Alan Attaboy

Cj Verde wrote:How does a capitalist raise pork v a permaculturist? What are they're different considerations?

I can't speak with certainty, but here's my best guess.

I've been reading Walter Jeffries' musings over at SugarMountain Farms. He raises pork and I'd consider his methods as being Pc methods. I'm not privy to his motivations and all of his methods, but I'm pretty certain that profitability and customer satisfaction are in the mix. I have a hard time drawing a line between capitalist pork products and permaculture pork products for I think that WJ methods are designed to make him money so he falls within the capitalist arena. He's vertically integrating, on a modest scale, by building a butchershop/slaughterhouse where he and his family will butcher their own pork and thereby capture more of the value added for themselves. That's innovation consistent with capitalism, that's not permaculture (to my understanding.)

Where I see the permaculture influence in his writings is that profit isn't as strong a motivator for him as it is for a factory farm operator. I'm assuming that there is more profit to be made in factory farming than there is in using 20 acres? to raise 200 pigs. That's a less than efficient use of his land and time if profit and return to capital are the primary factors motivating him. Maybe I'm wrong in these assumptions and it is more profitable to raise those pigs the way he's raising them, assuming that there was no price differential between pasture fed organic pork and factory farm pork, for if every pork producer switched to pasture feeding their pork then it would be impossible to charge his customers a premium for his pork.

The impression I'm getting from your question, and I admit I could be totally off-base, is that you're equating crony capitalism and state-directed capitalism with capitalism and to my mind these are three different ways of doing business. While I think I can make a convincing argument that Mr. Jeffries is both a permaculturist and a capitalist, I would not argue that he is practicing crony capitalism nor state-directed capitalism - he's not using influence/nepotism nor is he using the power of government and joining a pork marketing board which seeks to punish non-members with fines and prison for growing pork without joining the cartel. As far as I can tell Mr. Jeffries is doing what he wants, he's doing it his way, he's found a market receptive to his product, he's hustled and worked hard to develop his business, he's striving to be efficient in creating value and these all ring true of capitalists operating under the big tent of capitalism. Other capitalists will favor factory farming, and that's OK, for the decentralized nature of these different approaches creates resiliency in our food supply system. The one's I have a beef with (no cross-species pun intended) are the marketing board farmers who use government to shut down competitors.

Cj Verde wrote:The reason for this thread's existence (IMO) is that there needs to be some reconciliation between capitalism and permaculture. In some ways the goals are totally opposite - conceptually.
One of permaculture's key themes is resiliency whereas capitalism heads towards efficiency.

The resiliency of capitalism is pretty robust as it is. It's certainly not bullet proof but it ain't that bad either. The resiliency of capitalism lies in it operating on a diffuse basis. Many competitors trying different things so as to achieve better performance (usually performance is synonymous with profits) and the nature of the capitalist beast leads to innovation and different approaches to address the task at hand. This is a much more resilient way of doing things than crony capitalism or state capitalism. Look at how Obama put so many eggs into the basket of failed solar energy companies. That approach fails because it suffers from a knowledge problem - that approach presumes that one decision maker in government knows more, or knows better, than thousands or millions of individual and institutional actors, who face the same question. Each of the thousand or millions can try different solutions to the problem and they simply risk their own small resources, whereas Obama bets big with our money. The decentralized nature of capitalism lends it resiliency.

The whole Wall Street/mortgage meltdown is a textbook example of how forcing private economic institutions to advance the social goals of government leads to a loss of resiliency and a "bet all the chips on one approach" modus operandi.

Putting in place more regulations, more mandates, more oversight, more laws, etc simply serves to lessen the impact of innovation and decentralized approaches to various tasks and works to centralize everyone's operations into one favored approach. Imagine if government had the power to mandate that agriculture MUST be done only in a fashion prescribed by the "experts" in Washington - all of permaculture would be illegal and everyone would be in the same boat. Think of the risk of monoculture in agriculture, well the same applies to stifling of innovation in capitalism. Or look to the producer boards for Grains, cranberries, eggs, etc - they've used to power of government to shut down competition, more or less, in order to protect the economic interests of their producers, and this centralization doesn't lend itself to developing resiliency in how those farmers produce their crops.

Cj Verde wrote:I read that book. It's a very odd reference.

I thought the reference was quite pertinent considering the point of 8 year olds making sophisticated arguments. A parent taking pride in watching their child develop analytic reasoning has no resemblance to an 8 year old making persuasive arguments which sway adults through the use of tight logic, relevant references to history, persuasive use of rhetoric, etc. Ender Wiggen is a fictional 8 year old and he achieved what other 8 year olds are simply ill-equipped to do. I thought a nod to the character fit right into the topic.

I don't supposed you'd be interested in sharing ways you've put permaculture to use in your life?

Sure I would, but I'm more a a learner on this topic and I'm here to read, and learn, from people who know more than me, who've been doing it longer, who've tried many different experiments. I have nothing really original or insightful to contribute on that topic and my contributions will be more along the line of asking questions and seeking advice. That's the way I roll - I stake out positions of topics that I know a lot of about and I'll argue and defend my positions. On topics where my ignorance level is high, I stay back and learn from the words of others.

Cj Verde wrote:

Alan Attaboy wrote:Naomi Klein, to the best of my knowledge, has never had any of her positions validated against reality, so her analysis on any given topic should be given no more credence than that of a random 8 year old girl interviewed on the playground about current political affairs.

The Shock Doctrine has most certainly been validated.

Validated /= referenced. Stiglitz, from the World Bank, reviewing her book doesn't mean that what Klein wrote with respect to identifying problems and proposing solutions is in fact an accurate view of what is going on. I can reference Marx and Engel's The Communist Manifesto but referencing their work doesn't mean that I'm lending support to their analysis of problems or their solutions to their perceived problems.

Perhaps you'd like to rethink equating her with an 8 year-old girl? Besides, my daughter had plenty to say about politics when she was 8. In fact, it's an incredibly demeaning comment to both of them. I bet Ayn Rand had interesting things to say as an 8 year old too so you've basically slammed anyone who was ever an 8 year-old girl.

I don't doubt that your daughter had plenty to say about politics. Lots of people, of all ages, have plenty to say about politics. That fact that people have plenty to say doesn't say anything at all about the worthiness of the content of what they're saying. There is a difference between taking pride in seeing a young person starting to develop analytic thinking skills and applying them and finding profound meaning in the analysis from an 8 year old girl such that your own political views are changed by the strength of her arguments. Good arguments usually have a few things in common - they're built on a well developed understanding of the facts, they're built on an understanding of history and what motivates people, and they logically weave these strands into a coherent argument. Eight year olds don't have the analytic skills and depth of knowledge required to construct sophisticated arguments on their own. Klein has shown the same weakness as the scorching criticisms of her work make very clear. Her fans, of course, will be loyal, because they love rolling around in the confirmation bias she showers over them.

As for Rand, is that supposed to be some sly dig at me? Why would I give a care about what she wrote at age 8? She, and I, and you and your daughter, and all of us, (excepting Ender Wiggen) weren't really coming up with original and profound thinking when we were eight because we were all handicapped by lack of knowledge and experience.