The item on the radio: Corporate profits are at an all-time high, worker productivity is at an all-time high, unemployment is still horribly, miserably high. Why am I not surprised? Companies have discovered that they can get along without the dead wood. There is plenty of dead wood in the so-called private sector, as well as the public sector.
Fortunately, there is a solution. And, just as fortunately, the solution will drive everyone totally nuts. The solution is the ten day week. I used to bring up the ten day week as dinner party chat, and was generally ignored. No more.
Turns out my whole new structure to life was tried before, during the French Revolution, as part of the attempt to rationalize everyday life. I have been legitimized. Or delegitimized, depending whether you are a French aristocrat or not.
Before the revolution in France, necessities were priced in a delightful way. Bread was sold by the loaf; if the price of wheat went up, the loaf was a little smaller. If milk was scarce, a little water was added to the bottle. And so on. But the peasants, in particular, always paid the same amount for the loaf of bread or the bottle of milk, and were a bit insulated from the varying prices of staples. Folks who cheated the peasants were driven out of town.
But the revolutionaries demanded that, by golly, the system should be rational, and this foolishness must end, and the peasants must pay for a measured amount of bread or milk or anything. The peasants would have none of it; together with a bunch of similar bad moves by the revolutionaries, the emphasis on rationality in daily events turned the peasant class against the revolution.
The ten day week was another of those doomed ideas. Revolutionaries divided the year into twelve 30 day months -- which were renamed -- and each month had 3 ten day weeks*. At the end of the year, there was a five day holiday period. Each day had ten hours, each hour had 100 minutes, and so on. They were obsessed with the decimal business.** Didn't matter; the bible said seven days. The revolution was doomed.
That was then. Fortunately, we are no longer in the grips of religious fundamentalism. Snarky. The new ten day week will be divided into one five day unit called the First, and another five day unit called the Second. Half the population will work during each unit. A job will have two...hmm...occupants. Everyone will have a job for five days of ten, everyone will have leisure for five days of ten; the economy will blossom, and lions and lambs will do whatever together. Note that I have, with my usual modesty, not named the half-weeks after myself.
There will be some problems. What about families in which two parents, say, are working? Well, if they both work the First, or both work the Second, the family will have the whole other 5 days together, and will need day care for only five of ten days, rather than five of seven. If the adults work different periods, all day care problems are nicely solved. Vacation scheduling will be easy. Couples can take the same half-week, or the opposite half-week, depending on how they are getting along. Work scheduling will be difficult and will provide jobs for all the extra middle managers.
Strange loyalties will develop, and perhaps the Super Bowl will be played between the winners of the First and Second divisions, at some time during 5 DAY, those magical five extra days.
The big, big deal: there will be no unemployment!!! None at all!!! An immediate demand for workers, and then, of course, demand for goods and services. The ten day week saves civilization!!! And all my idea!!! Time to pick up my Nobel. I hope I know how to act at the dinner.
Whatever solution exists, there is no question about the problem. Current financial blahs are demand based, not supply based. There is plenty of capital around looking for places to settle, but not enough demand to buy stuff. If there was ever a time to take the wealth from the wealthy, this is it; the usual rationalization, that wealthy folks provide capital, is even more goofy now. We don't need more capital!!!! We have capital up our ying-yangs, or whatever the plural of ying-yang is. We need people buying stuff!!!
The French revolution and the ten day week aside, what are we to do with all the extra folks for whom there are no jobs, and never will be? Our young men, for instance, can't all go into the killing vocations. We need manufacturing jobs for them; we need the factory floor. Office work won't do; "Hell's Angels, Wayland Branch" colors may go fine in the factory, but not at Chase bank.
The ten-day week is my best idea -- actually, my only idea. I don't think anyone else has any ideas to compete. During the last boom, the killing industries provided jobs, and the housing industry provided jobs. One of them (guess which!!) is out of business, and it looks now like the killing industries are going to be able to get along with the labor they already have. This is where our enslavement to the supply/demand nonsense really gets annoying.
There are more of us than there are jobs, and we have no clue about how to cope. Until we pull manufacturing back from wherever it has gone, we will suffer the disastrous consequences of trading jobs for wealth. Bad idea when we started, worse idea now. We need manufacturing. We need factories.
Once again, we had what we needed, and we gave it all away.
That total isolation thing? Starting to look better, isn't it?
*Of course, Thermidor appears in Lobster Thermidor, a dish rumored to have been prepared for Napoleon I during Thermidor. In the Julian calendar that was about July 13 to August 12; the name is derived from the root therm, meaning heat. Duh. The common rule-of-thumb, no shellfish in months without an "r" in the name, applies only to oysters. Turns out the best time to eat lobsters is in months ending in "r", except December. No idea how this maps onto the revolution month names. Blah, blah. I love this stuff.
**The French revolutionaries, we should note, did not divide their ten-day weeks into two five-day units, so I can still revel in my creativity.
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Sunday, January 9, 2011
Just so awful.
Oh, Gabrielle Giffords.
The bad all comes out now, a day and some later, awful. Why is this so awful? Hundreds of thousands are dead, and this is so awful.
Everything changes again, turns bad. She is a storm: a woman, a Jew, a democrat. How could she live and work ? Her brain is shattered. I'm so sad and going through the motions again, and thinking about her brain and my brain.
Heard the old "What's that sound? Everybody look what's going on" song and went back to the King and Kennedy year, and remembering that I knew just then that we were always going to lose. No more thinking it might work out, knowing we were always going to lose and that it was over and just go home.
2008. 40 years. Watching Grant Park, and sort of bobbing the head up and down and sideways and crying and thinking maybe it's not so bad, and maybe it payed off. Forgot for a few minutes.
1991, standing on the Common with signs on Sunday mornings, the kids 9 and 7, counting the cars that went by and keeping track of who beeped and cheered and who yelled "Commie" out the car window and who gave us the finger. Saying what the finger meant and saying what "Commie" meant.
The signs are in the garage, and one says "Persian cats for peace". I knew in 1991 that we were going through the motions, but the rage again, and that time scared that it was so easy for them and would go on forever.
Went to Dunkin Donuts one of those Sunday mornings for food; we were the olds, we could feed the youngs. Waiting in line, and two old guys sitting at the counter, and one says "It's all the damn niggers fault", and the other says "Yeah, it's all the niggers fault", and just hearing it, and knowing that it would be a hundred years more.
Then Grant Park, sort of surprised, wondering what was coming, and thinking it was going to go bad and then seeing it go bad and not knowing how bad it would be.
And now this, and it's all so sad, and more going through the motions, and maybe how sad will count this time. Her brain is exploded and it always will be, and most of the time I only think what will happen to all of us and my own brain.
The bad all comes out now, a day and some later, awful. Why is this so awful? Hundreds of thousands are dead, and this is so awful.
Everything changes again, turns bad. She is a storm: a woman, a Jew, a democrat. How could she live and work ? Her brain is shattered. I'm so sad and going through the motions again, and thinking about her brain and my brain.
Heard the old "What's that sound? Everybody look what's going on" song and went back to the King and Kennedy year, and remembering that I knew just then that we were always going to lose. No more thinking it might work out, knowing we were always going to lose and that it was over and just go home.
2008. 40 years. Watching Grant Park, and sort of bobbing the head up and down and sideways and crying and thinking maybe it's not so bad, and maybe it payed off. Forgot for a few minutes.
1991, standing on the Common with signs on Sunday mornings, the kids 9 and 7, counting the cars that went by and keeping track of who beeped and cheered and who yelled "Commie" out the car window and who gave us the finger. Saying what the finger meant and saying what "Commie" meant.
