Horse and pig dna found in UK beefburgers

[2dimes]

It's interesting that when a system is supposed to promote efficiency in getting a product to market, in this case beef, all available suggestions to improve the result are to promote inefficiency in the system.

Seriously? I guess it's true, waiting for more beef before you make beef burgers would be less efficient than just putting in what ever you have on hand.

[_sabotage_]

If the system is getting beef and just beef, not mad cows disease, e coli or pork, to market and they greatest returns to the producer are in strict consideration of their efficiency at this, then the system has failed. It doesn't work, and i hear suggestions that promote further inefficiency. Let's put more steps in the way, etc. but this just leads to greater inefficiency. If we really wanted to look at getting beef to the market, we would look at the efficiency of the entire process, include all the externalized cost and promote this method. But we aren't trying to do that, we're trying to make it profitable for the producer and cheap on the consumer, and not paying too much attention to the result or the efficiency as it is supposed to conform to the main objective. As such, we don't have beef, we have a series of steps that maximize profit and beef is now also pork and horse as a result.

[2dimes]

Absolutely but then as a beef producer grows it would probably wish to branch out to produce other meat products.

The most efficient way to do that is by using the same equipment for both products, unless you can run the equipment to full capacity on just beef. Then you have no choice but to add equipment to process the other meat which naturally keeps them separate.

In theory the consumer would purchase the high quality brand. Most consumers will purchase the lower priced product.

The concept behind inspecting the stuff is to protect the consumer so they don't need to inspect it for themselves.

[Funkyterrance]

In theory the consumer would purchase the high quality brand. Most consumers will purchase the lower priced product.

All processing being equal, make mine HOR$E.

[2dimes]

All processing being equal, make mine HOR$EDICK.MPEG.

Sounds delicious. Probably won't get stamped with a U in a circle though.

[BigBallinStalin]

So, why is the national government's monopoly on regulation optimal?

What else do you propose? A Standard and Poor's, Moody's etc. model for regulation of food?

No government monopolies on regulation.
Courts which enforce laws against fraud.
Markets where consumers appropriately respond to fraudulent meat producers.
Brand names.
And competing agencies which inspect food.
(So, either have provincial governments offering their own regulatory agency, and/or have regulatory agencies on the market, or have no government regulatory agencies at all).


The problem with the government monopoly is that when it fails (e.g. with the horse meat), it doesn't go out of business; therefore, the incentive structure favors stagnation (relatively low innovation to address problems). Since there's no profit and loss incentive, they can't tell as accurately as those on the market how well they are satisfying consumer demand. Also, increases in their revenue do not result from satisfying consumers, but simply from spending other people's money which was involuntary gained through taxation or from irresponsible deficit spending.

Finally, regulatory capture, political capitalism, voters aren't rational, the problems of politics explained by public choice theorists, etc.

I'm not sure there is a government monopoly on regulation. Why do you think there is?

If there's one regulatory food agency which is funded by the national government, then this is a monopoly. If companies cannot compete directly with the monopoly--by offering similar services--then this is a monopoly. Since this is the case for government regulatory agencies, then they are monopolies (i.e. they have monopolies on regulation over their respective markets that they monitor).


Why do you support regulation from the national government--given the numerous problems mentioned?

There is not one agency, there are two, as I stated. I would like them to go back to being one, like the Irish system that caught this.

Whether the scenario entails two organizations granted by the government which excludes competition or one with that privilege, it doesn't affect the overall argument--which you failed to address.

What's most interesting about people like you is their faith in the government. Y'all hardly ever question these emotion-laden assumptions in favor of the state, yet y'all react most amusingly when topics like religion come up. It's quite enjoyable!

[BigBallinStalin]

If the system is getting beef and just beef, not mad cows disease, e coli or pork, to market and they greatest returns to the producer are in strict consideration of their efficiency at this, then the system has failed. It doesn't work, and i hear suggestions that promote further inefficiency. Let's put more steps in the way, etc. but this just leads to greater inefficiency. If we really wanted to look at getting beef to the market, we would look at the efficiency of the entire process, include all the externalized cost and promote this method. But we aren't trying to do that, we're trying to make it profitable for the producer and cheap on the consumer, and not paying too much attention to the result or the efficiency as it is supposed to conform to the main objective. As such, we don't have beef, we have a series of steps that maximize profit and beef is now also pork and horse as a result.

So all beef sold in the US is not beef?

[_sabotage_]

If it was a step in a factory, for example an electronic capacitor, as part of a much larger product, such as a computer monitor, and it was discovered that the part was not what it was, it would be considered an inefficiency in the system, the inputs were wrong and it damages the final product. The factory wouldn't add more inspectors to the finished electronic capacitor that had impurities, it would look at the inputs that were resulting in impurities and in solving this, it would make the production more efficient. In this case the final product is human nutrition. The assumption that is made is that somehow these impurities arrived in the meat with nothing to do with the inputs and by inspecting the part of the product as it comes through, we can solve it. It's like the doping tests they do on athletes, setting up tests is just setting challenges for people to break. An athlete will only ever run so fast no matter how efficient their training or technique. But being second isn't going to to be enough and they can always be afraid that others are using performance aids.

