alt Hacker News>American capitalism, has done far more to getting us closer to post-scarcity than anything else, with US-centric agriculture innovation being the shining example
Uh, the American food industry, like nearly every first world food industry, is super state run. We stopped letting capitalism run farms because regular famine was awful.
Have you seen how much we pay per bushel of corn? Our beef is not cheaper because of capitalism. It's cheaper from enormous state subsidies that are designed to ensure we grow shitloads of certain crops regardless of economic or market factors.
But it stopped all the crazy boom-bust cycles of farming that kept ruining farms, harming farmland, and starving Americans.
Even food stamps is largely about giving farmers more state money for growing things that aren't strictly profitable.
> Uh, the American food industry, like nearly every first world food industry, is super state run.
The topic is capitalism. It only speaks to ownership. If you want to talk about who is running the show, you'd need to change the subject to command/market economies. But there is absolutely no reason to change the subject. So, getting us back on track: What agriculture-related capital do you think these first-world states own, exactly? The Canadian government used to own some grain elevators, but even that was sold off to private interests many years ago.
> Have you seen how much we pay per bushel of corn?
How could I not? What a curious question.
> It's cheaper from enormous state subsidies that are designed to ensure we grow shitloads of certain crops regardless of economic or market factors.
I have no idea what you are trying to say here. Post-scarcity, by very definition, is approached through technical innovation. There is a case to be made that subsidies have helped compel people to develop that technology, I guess, but subsidies and capitalism are in no way at odds with each other anyway. This seems to have absolutely no applicability to the conversation at hand.