The signs are in the garage, and one says "Persian cats for peace". I knew in 1991 that we were going through the motions, but the rage again, and that time scared that it was so easy for them and would go on forever.
Went to Dunkin Donuts one of those Sunday mornings for food; we were the olds, we could feed the youngs. Waiting in line, and two old guys sitting at the counter, and one says "It's all the damn niggers fault", and the other says "Yeah, it's all the niggers fault", and just hearing it, and knowing that it would be a hundred years more.
Then Grant Park, sort of surprised, wondering what was coming, and thinking it was going to go bad and then seeing it go bad and not knowing how bad it would be.
And now this, and it's all so sad, and more going through the motions, and maybe how sad will count this time. Her brain is exploded and it always will be, and most of the time I only think what will happen to all of us and my own brain.
Sunday, January 2, 2011
Corpses and Little League Fields
During the French and Indian War, starting around 1708, bounties were offered for the scalps of Native Americans. Each side paid for the scalps of different qroups -- the French for Iroquois scalps, the English for Abenaki scalps. Scalps for money lasted, intermittently, until the late 1870s, in different parts of the country. The practice was finally abandoned for lack of demand, not lack of supply.
The big problem with scalps for money was that the whites could not tell whether the scalp was from a member of a friendly tribe or an enemy tribe. Woo-hoo!! Open season on members of any tribe who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Lo, the poor Indian.
Now, forward almost 200 years. Iraq, and the contractors. There are many, many issues with contractors in Iraq. Questions:
How does it make sense to pay contractors so much more than soldiers?
What is the system to make contractors accountable (and we are so in love with accountability) if they are murderous beyond their duties?
What sort of military control do we have over these people?
What on earth do we want these people to do?
There are more, I suppose, but let's start with those.
Contractors are overwhelmingly used for protection of diplomats and visitors. Contractors and their agencies are paid by the hour. A lot. The longer the war goes, the more they make. Not exactly a recipe for quick success.
The rationale is that we just have too few soldiers to be used for what, after all, is usually a mundane task. At first glance, this makes some sense. Soldiers fight the enemy, not watch doors.
Let's think about it another way, like the 18th century folks did. They had sensational success; their enemies were completely wiped out. We should be so successful!!!
Let's reverse roles. Soldiers, formerly in the field shooting people, moved to guard duty, taking care of the people and buildings we most value. Contractors moved to field operations. And the payment system changed. Contractors paid per corpse. How do we tell if the corpse was an enemy? Easy. The same way we do now!!! Success guaranteed!!! Lo, the poor Al-Qaeda!!!
I am not opposed to privatizing. Not at all. I just want privatizing to be successful, and I want privatizing to lessen the role of the state in many areas now ignored. Contractors in Iraq may have been a bad idea, but no reason to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Look around. What is the least noticed, but most necessary, function of local government? Easy again. Parks and fields. Particularly Little League fields, also used for adult softball.
I propose we offer towns good money to sell all their fields to us, along with an agreement that they will build no more. The towns already have a monopoly on fields, and get paid for their use. Easy stuff, particularly these days, with towns starving for cash.
Then we can jack up the user fee astronomically. Yessss!! A monopoly!!! The dream of every business. Hey, let somebody try to compete. With the price of land, no way!!! We do away with the town rec person, who has such enormous power and is widely despised. Instead, we get a scheduling web site. The software is easily available. Problems? Call customer service, in India. Nothing is more important to adult Americans than softball.
In the deal, we get catering rights for the fields -- something not even thought of before private industry took over. And we subcontract the serving of decent, healthy food for the little folks and the big folks during and after games. No more sugary treats. Beef Wellington? No, not so upscale. Deli platters, maybe.
In my town, there is a statue, a magnet for tourists. They stand in front of it and have their pictures taken, often by passers-by. Well, the mall does the same thing, with Santa. And charges the big bucks. And so will we. Our statue is there year round. Plus food stands!! Plus souvenir stands!! Plus a dunk-the-Brit booth!! The possibilities are endless, and so are the profits. Or course, not all towns have an attraction like the statue. We can be creative with parks, though.
Fire department? Already privatized. Street repair? Already privatized. Stick to parks. User fees for dog...performance? Alert Reader groans at inevitable appearance of poop in the chapter. Well, too hard to enforce anyway.
Schools are a sticking point. The charter school movement has left the mouth-breathing right salivating and producing other body fluids; finally, a chance to crush the teacher unions, which they seem to despise with a virulent hatred. There seems to be no such disdain of police and firefighter unions, for some reason. Perhaps the collision of beliefs.
But.....schools are tough. Seems easy, but you end up dealing with amphetamine-addled howler monkey parents, who won't be put off with a help line to India. They have a murderous rage, inflamed by the least issue. I wouldn't put it past them to hold corporate officers personally responsible for pain inflicted on their children. We can't have that. Stay away from schools.
Ah, the point. The commons are, well, common, usually for a good reason. Local institutions we hold dear, such as Little League, are not so easy to privatize, and are held in common for the community, much as sheep-grazing commons were in the early days of settlement.
There are also beloved national institutions immune from privatization. Soldiers are not in it for the money; we are taught to despise mercenaries, starting with the Hessian troops who were on the British side in the Revolutionary war. Soldiers are part of the commons. I don't know how the Iraq contractors have been able to escape the mercenary label. I always thought that folks fighting just for pay were mercenaries.
Teachers are treasured until they reveal themselves as "in it for the money" like the rest of us, and are no longer part of the commons. Same with stern but kindly librarians; they are the first to go, since they are old and cost too much on the health insurance. Same with the addled brother-in-law of the town manager, whose duties focus around field lines in the summer, and shoveling out town hall in the winter.
Where will it end? I will not allow the blog to be sold off to the highest bidder. Well......
The big problem with scalps for money was that the whites could not tell whether the scalp was from a member of a friendly tribe or an enemy tribe. Woo-hoo!! Open season on members of any tribe who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Lo, the poor Indian.
Now, forward almost 200 years. Iraq, and the contractors. There are many, many issues with contractors in Iraq. Questions:
How does it make sense to pay contractors so much more than soldiers?
What is the system to make contractors accountable (and we are so in love with accountability) if they are murderous beyond their duties?
What sort of military control do we have over these people?
What on earth do we want these people to do?
There are more, I suppose, but let's start with those.
Contractors are overwhelmingly used for protection of diplomats and visitors. Contractors and their agencies are paid by the hour. A lot. The longer the war goes, the more they make. Not exactly a recipe for quick success.
The rationale is that we just have too few soldiers to be used for what, after all, is usually a mundane task. At first glance, this makes some sense. Soldiers fight the enemy, not watch doors.
Let's think about it another way, like the 18th century folks did. They had sensational success; their enemies were completely wiped out. We should be so successful!!!
Let's reverse roles. Soldiers, formerly in the field shooting people, moved to guard duty, taking care of the people and buildings we most value. Contractors moved to field operations. And the payment system changed. Contractors paid per corpse. How do we tell if the corpse was an enemy? Easy. The same way we do now!!! Success guaranteed!!! Lo, the poor Al-Qaeda!!!
I am not opposed to privatizing. Not at all. I just want privatizing to be successful, and I want privatizing to lessen the role of the state in many areas now ignored. Contractors in Iraq may have been a bad idea, but no reason to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Look around. What is the least noticed, but most necessary, function of local government? Easy again. Parks and fields. Particularly Little League fields, also used for adult softball.
I propose we offer towns good money to sell all their fields to us, along with an agreement that they will build no more. The towns already have a monopoly on fields, and get paid for their use. Easy stuff, particularly these days, with towns starving for cash.