All beef sold in the US is not beef?

According to the NY Times: EACH day it’s becoming less likely that the meat you buy in the supermarket is just meat.

This was from 2006 and unless any drastic changes have occurred since then, I would say that yes, probably no beef is beef.

Beef production efficiency can only be maximized so much. That maximum efficiency would be a cowboy with genetically superior meat producing cows walking around a village producing genetically superior feed naturally and freely available to him. Said cowboy did a minor in butchering so he butchers the cows on a Sunday when people come out on foot and purchase their weekly needs. No excess input is required than what is being supplied naturally and said cowboy needs to cover his living expenses and future security with the cowboy living in a off grid self sustaining house somewhere near this.

It isn't a reasonable example, but actually not very far from a hundred years ago. According to the example, can beef supply demand? Here is a village, what about a city? For a city we add some inputs, transport, infrastructure costs and maintenance, a supermarket. All these inputs should add to the cost of supply to the end user. Do the supply and demand curves meet up in an economically pleasant manner? Cost of production, supplying the producer with a profit, efficiency in use of inputs and a pure product have no more efficiency than the above example. If this means that supply can't meet demand, then too bad for the graph. If it can meet demand, then we must consider why people need to inject beef with water, feed cows to each other, feed horses and pigs to cows, or combine their meats after killing. I would put to you that it is not to do what the system set out to do, supply an efficient production of nutrition to the market, but to provide cheap meat to consumer's and profits to producers. And putting meat inspectors at the end of the line isn't going to increase efficiency, it's going to take from it, add to the cost, become cumbersome.

Heading to the ranch, helping the farmer develop a more efficient means of production, improving efficiency of transport and delivery to the end user, making beef a cradle to cradle product would increase efficiency and target the systems goal.
So I wonder why we are all calling for further inefficiency and not targeting the roots of the problem and making it as efficient as possible.

[2dimes]

I would completely agree that would be optimum production.

I think efficiency is an additional or separate thing. Like making the most of something with the least effort.

I think something can be made completely wrong efficiently. Though it would not be the most efficient way to get the thing you may have desired.

[Funkyterrance]

Say what you want about _sabotage_, he knows a lot about beef.

[_sabotage_]

I would completely agree that would be optimum production.

I think efficiency is an additional or separate thing. Like making the most of something with the least effort.

I think something can be made completely wrong efficiently. Though it would not be the most efficient way to get the thing you may have desired.

If the product is completely wrong, then it wasn't very efficient when related to its goal. At the moment the goal is profit and this is created by making whichever old nastiness we can get people to buy. Our system has an excellent ability to do this. So if we want to improve the product and reconsider its efficiency we have to reevaluate the goal. The goal for the product shouldn't be any shit people will swallow, but the actual product that they asked for.

[2dimes]

Ok, if I'm catching up you are talking about the efficiency of consumption or maybe even efficiency for quality of life, rather than production.

[Funkyterrance]

A question for our resident free market preacher(for lack of a better phrase, no offense intened):

Let's say, hypothetically speaking, there is a company that produces product A. Product A is known by the company to contain ingredients that while technically safe, are actually quite unhealthy. Product A also happens to be quite cheap to produce and therefore can be sold at an equally cheap price. No one is getting sick directly from this product but many people who use it on a regular basis are in generally poor condition which results in these people getting sick much more readily than if they were to use a similar product B which, while being a healthier alternative to product A, is slightly more expensive. Otherwise the two products are virtually identical to your average consumer.
As it turns out, the company who produces product A is actually using some ingredients that are borderline spoiled but once put into the product they are untraceable as such. The reason the company producing product A is able to get away with this practice which gives it an advantage at the expense of the consumer, unbeknownst to the consumer, is that both companies exist in a completely free market system. Does this not suggest a flaw in the free market model?

[_sabotage_]

Kind of.

I'm saying we are looking at beef production from a too narrow view and because of this the inefficiencies arrive. The more we look at beef as individual parts, the more the larger system has room for failure.

If we say, wow that there rancher needs him some profit, what the hell can he do? Inject the beef with water, feed it tobacco so it is constipated before weighing, grind up the cow in its entirety bones and brains , he can do only things that lead to a inferior product.

If we look at a processing plant and say well damn how can they save money? They can reduce staff, maintain a less skilled staff, use less expensive cleaning methods, make areas multi use.

If we look at the packaging and transport, we will see other problems. And then shops and retailers. Each piece has its own issues and most aren't to due with beef, beef it's like ham, or packaged pretzels as far as the last few links are concerned. There is then the worry of going bad and its critical sales date.

We see that in this, the ultimate goal of beef on plates, or decent respectable food on plates, has little to do with inspecting the meat at some intermediate stage of the cycle, but with the cycle itself. A cradle to cradle approach would address these issues.

