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Comment Counter? (Score 1) 7

"By holding up modern China as an example of Communism, Smith expressly shows us that he is fucking propagandist scum inhabiting the more clever of propagandist echelons as the peon is then seemingly left with NO OPTIONS as to how they could potentially reorder or rethink their society."

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2014/04/open-thread-2014-10.html#c6a00d8341c640e53ef01a73dae40f4970d

The Almighty Buck

Journal Journal: Abraham Lincoln 2

"Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration."

Comment Yeah (Score -1) 390

This article makes it sound like the inability to afford food ends when you graduate.

But then grocery stores that gouge customers who don't have club cards or that charge confiscatory prices for food that is so plentiful we pay farmers not to grow it is a subject very much like liquor stores in poor neighborhoods.

You're not allowed to talk about it.

Comment Re:Militia, then vs now (Score -1) 1633

but we do not need to fear our military the way you seem to.

I don't fear the military. I fear a population led to believe the Federal government has the authority it claims to have.

nor would they stand idly by while someone else does it.

Sounds like we agree. So how about you get off my leg and start directing your outrage where it belongs?

Comment Floater. (Score 1) 3

Smart engineering thinking. These are the details that make for verisimilitude.

Sad. A future that could never, ever be. Remember when the situation of Kubrick's 2001 seemed not only plausible, but likely?

Comment Re:Shame this happened (Score 5, Informative) 136

It doesn't *have* to be done. There's a gigantic number of seeds which are commercially available already, there's many government and private organizations safeguarding these seeds, and the amount of patented seeds is comparatively insignificant. In addition, modern farming operations don't save seeds for future crops.

In fact, the basic idea behind Monsanto controlling the seed supply has been standard industry practice for 50+ years. Most vegetables commercially grown are F1 hybrids. In 1960, 99% of corn grown was an F1 hybrid. If you buy a Better Boy Tomato, an F1 hybrid also popular for home gardening, there will be little variation between the plants grown. However, the seed from these plants will be unusable. Peas and beans pollinate their own flowers, so for these plants such a strategy isn't practical. However, that doesn't mean the death of the species - even if most commercially grown tomatoes are F1 hybrids where the seeds are unusable, of course there's still a million variety of tomatoes which may be planted from seed (with a little care) and are easily available.

This is a symbolic marketing/propaganda move against Monsanto. Monsanto developed a soybean that is invulnerable to the safe, cheap, and environmentally benign herbicide Round-Up. They sell seeds with a contract stipulation that the seeds not be re-sown (again, normal farming practice is to buy all seed anyway), and won a lawsuit against a farmer who intentionally grow a Monsanto crop without paying Monsanto- he would buy the Monsanto crop for the first planting of the year, and use saved seed for the second planting of the year.

This group imagines that it's hard to find seeds that aren't patented, or at least that it will be in the future, to make some point that you shouldn't be allowed to patent seeds because think of how horrible it would be if you needed to deal with Monsanto to plant a carrot. However, if that future does come to pass, this wouldn't really help - you'd need something with the infrastructure to supply huge amounts of seeds, not just supply fun little seed packets to home gardeners.

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