Then we can jack up the user fee astronomically. Yessss!! A monopoly!!! The dream of every business. Hey, let somebody try to compete. With the price of land, no way!!! We do away with the town rec person, who has such enormous power and is widely despised. Instead, we get a scheduling web site. The software is easily available. Problems? Call customer service, in India. Nothing is more important to adult Americans than softball.
In the deal, we get catering rights for the fields -- something not even thought of before private industry took over. And we subcontract the serving of decent, healthy food for the little folks and the big folks during and after games. No more sugary treats. Beef Wellington? No, not so upscale. Deli platters, maybe.
In my town, there is a statue, a magnet for tourists. They stand in front of it and have their pictures taken, often by passers-by. Well, the mall does the same thing, with Santa. And charges the big bucks. And so will we. Our statue is there year round. Plus food stands!! Plus souvenir stands!! Plus a dunk-the-Brit booth!! The possibilities are endless, and so are the profits. Or course, not all towns have an attraction like the statue. We can be creative with parks, though.
Fire department? Already privatized. Street repair? Already privatized. Stick to parks. User fees for dog...performance? Alert Reader groans at inevitable appearance of poop in the chapter. Well, too hard to enforce anyway.
Schools are a sticking point. The charter school movement has left the mouth-breathing right salivating and producing other body fluids; finally, a chance to crush the teacher unions, which they seem to despise with a virulent hatred. There seems to be no such disdain of police and firefighter unions, for some reason. Perhaps the collision of beliefs.
But.....schools are tough. Seems easy, but you end up dealing with amphetamine-addled howler monkey parents, who won't be put off with a help line to India. They have a murderous rage, inflamed by the least issue. I wouldn't put it past them to hold corporate officers personally responsible for pain inflicted on their children. We can't have that. Stay away from schools.
Ah, the point. The commons are, well, common, usually for a good reason. Local institutions we hold dear, such as Little League, are not so easy to privatize, and are held in common for the community, much as sheep-grazing commons were in the early days of settlement.
There are also beloved national institutions immune from privatization. Soldiers are not in it for the money; we are taught to despise mercenaries, starting with the Hessian troops who were on the British side in the Revolutionary war. Soldiers are part of the commons. I don't know how the Iraq contractors have been able to escape the mercenary label. I always thought that folks fighting just for pay were mercenaries.
Teachers are treasured until they reveal themselves as "in it for the money" like the rest of us, and are no longer part of the commons. Same with stern but kindly librarians; they are the first to go, since they are old and cost too much on the health insurance. Same with the addled brother-in-law of the town manager, whose duties focus around field lines in the summer, and shoveling out town hall in the winter.
Where will it end? I will not allow the blog to be sold off to the highest bidder. Well......
Thursday, November 25, 2010
Clubbed Like Baby Seals
It took a long time. A generation of politicians, economists, think-tankers, all the powers-that-be, have been totally, wildly wrong, stupid in a very debilitating way. I, of course, will now take time to set them straight.
Trade between nations is not about money. It just isn't. Trade between nations is about jobs. Just jobs. We're losing jobs, very badly, to the point that the rest of the world is sitting back, hands in their plump laps, smiling seraphically. Or is it cherubically? Our clocks are getting cleaned, our lunches are being eaten, our faces pushed into the mud. Put your own metaphor here. My personal favorite: We are being clubbed like baby seals, and then skinned.
Yipes. China, Vietnam, Indonesia, India; they all have more people working. We have fewer people working. They have industrial development guided by groups of smart people. We have smarmy, big haired people, making sure that industrial development isn't guided by anything smart.
We love our delusions. We keep saying that we are more creative than all those Asians; they can only copy, not be creative. We are the smart, creative folks who will lead the world in everything intellectual. Race-baiting swill. Japan beat us in cars and electronics -- creatively. Europe is beating us in bio-tech -- creatively. China is beating us in gew-gaws, or tchotchkes, or whatever you call them -- goofy little things that we like to buy. Stuff. OK, not so creatively.
Our biggest export to China, our intellectual value-added American-made stuff, our grand product of the best-in-the-world educational system: junk. Junk metal, and junk paper and junk plastic, shipped to China and morphed into the stuff we buy back. Ack. Your Alert Blogger is stunned!! Wasn't supposed to work like that. We somehow got on the wrong end.
Ok. Lemme hear it. They are: Slave-mongers!! Environment polluters who work in dreadful factories for dreadful wages, spoiling it all for us.
Well, sure. They have discovered, though, that having a job is better than being a peasant. Just like the Irish, Italians, Jews, Germans, Poles, and all the other peasants who left their homes to come to American jobs. Jobs, jobs, jobs: all that matters. Jobs.
So, if I'm so smart, what do I think we should do? I hate to say it -- well, not so much : we need to put up our fists, jab, float like butterflies, sting like bees. No More Mister Nice Guy. How? Easy, really. We stop buying stuff we didn't make.
No more Toyotas -- 200% tariff No more Porsches -- 300% tariff. No more grapes in the winter -- 2% tariff; I like grapes. No more tchotchkes -- 10,000% tariff. Thank god -- no more tchotchkes. No more Columbian coffee. No more stuff we didn't make. We just stop. OK, I'll give up the winter grapes, in the interest of the majority -- 100% tariff.
Sure. Right. You can't do that. The last 50 years of economic theory show that mercantilism -- what we are talking about here -- is a dreadful failure. Except when it isn't. The last 50 years show that guided development and strategically aimed tariffs work very well, thank you. There are, I suppose, exceptions -- Cambodia comes to mind, but no matter what, Cambodia wouldn't work. India and China, though, the largest of the Asian nations, seem to be OK. Why? Lots of jobs to go around.
We have made a dreadful mistake. We have put wealth before jobs. Please note that all the folks pushing for this wonderful world of free trade are sitting back, burning money in their barbecues so the steaks will be nice and tender. Yet again: I've got mine, the rest of you just go away and die.
When will we finally notice that class warfare is class warfare, and the weapons are jobs? When will we finally notice that the big earners still are working, and we aren't?
Trade between nations is not about money. It just isn't. Trade between nations is about jobs. Just jobs. We're losing jobs, very badly, to the point that the rest of the world is sitting back, hands in their plump laps, smiling seraphically. Or is it cherubically? Our clocks are getting cleaned, our lunches are being eaten, our faces pushed into the mud. Put your own metaphor here. My personal favorite: We are being clubbed like baby seals, and then skinned.
Yipes. China, Vietnam, Indonesia, India; they all have more people working. We have fewer people working. They have industrial development guided by groups of smart people. We have smarmy, big haired people, making sure that industrial development isn't guided by anything smart.
We love our delusions. We keep saying that we are more creative than all those Asians; they can only copy, not be creative. We are the smart, creative folks who will lead the world in everything intellectual. Race-baiting swill. Japan beat us in cars and electronics -- creatively. Europe is beating us in bio-tech -- creatively. China is beating us in gew-gaws, or tchotchkes, or whatever you call them -- goofy little things that we like to buy. Stuff. OK, not so creatively.
Our biggest export to China, our intellectual value-added American-made stuff, our grand product of the best-in-the-world educational system: junk. Junk metal, and junk paper and junk plastic, shipped to China and morphed into the stuff we buy back. Ack. Your Alert Blogger is stunned!! Wasn't supposed to work like that. We somehow got on the wrong end.
Ok. Lemme hear it. They are: Slave-mongers!! Environment polluters who work in dreadful factories for dreadful wages, spoiling it all for us.
Well, sure. They have discovered, though, that having a job is better than being a peasant. Just like the Irish, Italians, Jews, Germans, Poles, and all the other peasants who left their homes to come to American jobs. Jobs, jobs, jobs: all that matters. Jobs.
