that it doesn't capture enough of the meaning (at least from my perspective) in the word "freedom." I am aware that definitions can't be "wrong" in any objective sense.

[Junghalli]

If we're going to say that hunter-gatherers spend their free time seeking status and social benefits I think it's rather important to clarify what exactly this means.

I mean, if they spend time socially interacting, and this is defined as status-seeking ... I think you could probably also then count me posting on this board right now as "status seeking" (indeed, I think you might be able to make a good argument that debate boards are very much a status-seeking activity, people tend to expend energy trying to "win" arguments, correct others and thus implicitly demonstrate superior knowledge etc.). If we're going with that definition I wonder how much of moderns' "free time" would turn into "work" under it?

I mean, thinking about all the things I did in my free time today that could be thought of as status-seeking if you squint at it right, and then cutting out work and survival-related activities, I think I had like maybe an hour of "real" free time today, maybe less.

[K. A. Pital]

I'm not free to fly, for example. But gravity isn't coercing me.

Maybe I should amend my definition to remove "without dying." Coercion is just the imposition of extra costs on some possible futures, and death is a possible cost.

I think it's wrong to distinguish between man-made and not-man-made costs, and I think it's wrong to not distinguish between high costs and low costs. Hence the example of gravity, toward the first point.

Coercion implies sentient action. As gravity isn't sentient, it cannot coerce you. So it's not wrong to distinguish between man-made and the opposite if one talks about coercion.

A sentient machine could coerce you and so could a human. Perhaps an animal could also coerce you, as they have a measure of intelligence, but the less intelligent something is, the less is the capacity to coerce, since the action is not sentient.

[Surlethe]

Yeah. I meant to imply sentient beings by using passive voice, but that wasn't clear. When it comes to freedom, I don't think coercion is important. Costs are important. Take a given situation and (if possible) swap a sentient being imposing costs for a non-sentient source of the same costs. The options I face and the costs they bear are the same, so in both cases I am equally "free", even though in the second no coercion is occurring. For example, say an invading army is going to burn my hometown. Am I less free than if a volcano is about to erupt and burn my hometown? I say no (setting aside details, like that volcanoes don't rape and steal before they burn, or that invading armies usually don't burn you alive). In both cases the costs are (roughly) the same, so as far as I'm concerned there's (roughly) no difference in how free I am to act.

[K. A. Pital]

When it comes to freedom, I don't think coercion is important.

I sure as hell do. I can't accuse an animal of being sadistic when it tears up its prey apart. It does not comprehend, since sentience is lacking or barely developed. Human comprehends.

The options I face and the costs they bear are the same, so in both cases I am equally "free", even though in the second no coercion is occurring.

I would say there is an important distinction. Coercion is a consequence of human action. Therefore, it is an active reduction of freedom by a sentient force. An eruption is not a sentient force. It might impose you with extreme costs, sure enough, and it poses an interesting question on whether the greatest freedom should also include the ability to overcome or avoid any natural limitations.

When humans reduce your freedom (which is already pretty limited by nature) even further, is it not an event slightly different from the presence of mere nature alone?

[Surlethe]

What does sadism have to do with freedom?

I would say there is an important distinction. Coercion is a consequence of human action. Therefore, it is an active reduction of freedom by a sentient force. An eruption is not a sentient force. It might impose you with extreme costs, sure enough, and it poses an interesting question on whether the greatest freedom should also include the ability to overcome or avoid any natural limitations.

In order of your sentences: No. Yes. Yes. Yes. I don't know what you mean.

When humans reduce your freedom (which is already pretty limited by nature) even further, is it not an event slightly different from the presence of mere nature alone?

Yes. But that question doesn't address my point, which is that reduction by man is not functionally different from an equivalent reduction by nature. Extra reducing by humans beyond that imposed by nature is slightly (or greatly!) different from the presence of mere nature alone because of the "extra", not because of the "by humans."

[K. A. Pital]

But that question doesn't address my point, which is that reduction by man is not functionally different from an equivalent reduction by nature. Extra reducing by humans beyond that imposed by nature is slightly (or greatly!) different from the presence of mere nature alone because of the "extra", not because of the "by humans."

Yes, perhaps so. However, it directly relates to the quote, since human freedom was limited only by nature before the reduction in freedom done by other humans.

Perhaps the techno- and other utopian strands of thought are the result of understanding that humans have taken too much freedom from other humans and trying to restore the initial level of freedom by either reducing human coercion, natural limits or both.

[Surlethe]

I don't really see a difference between nature and humans, anyway. What's the distinction between a tribe of chimpanzees and a tribe of prehistoric humans? More individuals, more tools, more specialization?

[Purple]

I don't really see a difference between nature and humans, anyway. What's the distinction between a tribe of chimpanzees and a tribe of prehistoric humans? More individuals, more tools, more specialization?

A greater degree of capability to make independent decisions. As in decisions not based on their hardware (instincts, hormones, trained/learned behavior and stuff like that).

[Dalton]

HMS Dinghy: You are also required to reply to dalton in that gay comics character thread. Either do so or face the consequences. Just a litte reminder.

Explain to him why I think comic book superheroes/villains come across as gay? Nope, I think it's pretty obvious. Maybe he disagrees, but as an aesthetic opinion it's not really subject to some kind of objective standard of proof.

This isn't the first time you have threatened to <something> me because you do not agree with my opinions or whatever; I don't see somewhere in the rules every comment must be spun out to infinity, so if you're going to ban me for that reason then just go ahead and do it.

Oh please. You make a ridiculously offensive blanket statement like that and you expect me to wave it off like it's nothing? You obnoxious turd.

[Lord Zentei]

The intent is really clearly stated - create an omnipotent state that controls everything. Marx believes people would learn to like it, but that's all. We would not apply such an unfairly favourable standard to any other ideology. Say, naziism. Once all the disfavoured races ("rebels and emigres") are gone, everyone will be happy to live under naziism since it's so great -- so we have no reason to believe its creators didn't honestly believe. But that hardly makes naziism not authoritarian, or the intent of its creators not authoritarian. You're mixing up "authoritarian" with "bad" and "liberal" with "good". I believe Marx honestly thought his ideas would make the world better, but they would do this by making it more authoritarian in a particular way.

Incorrect. The socialist state was to be an intermediary condition. Marx's end goal was a situation where the socialist system would become redundant.

Incidentally, where the hell are you getting the idea that I'm mixing up "authoritarian" with "bad" and "liberal" with "good"? That doesn't make any kind of sense.