alt Hacker News>but I'd rather not have the government decide what I'm allowed to eat.
I don't know how it'd get to that if we had even more supply. I'm saying we'd be better off dealing with the problems of overproduction rather than the problems of unprofitable businesses and killing production capacity because it isn't profitable in the short-term.
I also never said you couldn't have non/not-for-profit food production, just that they shouldn't be for-profit.
It's difficult because a lot of the margins have been pressed out, and capital funding is often done in a way that doesn't allow for a market to shrink and respond to over-production or a reduction in demand.
If the government was responsible for running the farms, we would not have near the variety we have today... and for that matter, it would be much closer to soviet communism. I'm absolutely opposed to that.
And how do you know we would be better off? What would you do with oversupply? We had mountains full of cheese for decades from oversupply.. and that's a single product. Canned fruit doesn't even last that long before breaking down. The alternative is waste year after year, vs. cutting back and planting something else, which is what is happening... part of the market was allowed to fail (Del Monte) and part is being bailed out (farms) in defense of being able to have ongoing production, even if the product is different.
That seems far better than having mountains full of rotten peaches in cans.