So, if I'm so smart, what do I think we should do? I hate to say it -- well, not so much : we need to put up our fists, jab, float like butterflies, sting like bees. No More Mister Nice Guy. How? Easy, really. We stop buying stuff we didn't make.
No more Toyotas -- 200% tariff No more Porsches -- 300% tariff. No more grapes in the winter -- 2% tariff; I like grapes. No more tchotchkes -- 10,000% tariff. Thank god -- no more tchotchkes. No more Columbian coffee. No more stuff we didn't make. We just stop. OK, I'll give up the winter grapes, in the interest of the majority -- 100% tariff.
Sure. Right. You can't do that. The last 50 years of economic theory show that mercantilism -- what we are talking about here -- is a dreadful failure. Except when it isn't. The last 50 years show that guided development and strategically aimed tariffs work very well, thank you. There are, I suppose, exceptions -- Cambodia comes to mind, but no matter what, Cambodia wouldn't work. India and China, though, the largest of the Asian nations, seem to be OK. Why? Lots of jobs to go around.
We have made a dreadful mistake. We have put wealth before jobs. Please note that all the folks pushing for this wonderful world of free trade are sitting back, burning money in their barbecues so the steaks will be nice and tender. Yet again: I've got mine, the rest of you just go away and die.
When will we finally notice that class warfare is class warfare, and the weapons are jobs? When will we finally notice that the big earners still are working, and we aren't?
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Anchovies on Pillowcases
There was a tradition, during the 18th century, in Pennsylvania, upstate New York, the Ohio Valley, when those folks who already lived there traded with the new folks who were just arriving. Some types of food, not a lot of variety, but many, many furs, going in the one direction. Kettles, guns, knives -- mostly metal stuff, manufactured stuff, going in the other. Made sense. Both groups were better off. Free trade!!!! No tariffs!!!
Of course, someone actually had to do the trading. A surprisingly small number of folks were traders, usually working alone or with one family member. A lot was required: language skills, human skills, fearlessness, trust, wisdom, economic calculation gritty physical endurance. Both native and newcomer were traders between communities. Just imagine the first time arriving in such a strange place, carrying all your riches on your back. Their lives were often short, for one reason or other.
My interest was piqued (yes, piqued!!) by a small detail. When arriving in a community, whether native or newcomer, there was a cleaning ritual. Arriving folks would be given a bowl of water, to wash their hands and faces. Most of the time there was not much improvement in actual cleanliness. So, why this washing?
New arrivals had always passed through forest. Forests were considered by both parties as places of menace and filth. Not a benign playland. No Bambi. Cleaning after being in the forest was a ritual of passing into civilized society and putting the dirt behind.
When I was a good catholic youth, churches always had a bowl of holy water (yes, such a thing existed!!) at the doorway. On the way in or out, you were to dip a finger in the bowl and make the sign of the cross. Another ritual of passing into the civilized, and leaving the detritus of the world behind.
Forward, again, to the new american obsession, the ritual hand cleansing offered at some places. Originally begun as a defense against the influenza virus*, it has become something a bit more confusing. It is available, but not required. The utensils sit, visible, an appeal to conscience and civility. These are mysterious devices, which spurt a liquid on our hands; magically, the liquid disappears. We never know when one of the the cleansing devices will pop up, in a very strange place.
And then, there is this: A quarter of the folks surveyed walking down the street in the north of England have poop on their hands.** No reason the think the north of England is unique.
Wow! A huge literature on most/least effective ways to get folks to wash their hands when leaving bathrooms. Turns out the most effective is a cleansing trough outside of the bathroom, in plain sight of both genders; embarrassment is more effective than lecture. I haven't seen any troughs installed at, say, TGI Friday's, or even places lower on the pecking order, if there are any.
Alert Reader is sighing, knowing that more poop discussion was inevitable. Not if, but when.
My children, and their friends, take multiple showers each day; the showers are randomly timed. On occasion, the showers signify entering or leaving the house, but not always. Why take a shower in the middle of the day, neither coming in or going out? They have no explanation, and think I am odd to be asking about something so ordinary (see Tough Questions).
But there is yet another side. Through high school, at least, kids no longer take showers after phys ed class, team practices, even games. All of these are activities in which there is actual dirt, not symbolic dirt. But, no showers. I remember, so long ago, showers after gym class -- what we called it then -- and of being unclothed in front of the other kids. Difficult. And, after a while, not do difficult. I used to think the newer approach to group showers displayed increased homophobia. Yet, who could be more homophobic that a group of catholic high school boys in 1960? I am open to speculation.
But more about dirt. I read a book about dirt, a long time ago.*** The whole point: We think dirt is soil, grime, mud, dust, filth -- it goes on. Real you-can-touch-it dirt stuff. But the book looked at dirt as a social construct: The anchovy on the pillowcase is a central image of dirt. Dirt is something where it shouldn't be, like weeds are plants where they shouldn't be. Granules from the outside of the home become dirt inside the home.
Washing our hands was a symbol in the 18th century. Probably now, too. But now, in the shower age, there is confusion about washing. Looks like we don't really try to get the poop off when we leave the bathroom, and we didn't in 18th century washing rituals. But all those showers!!!
I'm beginning to think that the polite requirement of washing hands before leaving the bathroom is equivalent to emerging from the forest -- a pretend cleanliness ritual, that signifies the transition from the dirty place to the clean place. But doesn't really clean. A lot like the parental five-second rule: if you can pick it up within five seconds of it hitting the floor, it's safe for child consumption. No, it isn't.
Washing hands isn't enough any more; we're past the washing rituals of the eighteenth century, and have jumped forward into some other space. Washing hands in hospitals and some other settings is a health issue. Maybe. But maybe it is also a sign of confused internal life, metaphors gone wild. Showers taken when some impulse or other is felt. And, maybe William James was right, and there is strength where there is a fear of dirt. Yup. Me and Billy Jim.
Plumber's apprentices are told: It may be poop to them, but it's our bread and butter.
That takes care of that.
*Old joke: Giant cockroach goes into a bar. Asks for a beer. Bartender brings the beer. Giant cockroach thanks bartender, then begins to beat on the bartender, knocking him down and kicking him on the ground. Then the giant cockroach leaves the bar.
New customer enters the bar. Sees the bruised and bloody bartender, and says "Wow, what happened to you?"
The bartender explains, "You know, there's this nasty bug going around...." Ba-dum-dum.
**I am told I need to have a citation. Cynical doubters please see The London Times
***Mary Douglas: Purity and Danger
Enough with the footnotes. This is a blog, not a dissertation.
Of course, someone actually had to do the trading. A surprisingly small number of folks were traders, usually working alone or with one family member. A lot was required: language skills, human skills, fearlessness, trust, wisdom, economic calculation gritty physical endurance. Both native and newcomer were traders between communities. Just imagine the first time arriving in such a strange place, carrying all your riches on your back. Their lives were often short, for one reason or other.
My interest was piqued (yes, piqued!!) by a small detail. When arriving in a community, whether native or newcomer, there was a cleaning ritual. Arriving folks would be given a bowl of water, to wash their hands and faces. Most of the time there was not much improvement in actual cleanliness. So, why this washing?
New arrivals had always passed through forest. Forests were considered by both parties as places of menace and filth. Not a benign playland. No Bambi. Cleaning after being in the forest was a ritual of passing into civilized society and putting the dirt behind.
When I was a good catholic youth, churches always had a bowl of holy water (yes, such a thing existed!!) at the doorway. On the way in or out, you were to dip a finger in the bowl and make the sign of the cross. Another ritual of passing into the civilized, and leaving the detritus of the world behind.
