Topic: Owned and Operated (Read 1237 times)

I have quoted this article several times within this forum, but I'm pretty sure nobody ever reads it. How about some people read it now, for a change? It's not trivial or simple, but it might change your mind about the value of diversity, whether ethnic or biological. In the case of lost knowledge, as brought to our attention regarding agriculture, we would be referring to the former (ethnic). But destroying biological diversity is also lost knowledge, to be yet discovered and used for medicine, material science, engineering and computer science.

Here's the article: http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/in_defense_of_difference/

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How much knowledge like that has been lost? In the 1990's, we were growing Andean potatoes using fertilizers and machines, and not doing anywhere near as well as the ancient Indians (screw it, I'm calling them Indians) did. That's pretty impressive. Presumably, there's plenty of knowledge that people had before the present that we don't have know, and some of that knowledge would be useful. I bet a lot of it would be. Society would be a lot further along
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Well, I gave you one Now let's all bee green and exploit wormholes and save the universe and enjoy some fair trade coffee while we're at it.

Well, if ever I need to grow potatoes in the Andes mountains, I'll be sure to follow their instructions. Different circumstances have different solutions. You make that point yourself. They had no use for the wheel. Think about it. In steep mountains, a wheel is not your friend anymore.

Have you guys ever heard of the ancient Andean irrigation systems? We're talking three thousand years old. When researchers re-built part of the irrigation system based on ancient specifications, they found that it was far more productive than a system using modern fertilizers and machines. It could produce 10 metric tons of potatoes per hectare, compared with 1-4 metric tons on nearby modern fields. It worked at the world record 12,000 feet above sea-level. Plus, land never had to lie fallow with this system.

No, it's not some tabloid pipe-dream; this comes from the mouth of John M. Murrin in the 5th edition of the textbook "Liberty, Equality, Power -- A History of the American People."

There. Solution #1: listen to the smart ancient Indians who found no use for the wheel. Err, Native Americans. Err, First Americans. Err...

Oh. Okay.

Actually, I was commenting on what Tim Johnson aka Atlas aka Boss aka Immanuel Goldstien aka Mike Jones aka J.K. Schmidt aka J. Smith aka John S. aka @tl@s aka Bitcoin Futuristics aka WhiteFlag aka EmanuelDeOrtego aka Emanuel.De.Ortego aka Sir.Emanuel.De.Ortego aka Duchamp aka Dada Dali Lama aka GreatBurden aka Dr. Glamorian aka Ragnok aka MikeJones_ aka LuciusDeBeers aka...

was saying, not you. ^_^

I find it amusing that everyone here in this thread but me is doing nothing productive, and instead complaining about me and how I'm not doing anything useful, and yet I'm the only one creating productive information within this thread.

Hmm...who else do we know that thinks that way...Atlas?

Don't you see? The solution is awareness via education. The solution is to end ignorance about the problems. Whether it's explaining to libertarians, or politicians, or reforming education in school, the solution is to educate. Schools are probably spending too much time educating the students on recycling, conserving energy, and so on, and not enough time explaining ecosystem services, conservation, trophic cascades, edge effects, ice albedo feedback loops, island biogeography, wildlife corridor projects, the benefits of dam removal, urban planning, habitat loss, biodiversity, examples of how material science, medicine, computer science and engineering benefit from biodiversity, etc.

Yes, perhaps it is true that I have not been proposing solutions. Instead, I have simply been enacting the solution in my own small way - by creating awareness.

You're not "teaching" me anything. All of that post was rehash from previous posts, nothing new, and nothing positive. All you do is say "this won't work," or "that will destroy the environment." Never, not once, have you suggested anything that remotely resembles a solution to the various problems you've presented. You haven't even fully elucidated the problems. So, seriously, solutions or GTFO.

Look at this guy. He thinks he's god. He think he's smart enough to run your life.

Poor attitude for someone being taught new things.

Enough doom and gloom from you. Solutions or GTFO.

You do understand the law of diminishing returns with regard to resource extraction? As you add numbers to the population, each succeeding block of millions must utilize ever diminishing methods. The best crop land has already been developed. The easiest accessible oil already drilled, and so on. Couple that with an increasingly rapid decrease in resources which undergo a non-reversible transformation upon use, and things aren't so rosy. To compound matters, new technology actually makes things worse by continually making it appear that we aren't picking ever higher fruit, which gives one the false sense that the resources will continue. Not a good thing.

The world today has much less to offer than it did 200 years ago. The potential knowledge that lay hidden within all the world's forest then is simply not available today, nor will an equivalent amount be available for a long time.

Ever wonder why Africa is the only continent with a lot of megafauna? Follow along here for a moment. Recall from other threads that megafauna co-evolves within an ecosystem and is integral to its functioning at full capacity to provide ecosystem services, via processes such as trophic cascades. Now, think about this: Homo sapiens migrated out of Africa, into Europe and Asia, across into North America and down to South America, and from Asia, down to Australia and out into the Pacific. The entry times onto the new continents occurred just before megafauna disappeared from each of those continents. Consider now, how less rich the world is today.

Oh, and about Africa. Why did the megafauna not die out there, considering homo sapiens originated from there? Because the megafauna co-evolved with homo sapiens and adapted to survive along side humans. Not so for the megafauna on other continents upon homo sapien's arrival. The time spans were too short for the megafauna to evolve a fear of the human hunter.

Looks interesting.

Edit: Good movie. Don't think the Venus Project/Zeitgeist is THE answer, you can't get free, no matter how well you manage the resources. You can get cheap, but not free. We will never be truly post-scarcity (in the sense that there is a limit to the amount of resources we can get out of a planet), but we can certainly be post-artificial scarcity produced by inefficient and corrupt systems of management. Technology will greatly increase the efficiency of the market to distribute resources in an appropriate manner, no doubt about it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njSV5LtVmR4