AG Barr ‘Very Concerned’ Over Bill Gates’ ‘Digital Vaccine Certificates,’ Calls Lockdown Measures ‘Draconian,’ Wants Gone by May

All this is true, the government does subsidize agriculture. There are a couple of ways this is done. One is by paying farmers not to grow certain crops when the price gets too low. In this way the demand, and price, go up. Another is low interest loans and grants.

The first is simply to offset the difficulty in managing a privately owned farm in a global market. It's difficult to foresee prices ahead of times because they are in competition with farmers and supplying customers world wide. Product diversification would be a solution except that farm equipment is expensive and varies per crop. By this I mean harvesting machines and the like. Farmers invest in seed each year, if they grow the wrong stuff they could lose their ass. For the private farmer who's probably borrowing for capital it's too much.

The second is to provide capital for seed and equipment and the like. They use loans and grants at their discretion so some of it could be helping to pay wages. The reason this is necessary is again economic. The wholesalers (companies that purchase then process and package the crops) pay a market based price. The farmers have no control. If their costs are higher they have no way to pass it on. Groceries and big food companies are not constrained in this way. If they want to charge more for an ear of corn, they charge it and we consumers pay that price.

So the problem is, the large corporation in the middle of the food supply chain is setting prices on both ends.

The consumer can simply not buy the product, either en masse or individually. En masse would be in protest, ie not buying Barilla Pasta because of Guido Barilla's anti-gay comments, Individually would be analyzed by statisticians who would then recommend a price reduction based on quarterly sale comparisons.

The only way farmers can influence price for their business is by organizing into farming co-ops. The buyers will pay a certain price set by the market. If the payout is too low for the farmer he has two choices; not sell and lose his ass, or sell and lose part of his ass. If the farmers organize they can refuse to sell as a group and try to force the corporation to up the payout, or in a severe case just not produce.''

Either is a losing strategy for the farmers. The processing companies are owned by the same mega-corporations that own the transportation companies and the distribution companies, and probably the banks that the farmers are paying their mortgages and business loans to.

Rather than break up something that is too big to fail (= too big to not be broken up) the government's solution has been low interest loans and grants.

If the corporation was run in such a manner the company cared about the farmers success they could analyze the farmers costs and pay a price based on the idea they deserve to make a fair profit. That price would then be passed on to the consumer. On the global market the price might be lower and the corporation might have to eat a bit of a loss.

Corn futures right now are trading at approximately $315 per 5000 bushels (127 metric tons), There are about 112 ears of corn in a bushel.

5000 x 112 = 560,000 ears of corn
$315 / 560,000 ears = $0.0005625 per ear
If you doubled the payout and passed it on to the consumer we would pay 1/20 of a cent more per ear of corn.

Abuse of this economic arrangement would be to keep the payout to farmer low enough to force them out of business and then buy their land. Then the mega corporation would own the whole thing from the top to the bottom. This is why farmers are so resistant to selling their farms (or defaulting on the loans) and why the government had to step in.

In philosophical terms it's the age old problem. Is an empire run by a king bad or good? It depends on the king. If he's cool like Alexander the Great, everything works out ok, if he's like Nero, there will be abuse after abuse, and everything will go to s***. The answer is thus no; monarchies are a bad model for society.

By the same argument, large corporations run by a very few people who may screw the small guy and may screw themselves (an economic catastrophe) allowed to get even bigger is a bad idea. The only thing worse would be socialism where these decisions would be in the hands of the government officials. Even fewer people would be in the decision making process for an even bigger mega corporation (all of them combined).

That was all completely off topic, my sincere apologies.

Don’t be sorry. Like 80% of our conversation ends up off topic. If flows naturally cool. If it upsets the OP and people are trolling more than conversing-it’s a problem but wandering flow is not.

Here's a blog post that's sort of on topic

Our conversations here at the TFS:

It's like a snowflake falling onto Mountain Top and Landing among another several hundred snowflakes collecting to make a giant iceberg. (Or at least a snowbank)-- but then because of the casinos (whatever evil thing Trump did #corporateChristianWhiteDumbDumbsorwhatever##) it's beginning to melt and global warming it starts to trickle into the river and goes down into the lake for the fish and then over damn because now it's no longer a snowflake but its water and then it turns into the ocean and then it turns into the Pacific Ocean which is an even bigger ocean.

And that's how we talk. The end.