Forward, again, to the new american obsession, the ritual hand cleansing offered at some places. Originally begun as a defense against the influenza virus*, it has become something a bit more confusing. It is available, but not required. The utensils sit, visible, an appeal to conscience and civility. These are mysterious devices, which spurt a liquid on our hands; magically, the liquid disappears. We never know when one of the the cleansing devices will pop up, in a very strange place.
And then, there is this: A quarter of the folks surveyed walking down the street in the north of England have poop on their hands.** No reason the think the north of England is unique.
Wow! A huge literature on most/least effective ways to get folks to wash their hands when leaving bathrooms. Turns out the most effective is a cleansing trough outside of the bathroom, in plain sight of both genders; embarrassment is more effective than lecture. I haven't seen any troughs installed at, say, TGI Friday's, or even places lower on the pecking order, if there are any.
Alert Reader is sighing, knowing that more poop discussion was inevitable. Not if, but when.
My children, and their friends, take multiple showers each day; the showers are randomly timed. On occasion, the showers signify entering or leaving the house, but not always. Why take a shower in the middle of the day, neither coming in or going out? They have no explanation, and think I am odd to be asking about something so ordinary (see Tough Questions).
But there is yet another side. Through high school, at least, kids no longer take showers after phys ed class, team practices, even games. All of these are activities in which there is actual dirt, not symbolic dirt. But, no showers. I remember, so long ago, showers after gym class -- what we called it then -- and of being unclothed in front of the other kids. Difficult. And, after a while, not do difficult. I used to think the newer approach to group showers displayed increased homophobia. Yet, who could be more homophobic that a group of catholic high school boys in 1960? I am open to speculation.
But more about dirt. I read a book about dirt, a long time ago.*** The whole point: We think dirt is soil, grime, mud, dust, filth -- it goes on. Real you-can-touch-it dirt stuff. But the book looked at dirt as a social construct: The anchovy on the pillowcase is a central image of dirt. Dirt is something where it shouldn't be, like weeds are plants where they shouldn't be. Granules from the outside of the home become dirt inside the home.
Washing our hands was a symbol in the 18th century. Probably now, too. But now, in the shower age, there is confusion about washing. Looks like we don't really try to get the poop off when we leave the bathroom, and we didn't in 18th century washing rituals. But all those showers!!!
I'm beginning to think that the polite requirement of washing hands before leaving the bathroom is equivalent to emerging from the forest -- a pretend cleanliness ritual, that signifies the transition from the dirty place to the clean place. But doesn't really clean. A lot like the parental five-second rule: if you can pick it up within five seconds of it hitting the floor, it's safe for child consumption. No, it isn't.
Washing hands isn't enough any more; we're past the washing rituals of the eighteenth century, and have jumped forward into some other space. Washing hands in hospitals and some other settings is a health issue. Maybe. But maybe it is also a sign of confused internal life, metaphors gone wild. Showers taken when some impulse or other is felt. And, maybe William James was right, and there is strength where there is a fear of dirt. Yup. Me and Billy Jim.
Plumber's apprentices are told: It may be poop to them, but it's our bread and butter.
That takes care of that.
*Old joke: Giant cockroach goes into a bar. Asks for a beer. Bartender brings the beer. Giant cockroach thanks bartender, then begins to beat on the bartender, knocking him down and kicking him on the ground. Then the giant cockroach leaves the bar.
New customer enters the bar. Sees the bruised and bloody bartender, and says "Wow, what happened to you?"
The bartender explains, "You know, there's this nasty bug going around...." Ba-dum-dum.
**I am told I need to have a citation. Cynical doubters please see The London Times
***Mary Douglas: Purity and Danger
Enough with the footnotes. This is a blog, not a dissertation.
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Well, It All Worked, for a While, At Least
The Doom Blogger will now give a short history of a time when it all worked, for a little while. Try to pay attention. This doesn't count in your grade. Well, yes it does, so pay attention. Put the cell phones away. No IM; put those thumbs away.
Before being wiped out, a group of folks managed to ignore the forces swirling around them for almost 150 years -- and then ultimately lost their work, their friends, and their nation. The place was north of Maine: Arcadia. Now Nova Scotia. Even the name has been changed.
In 1620, the Pilgrims landed. In 1604, though, the French had settled on what they called Port Royal or Arcadia. Port Royal was finally "conquered" for good by the English in 1710, and gently occupied until 1740, when the whole place went to the dogs.
What happened in the first hundred years of Arcadia? Not much, and a lot. The people who already lived there, the Mi'kmaq, were neutral toward the French when the colony began. In the 14th century, fishing boats came to the George's Banks for the cod, and landed to salt and dry the fish at Arcadia. Most of those boats were Portuguese, some Norwegian, some French. The Mi'kmaq were already seasoned traders when the French colony began, and not threatened by the mere presence of a small number of Europeans.
In other places, the French focused on fur trade and saving souls, in that order. Arcadia, though, was a farming community; access to the St. Lawrence river, the path to Quebec and Montreal, was controlled by the forts around the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Those forts were important to France, and needed food. Arcadia supplied grain and meat to the troops in the forts, and in return were supplied with tools, salt, and whatever else 17th century folks needed.
Who cares? Just another colony. Not at all. In that century, the French colonists and the Mi'kmaq managed to merge into one supercolony, with complex patterns of family relationships derived from both French and Mi'kmaq society. Intermarriage was more the rule than the exception; the usual pattern of European men having native wives was matched by Mi'kmaq men having French wives. After a century, the complexity of blood and custom must have confused the settlers themselves at times.
The colony was nominally Catholic, and was supplied with priests; no one seems to have cared much, and, when the British arrived for good, didn't fuss about the change over to Protestantism, and then back.
At the time, of course, French and English colonials faced off over religion at least as much as over land. Relatives thought that captives taken in raids were in the grips of heathens, doomed to burn in hell. Not in Arcadia. In the documents about the later history of Arcadia, there is a sense of frustration, on each side, about the nonchalant religious attitudes of the Arcadians.
And what of other parts of 17th century life? Productivity seems to have been good. The land was rocky, not really great for growing grain, but the Arcadians managed. The newcomers had been peasants in France, and knew the vagaries of small farm life. The Mi'kmaq could produce sea food and hunted meat and furs. Somebody always had food, important in times when famine and starvation were common.
Government was a strange institution. Between 1600 and 1710 (or so) the British from Maine and Massachusetts occasionally attacked, occasionally won, then lost interest and just meddled in the vagaries of colony politics. There was trade, some of it smuggling, with the New England colonies. Once, a merchant owned warehouses in Arcadia and Boston, and attacked his own buildings. Strange days. Ultimately, the French prevailed in the 17th century.
Much like other places at the time, and despite the success of the colony, starvation remained a great fear. Government faded into the background. Remember, these were French peasants, who were very familiar with not having enough food.
A side issue: Many academics have written about the French folktales of the time, which were largely about food. The academics use various theoretical approaches. For some reason, French folktales became a very fertile ground for dissertations. Finally, a sensible reader came along, and made the startling observation that French folk tales were largely about food because French folk were always worried about food. That was the end of the argument.
Back to Arcadia:
Everyone worked, danced, ate, talked, had babies, had arguments, all together. Housing was in small villages, with gathering places in larger towns. Not much city life; the size of the colony limited the number of folks not directly involved in food production. No bloggers in Arcadia. No mimes, either. Somehow the Arcadians managed their deprivation.
