Posts on the Go


You work for a living. With or without your consent, the government confiscates a large chunk of the money you earn.Like any unearned wealth, the government’s money is spent willy-nilly and without accountability. A portion of this money is given to farmers — not Good Old Farmer Joe, but massive farming corporations which grow as much corn as possible. The more they grow, the more money the government gives them.Unlike real businesses, there is no reason to stop producing food, since each bushel is subsidized. Compare this to Apple. What if the gov’t gave Apple $300 for each iPod they manufactured. They would make one billion iPods a month. What would happen next? They would sell them to other companies for $20 each, who would dissassemble them and make new consumer electronics out of the scavenged iPod parts. You would have telephones with scroll wheels and pink medicine cabinets made from Nano shells. The Sharper Image would sell The iPod Wall. This is a grid of 1,200 iPod screens coordinated to look like one massive iPod and costs a hundred dollars.Replace iPods with corn kernels and you have the model for our federal food program. Do you wonder what “processed food” is? It’s the same as the above example. You take a vegetable and break it down to its component molecules, then build new foods from these ingredients. You know “high fructose corn syrup”? That’s produced by processing corn kernels. It is cheaper than sugar and that’s why it’s in so much food.Why is non-nutritious food so cheap? Because of these subsidies. If you feel bad for poor people who only have access to dollar menus, you should be angry with yourself, not just McDonalds. The food is cheap because you already paid for it. You paid for the corn, you paid for the gasoline to transport it on the roads you paid for to the cows you pay for who eat it because they don’t have the option to eat what they’re evolved to eat: grass. You also pay for the antibiotics that allow the cow to survive without grass. You pay for it one last time when you die of heart disease after a life of eating poison. What a hard problem to solve. It will take so many years to undo the system, why bother? Well, one day, it will be Nov17, 2037. Pretend you are 30 years older, on that day, looking back. What are you thinking? — jakoblodwick

You work for a living. With or without your consent, the government confiscates a large chunk of the money you earn.

Like any unearned wealth, the government’s money is spent willy-nilly and without accountability. A portion of this money is given to farmers — not Good Old Farmer Joe, but massive farming corporations which grow as much corn as possible. The more they grow, the more money the government gives them.

Unlike real businesses, there is no reason to stop producing food, since each bushel is subsidized. Compare this to Apple. What if the gov’t gave Apple $300 for each iPod they manufactured. They would make one billion iPods a month. What would happen next? They would sell them to other companies for $20 each, who would dissassemble them and make new consumer electronics out of the scavenged iPod parts. You would have telephones with scroll wheels and pink medicine cabinets made from Nano shells. The Sharper Image would sell The iPod Wall. This is a grid of 1,200 iPod screens coordinated to look like one massive iPod and costs a hundred dollars.

Replace iPods with corn kernels and you have the model for our federal food program. Do you wonder what “processed food” is? It’s the same as the above example. You take a vegetable and break it down to its component molecules, then build new foods from these ingredients. You know “high fructose corn syrup”? That’s produced by processing corn kernels. It is cheaper than sugar and that’s why it’s in so much food.

Why is non-nutritious food so cheap? Because of these subsidies. If you feel bad for poor people who only have access to dollar menus, you should be angry with yourself, not just McDonalds. The food is cheap because you already paid for it. You paid for the corn, you paid for the gasoline to transport it on the roads you paid for to the cows you pay for who eat it because they don’t have the option to eat what they’re evolved to eat: grass. You also pay for the antibiotics that allow the cow to survive without grass. You pay for it one last time when you die of heart disease after a life of eating poison.

What a hard problem to solve. It will take so many years to undo the system, why bother? Well, one day, it will be Nov17, 2037. Pretend you are 30 years older, on that day, looking back. What are you thinking?

— jakoblodwick