Sunday, July 27, 2008

The Oil Drum | Food Sovereignty and the Collapse of Nations

The Oil Drum | Food Sovereignty and the Collapse of Nations

Mr. Gaidar doesn’t seem to suggest that the collapse of his country happened because a large portion of the population moved from the countryside into the cities and stopped growing their own grain. Instead he seems to place the bulk of the blame for collapse on economics- on the inability of the Soviets to feed themselves not because there weren't enough people growing grain in that country but because of their inability to buy enough grain from other people to feed themselves because of decreasing oil and natural gas revenues. The idea that the Soviet collapse was due in part to the fact that the Soviet Union gave up on its capacity for food self sufficiency (food sovereignty) in an effort to pursue industrialization seems absent from his theory.
What are the implications for China?
Why the U.S. government would insist on the corrupted ethanol policy sending food price sky high?
What cause the high oil price?

Thursday, July 10, 2008

From the oil drum

... plenty of lawyers go into politics, ... As a result politics tends to be framed by lawyer thinking, not engineer thinking. Politicians do not deal in facts. They deal in perception.


Well, we could expand the subjective of first sentence a little bit. Politics is not the only profession that cares more about perception than facts.