I don't mean to pass this all off as a 17th century paradise. I doubt anyplace in the 17th century (or now) is a paradise -- paradise wasn't even a paradise. But, there were very, very few problems generated by greed, rage, group loathing, religion, race hate -- the destructive social forces we seem to love so much. Whatever informal group values operated, everybody got along well enough to avoid prisons, lawsuits, blah, blah. Fill in your favorite social ill here. And, as I said before, the politics of colonial government intrigue just didn't matter very much to most people.
The 17th century in Europe was a tough time. Religious struggles were played out on large and small scales. Tens of thousands were murdered by different sects. The English Civil War began with the beheading of the king. Ireland fell completely to the English. Add the usual ration of disease, starvation, crime, what have you. A very tough time. But, sitting there, out of the way, Arcadia. Not quite bliss, but an awful lot better than most folks had.
Luck kicked Arcadia in the shins starting in 1704. English/French skirmishes in North America took on a more desperate tone, mirroring events in Europe. The French and their native allies -- from the interior of the continent -- began a long series of awful raids on English settlements. The Deerfield Raid is the most famous. Many were killed, many taken captive, and everybody terrified. King Philip's War, generated without French help, raised the terror level. Remember, at the time, the English might well have been pushed into the sea if the natives had gotten their act together. A few battles going a different way, I'd be blogging in French. Moi?
Then, the English exhibited a trait that has come all the way down to present day America: when agitated, go kill large numbers of brown people. The brown people in North America were difficult victims; they moved about, were good at fighting back, and necessary for the functions of the English colonies. Who to kill, then? Hmmm, French, Catholic, settled, and, above all, racially mixed. Arcadia!! The heathens!!!
Expeditions to conquer Arcadia in the 17th century came often; the English would then lose interest, the French would move back in, and the cycle would start over. Intrigue, intrigue. In 1704, the British came to stay, and ruled with a gentle and confused hand until the 1740s. Then the English decided, all over the continent, that enough was enough. In the general dismantling of the French presence, Arcadia was completely destroyed. Obliterated. Buildings burned, animals killed, people murdered. Scorched earth policy. No one was to be left.
Some Arcadians fled to other parts of Canada, many fled to Mi'kmaq villages on the mainland. The British sent a few to France, and some to the British sugar plantations in the Caribbean; most, though, were sent to Louisiana, and became the Cajuns -- you can hear the name changing. Ethnic cleansing carried through. The entire French political presence north of Maine was ended. And, eventually, ended everywhere on the continent.
Can you imagine? One day in your house, on a farm on an island in the North Atlantic, then, after months on a ship, dumped in the diseased swamps of the South. Can there be a more peculiar end to a peculiar social experiment? Worse has happened to populations, of course; look at the Aztecs and the Mayans and everybody else who lived in the Americas in 1500. Or in Asia during the Mongol expansion in the 12th century. Supply your own genocide here.
There are different ways to look at what went on. Some military, some political, some economic. But it did happen, and it was genocide.
And Arcadia is a special kind of genocide, if there can be such a thing. Damn. They had it right, and kept it going for a century; they evolved ways to get along, and to mix races, without warfare. The English, ultimately, couldn't live with race mixing, and put an end to it all.
We have inherited their ugliness, and based a nation on their fearfulness. Great.
Before being wiped out, a group of folks managed to ignore the forces swirling around them for almost 150 years -- and then ultimately lost their work, their friends, and their nation. The place was north of Maine: Arcadia. Now Nova Scotia. Even the name has been changed.
In 1620, the Pilgrims landed. In 1604, though, the French had settled on what they called Port Royal or Arcadia. Port Royal was finally "conquered" for good by the English in 1710, and gently occupied until 1740, when the whole place went to the dogs.
What happened in the first hundred years of Arcadia? Not much, and a lot. The people who already lived there, the Mi'kmaq, were neutral toward the French when the colony began. In the 14th century, fishing boats came to the George's Banks for the cod, and landed to salt and dry the fish at Arcadia. Most of those boats were Portuguese, some Norwegian, some French. The Mi'kmaq were already seasoned traders when the French colony began, and not threatened by the mere presence of a small number of Europeans.
In other places, the French focused on fur trade and saving souls, in that order. Arcadia, though, was a farming community; access to the St. Lawrence river, the path to Quebec and Montreal, was controlled by the forts around the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Those forts were important to France, and needed food. Arcadia supplied grain and meat to the troops in the forts, and in return were supplied with tools, salt, and whatever else 17th century folks needed.
Who cares? Just another colony. Not at all. In that century, the French colonists and the Mi'kmaq managed to merge into one supercolony, with complex patterns of family relationships derived from both French and Mi'kmaq society. Intermarriage was more the rule than the exception; the usual pattern of European men having native wives was matched by Mi'kmaq men having French wives. After a century, the complexity of blood and custom must have confused the settlers themselves at times.
The colony was nominally Catholic, and was supplied with priests; no one seems to have cared much, and, when the British arrived for good, didn't fuss about the change over to Protestantism, and then back.
At the time, of course, French and English colonials faced off over religion at least as much as over land. Relatives thought that captives taken in raids were in the grips of heathens, doomed to burn in hell. Not in Arcadia. In the documents about the later history of Arcadia, there is a sense of frustration, on each side, about the nonchalant religious attitudes of the Arcadians.
And what of other parts of 17th century life? Productivity seems to have been good. The land was rocky, not really great for growing grain, but the Arcadians managed. The newcomers had been peasants in France, and knew the vagaries of small farm life. The Mi'kmaq could produce sea food and hunted meat and furs. Somebody always had food, important in times when famine and starvation were common.
Government was a strange institution. Between 1600 and 1710 (or so) the British from Maine and Massachusetts occasionally attacked, occasionally won, then lost interest and just meddled in the vagaries of colony politics. There was trade, some of it smuggling, with the New England colonies. Once, a merchant owned warehouses in Arcadia and Boston, and attacked his own buildings. Strange days. Ultimately, the French prevailed in the 17th century.
Much like other places at the time, and despite the success of the colony, starvation remained a great fear. Government faded into the background. Remember, these were French peasants, who were very familiar with not having enough food.
A side issue: Many academics have written about the French folktales of the time, which were largely about food. The academics use various theoretical approaches. For some reason, French folktales became a very fertile ground for dissertations. Finally, a sensible reader came along, and made the startling observation that French folk tales were largely about food because French folk were always worried about food. That was the end of the argument.
Back to Arcadia:
Everyone worked, danced, ate, talked, had babies, had arguments, all together. Housing was in small villages, with gathering places in larger towns. Not much city life; the size of the colony limited the number of folks not directly involved in food production. No bloggers in Arcadia. No mimes, either. Somehow the Arcadians managed their deprivation.
I don't mean to pass this all off as a 17th century paradise. I doubt anyplace in the 17th century (or now) is a paradise -- paradise wasn't even a paradise. But, there were very, very few problems generated by greed, rage, group loathing, religion, race hate -- the destructive social forces we seem to love so much. Whatever informal group values operated, everybody got along well enough to avoid prisons, lawsuits, blah, blah. Fill in your favorite social ill here. And, as I said before, the politics of colonial government intrigue just didn't matter very much to most people.
The 17th century in Europe was a tough time. Religious struggles were played out on large and small scales. Tens of thousands were murdered by different sects. The English Civil War began with the beheading of the king. Ireland fell completely to the English. Add the usual ration of disease, starvation, crime, what have you. A very tough time. But, sitting there, out of the way, Arcadia. Not quite bliss, but an awful lot better than most folks had.
Luck kicked Arcadia in the shins starting in 1704. English/French skirmishes in North America took on a more desperate tone, mirroring events in Europe. The French and their native allies -- from the interior of the continent -- began a long series of awful raids on English settlements. The Deerfield Raid is the most famous. Many were killed, many taken captive, and everybody terrified. King Philip's War, generated without French help, raised the terror level. Remember, at the time, the English might well have been pushed into the sea if the natives had gotten their act together. A few battles going a different way, I'd be blogging in French. Moi?
Then, the English exhibited a trait that has come all the way down to present day America: when agitated, go kill large numbers of brown people. The brown people in North America were difficult victims; they moved about, were good at fighting back, and necessary for the functions of the English colonies. Who to kill, then? Hmmm, French, Catholic, settled, and, above all, racially mixed. Arcadia!! The heathens!!!
Expeditions to conquer Arcadia in the 17th century came often; the English would then lose interest, the French would move back in, and the cycle would start over. Intrigue, intrigue. In 1704, the British came to stay, and ruled with a gentle and confused hand until the 1740s. Then the English decided, all over the continent, that enough was enough. In the general dismantling of the French presence, Arcadia was completely destroyed. Obliterated. Buildings burned, animals killed, people murdered. Scorched earth policy. No one was to be left.
Some Arcadians fled to other parts of Canada, many fled to Mi'kmaq villages on the mainland. The British sent a few to France, and some to the British sugar plantations in the Caribbean; most, though, were sent to Louisiana, and became the Cajuns -- you can hear the name changing. Ethnic cleansing carried through. The entire French political presence north of Maine was ended. And, eventually, ended everywhere on the continent.
Can you imagine? One day in your house, on a farm on an island in the North Atlantic, then, after months on a ship, dumped in the diseased swamps of the South. Can there be a more peculiar end to a peculiar social experiment? Worse has happened to populations, of course; look at the Aztecs and the Mayans and everybody else who lived in the Americas in 1500. Or in Asia during the Mongol expansion in the 12th century. Supply your own genocide here.
There are different ways to look at what went on. Some military, some political, some economic. But it did happen, and it was genocide.
And Arcadia is a special kind of genocide, if there can be such a thing. Damn. They had it right, and kept it going for a century; they evolved ways to get along, and to mix races, without warfare. The English, ultimately, couldn't live with race mixing, and put an end to it all.
We have inherited their ugliness, and based a nation on their fearfulness. Great.
Friday, October 29, 2010
Meat and post-classic America
If we all became vegans, there would be an agricultural crash; it would last just long enough for all the meat interests, corporate and family, to get more subsidies from the government. Farm lobbyist are more influential than anybody save the NRA.
Most of the howling about factory farms is about meat. Long experience growing meat animals has led to the livestock, including poultry, being penned; production is much higher if animals are closed in. Cattle grazing on the plains, the round-up, cattle drives, all the staples of Westerns? Gone, just gone.
Contemporary family farms do have huge barns, filled with agricultural machines; grain is the big product on family farms and most grain is produced on family farms. Family farms aren't the quaint 160 acres of yesteryear, though. A combination of leasing, futures contracts, and subsidized bank loans has led to family farms becoming huge. The owners may be related, but most of the work is done by managers and employees; the family lives in Miami, maybe. Or Paris. Use your imagination.
Who cares? What about those factory farms, that we all should hate? Factory farms produce four fifths of the meat in the US. Factory farms are sheds full of penned cattle or huge buildings full of caged chickens. They are notorious for disease, waste problems, animal cruelty. Dealing with waste is a sensational problem. Each cow, or pig, is a living poop machine. A 4.5 pound hen produces 2 pounds a week of chicken poop, a 1400 pound cow, 350 pounds, a 180 pound pig 90 pounds. Those pigs eat like.....
An example: In 2000, a feedlot in Nebraska had 85,000 cattle on 600 acres. That's about 142 cows per acre. Not exactly 2 acre zoning. If you figure that a third of the 600 acres is devoted to transport, processing, storage, and so on, you get about 212 per acre. They would need to be put in rows, side by side, nose to butt. Surprise: they are. One of the first cruel oddities is that the tails of the cows are amputated lest they bother the cows in back of them.
How do they spend their day on the feedlot? Bo-ring. Eat, then sleep, then eat. Eat really a lot. No exercise; exercise makes the meat tough. Oh, I forgot: Eat, then poop, then sleep, then eat, then poop, then sleep. That's 29,750,000 pounds of cow poop on our Nebraska feedlot -- every week. Every week. Cow poop stops for no man. Yipes. That's a lot of cow poop. And that's just one feedlot.
So what? Well, a couple of things. The poop has to go somewhere. Where? How does it get removed from the sheds? Turns out there are many competing belt systems to haul the poop out of the sheds. By the time it reaches the outside world, half the weight is evaporated as moisture. Down to about 15,000,000 pounds for this feedlot. Then it is dried further, processed, and ultimately becomes a solid ten percent of what was originally pooped. Fine. We are down to 3,000,000 pounds. The manure is then put on trains or trucks, and taken to grain farms, where it is used for fertilizer. Turns out the cow pee is a much more difficult problem, and requires several more steps to make relatively safe.
Ah, the cycle is complete. Zen stuff. Simple ideas, complex systems. Santa Fe Institute ideas. But this poop thing is just an interesting diversion from whatever the point of the essay is.
Each step in the cycle consumes stunning amounts of energy, in a lot of forms. Who knows how many gallons of gas or diesel we are throwing at each pound of meat? The systems have grown up without any real planning, and are not very efficient. Surprise. American energy costs have been so subsidized, and farming so subsidized, that both grain farms and feedlot operations are largely government-sponsored operations. Strange. "Keep your gummint hands off my Medicare" writ large. Like the defense industry. Strange.
Pretend that we all became vegans. Hell, pretend that half of us become vegans. I can certainly imagine a holiday dinner with no meat, and no fake meat. And less expensive than the whole turkey thing. TG dinner is mostly vegan anyway. Take away the turkey ("Oh, and it's not dry at all"), and we're in vegan territory. I actually think most folks wouldn't care much; I wouldn't. Despite the table talk, turkey is always dry. Stuffing, the dreaded lima beans, turnip, squash, mashed, sweets, yams. Even cranberries, which I loathe. More than enough different eats. Get that dry old animal away from me. Maybe I'm not the one who should be talking about dry old animals.
I would have guessed that meat consumption in the US crashed in the late 20th century. Wrong, wrong, wrong. In 1950, we each ate 144 pounds of meat; in 2005, 221 pounds. Everybody I know, though, is eating less meat. Is this a class issue? A race issue? What's going on?
Take pork; both race and class matter. In 2000, eating pork varied inversely with income. Race? Non-hispanic black folks are easily the highest consumers of pork. Hmm. If you put those together, you get the picture of poor black folks being the heaviest consumers of pork. Middle age men eat the most pork of all age-gender groups. Go figure.
Eating beef also varies inversely with income. The ethnicity numbers are about the same as pork. Strangely, though, Hispanic folks beat everyone else, easily, in the amount of beef eaten at home. Who knew?
Rural folks eat more beef and pork than their city cousins. But in age and gender, the big consumers of beef are young men. McDonald's?
Chicken? Consumption varies directly with income; the more money you make, the more chicken you eat. People living alone eat the most chicken. Odd. Families of more than eight eat the least chicken. I couldn't find more numbers for chicken. I did find numbers on exports; chicken exports have gone up a gazillion percent, to both asian and arab countries. Hmmm. What countries lend us most money?
The outcome of it all: in america, race and class strike again, this time in an unexpected arena.
By now, I have bored myself silly, and lost whatever point there was. It's always fun to look up numbers, and numbers about animal poop are the best. I'm comfortable with the numbers.
Hidden in the numbers, and in the USDA reports about consumption of all this stuff, is a nervous tone. China, India and Brazil are all chowing down on increasing amounts of meat, and on increasing amounts of energy. The train has left the station, and is coming down the track on diet and energy both. The post-classic american decline will change our diets, as well as our addiction to killing millions of brown people. We will have competition in both.
Energy will very soon cost a bunch more; we can kill all the darker-shaded folks we want. Doesn't matter. Oil is going through the roof. Food is going through the roof, because so much of what we grow is heavily subsidized by low oil prices. Obvious stuff, well known, well publicized.
So, our sins are coming home to haunt us. All the money we have borrowed from China, in particular, but also India and some of the Arab countries, will be used to buy our own cows and chickens. Meat producers will rejoice. The rest of us will sink into the dietary penury we deserve, for having worshipped at the altar of supply/demand. No turkey for you, even if you want it.
Ah, starving by our own greed. Not just sitting in the dark in the cold; now there's no food, either. Nice metaphor for pretty much everything in the new century. Well, enjoy, I guess. It just sounds pitiful. Again, the picture of having so much, and just throwing it all away. What for? What did we get in return? Everything we touch turns to animal poop.
And the promised cartoon, in the best size I could make it without blurring.
Click on it for the full size:
Most of the howling about factory farms is about meat. Long experience growing meat animals has led to the livestock, including poultry, being penned; production is much higher if animals are closed in. Cattle grazing on the plains, the round-up, cattle drives, all the staples of Westerns? Gone, just gone.
Contemporary family farms do have huge barns, filled with agricultural machines; grain is the big product on family farms and most grain is produced on family farms. Family farms aren't the quaint 160 acres of yesteryear, though. A combination of leasing, futures contracts, and subsidized bank loans has led to family farms becoming huge. The owners may be related, but most of the work is done by managers and employees; the family lives in Miami, maybe. Or Paris. Use your imagination.
Who cares? What about those factory farms, that we all should hate? Factory farms produce four fifths of the meat in the US. Factory farms are sheds full of penned cattle or huge buildings full of caged chickens. They are notorious for disease, waste problems, animal cruelty. Dealing with waste is a sensational problem. Each cow, or pig, is a living poop machine. A 4.5 pound hen produces 2 pounds a week of chicken poop, a 1400 pound cow, 350 pounds, a 180 pound pig 90 pounds. Those pigs eat like.....
An example: In 2000, a feedlot in Nebraska had 85,000 cattle on 600 acres. That's about 142 cows per acre. Not exactly 2 acre zoning. If you figure that a third of the 600 acres is devoted to transport, processing, storage, and so on, you get about 212 per acre. They would need to be put in rows, side by side, nose to butt. Surprise: they are. One of the first cruel oddities is that the tails of the cows are amputated lest they bother the cows in back of them.
How do they spend their day on the feedlot? Bo-ring. Eat, then sleep, then eat. Eat really a lot. No exercise; exercise makes the meat tough. Oh, I forgot: Eat, then poop, then sleep, then eat, then poop, then sleep. That's 29,750,000 pounds of cow poop on our Nebraska feedlot -- every week. Every week. Cow poop stops for no man. Yipes. That's a lot of cow poop. And that's just one feedlot.
So what? Well, a couple of things. The poop has to go somewhere. Where? How does it get removed from the sheds? Turns out there are many competing belt systems to haul the poop out of the sheds. By the time it reaches the outside world, half the weight is evaporated as moisture. Down to about 15,000,000 pounds for this feedlot. Then it is dried further, processed, and ultimately becomes a solid ten percent of what was originally pooped. Fine. We are down to 3,000,000 pounds. The manure is then put on trains or trucks, and taken to grain farms, where it is used for fertilizer. Turns out the cow pee is a much more difficult problem, and requires several more steps to make relatively safe.
Ah, the cycle is complete. Zen stuff. Simple ideas, complex systems. Santa Fe Institute ideas. But this poop thing is just an interesting diversion from whatever the point of the essay is.
Each step in the cycle consumes stunning amounts of energy, in a lot of forms. Who knows how many gallons of gas or diesel we are throwing at each pound of meat? The systems have grown up without any real planning, and are not very efficient. Surprise. American energy costs have been so subsidized, and farming so subsidized, that both grain farms and feedlot operations are largely government-sponsored operations. Strange. "Keep your gummint hands off my Medicare" writ large. Like the defense industry. Strange.
Pretend that we all became vegans. Hell, pretend that half of us become vegans. I can certainly imagine a holiday dinner with no meat, and no fake meat. And less expensive than the whole turkey thing. TG dinner is mostly vegan anyway. Take away the turkey ("Oh, and it's not dry at all"), and we're in vegan territory. I actually think most folks wouldn't care much; I wouldn't. Despite the table talk, turkey is always dry. Stuffing, the dreaded lima beans, turnip, squash, mashed, sweets, yams. Even cranberries, which I loathe. More than enough different eats. Get that dry old animal away from me. Maybe I'm not the one who should be talking about dry old animals.
I would have guessed that meat consumption in the US crashed in the late 20th century. Wrong, wrong, wrong. In 1950, we each ate 144 pounds of meat; in 2005, 221 pounds. Everybody I know, though, is eating less meat. Is this a class issue? A race issue? What's going on?
Take pork; both race and class matter. In 2000, eating pork varied inversely with income. Race? Non-hispanic black folks are easily the highest consumers of pork. Hmm. If you put those together, you get the picture of poor black folks being the heaviest consumers of pork. Middle age men eat the most pork of all age-gender groups. Go figure.
Eating beef also varies inversely with income. The ethnicity numbers are about the same as pork. Strangely, though, Hispanic folks beat everyone else, easily, in the amount of beef eaten at home. Who knew?
Rural folks eat more beef and pork than their city cousins. But in age and gender, the big consumers of beef are young men. McDonald's?
Chicken? Consumption varies directly with income; the more money you make, the more chicken you eat. People living alone eat the most chicken. Odd. Families of more than eight eat the least chicken. I couldn't find more numbers for chicken. I did find numbers on exports; chicken exports have gone up a gazillion percent, to both asian and arab countries. Hmmm. What countries lend us most money?
The outcome of it all: in america, race and class strike again, this time in an unexpected arena.
By now, I have bored myself silly, and lost whatever point there was. It's always fun to look up numbers, and numbers about animal poop are the best. I'm comfortable with the numbers.
Hidden in the numbers, and in the USDA reports about consumption of all this stuff, is a nervous tone. China, India and Brazil are all chowing down on increasing amounts of meat, and on increasing amounts of energy. The train has left the station, and is coming down the track on diet and energy both. The post-classic american decline will change our diets, as well as our addiction to killing millions of brown people. We will have competition in both.
Energy will very soon cost a bunch more; we can kill all the darker-shaded folks we want. Doesn't matter. Oil is going through the roof. Food is going through the roof, because so much of what we grow is heavily subsidized by low oil prices. Obvious stuff, well known, well publicized.
So, our sins are coming home to haunt us. All the money we have borrowed from China, in particular, but also India and some of the Arab countries, will be used to buy our own cows and chickens. Meat producers will rejoice. The rest of us will sink into the dietary penury we deserve, for having worshipped at the altar of supply/demand. No turkey for you, even if you want it.
Ah, starving by our own greed. Not just sitting in the dark in the cold; now there's no food, either. Nice metaphor for pretty much everything in the new century. Well, enjoy, I guess. It just sounds pitiful. Again, the picture of having so much, and just throwing it all away. What for? What did we get in return? Everything we touch turns to animal poop.
And the promised cartoon, in the best size I could make it without blurring.
Click on it for the full size:
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