The example of a cowboy butchering meat and selling it to the villagers as they come to him on a sunday is an example of cradle to cradle. There is little margin of error, the producer takes care of each step and the villagers will know who to lynch.

[_sabotage_]

FT,

That is why we need an official criteria for beef. Beef is cow with these inputs. Anything apart from this is not beef. Then when people buy A, they know that they aren't getting B.

[Funkyterrance]

FT,

That is why we need an official criteria for beef. Beef is cow with these inputs. Anything apart from this is not beef. Then when people buy A, they know that they aren't getting B.

Yeah, I think my problem with the system is really that the fact that not all cows are created equal is not taken into consideration. The labels for foods and such are much too vague to give a consumer any real understanding of what they are eating. I propose the rule of every package containing something that's going into your body to have a complete bio of the company attached to it and this bio aught to be as complete as humanly possible. I don't want to read "Jax Pacific, Columbus Ohio" on the label with a short list of ingredients and nutrition information. This doesn't tell me anything really as the sources of the ingredients need not be listed nor the standards of the company supplying the ingredients. Labeling is designed to answer the questions that all companies must answer. The rest of the label is fluff and jazz to get the average consumer to buy it.
I think that a truly comprehensive label aught to be on everything as opposed to just random checks of companies to make sure they are following the industry standards. Make the label so complete that even the most critical and conscientious person can know for certain that if the information on the label is correct, they can make the decision to buy or not to buy. There should still be random checks, only these checks will be comparing what's written on the label with what's actually happening at the factory/company/company's suppliers. If there are inconsistencies, the company is appropriately fined. This is the only practical way that you could, in this day and age, actually get what you pay for.

[BigBallinStalin]

If it was a step in a factory, for example an electronic capacitor, as part of a much larger product, such as a computer monitor, and it was discovered that the part was not what it was, it would be considered an inefficiency in the system, the inputs were wrong and it damages the final product. The factory wouldn't add more inspectors to the finished electronic capacitor that had impurities, it would look at the inputs that were resulting in impurities and in solving this, it would make the production more efficient. In this case the final product is human nutrition. The assumption that is made is that somehow these impurities arrived in the meat with nothing to do with the inputs and by inspecting the part of the product as it comes through, we can solve it. It's like the doping tests they do on athletes, setting up tests is just setting challenges for people to break. An athlete will only ever run so fast no matter how efficient their training or technique. But being second isn't going to to be enough and they can always be afraid that others are using performance aids.

All beef sold in the US is not beef?

According to the NY Times: EACH day it’s becoming less likely that the meat you buy in the supermarket is just meat.

This was from 2006 and unless any drastic changes have occurred since then, I would say that yes, probably no beef is beef.

Beef production efficiency can only be maximized so much. That maximum efficiency would be a cowboy with genetically superior meat producing cows walking around a village producing genetically superior feed naturally and freely available to him. Said cowboy did a minor in butchering so he butchers the cows on a Sunday when people come out on foot and purchase their weekly needs. No excess input is required than what is being supplied naturally and said cowboy needs to cover his living expenses and future security with the cowboy living in a off grid self sustaining house somewhere near this.

It isn't a reasonable example, but actually not very far from a hundred years ago. According to the example, can beef supply demand? Here is a village, what about a city? For a city we add some inputs, transport, infrastructure costs and maintenance, a supermarket. All these inputs should add to the cost of supply to the end user. Do the supply and demand curves meet up in an economically pleasant manner? Cost of production, supplying the producer with a profit, efficiency in use of inputs and a pure product have no more efficiency than the above example. If this means that supply can't meet demand, then too bad for the graph. If it can meet demand, then we must consider why people need to inject beef with water, feed cows to each other, feed horses and pigs to cows, or combine their meats after killing. I would put to you that it is not to do what the system set out to do, supply an efficient production of nutrition to the market, but to provide cheap meat to consumer's and profits to producers. And putting meat inspectors at the end of the line isn't going to increase efficiency, it's going to take from it, add to the cost, become cumbersome.

Heading to the ranch, helping the farmer develop a more efficient means of production, improving efficiency of transport and delivery to the end user, making beef a cradle to cradle product would increase efficiency and target the systems goal.
So I wonder why we are all calling for further inefficiency and not targeting the roots of the problem and making it as efficient as possible.

Because voters are well-intended yet uninformed?
Because it is politically profitable to pander to such good intentions?


(nice post. I want to nitpick, but I agree with your general point).

[_sabotage_]

FT,

But again you are suggesting that it should be dealt with after all the inputs have been added.

Why don't we label it before everything has been put in? We say that if you want this sold as beef, then you need to have these and only these ingredients?

The doesn't really allow for a competitive edge in production. But the ability to produce what we consider beef has a limited optimization. Just like runners, they will only be able to do so much the within guidelines and performance would stall, so says the capitalist manifesto. But we don't consider how this drives competition from the market place in the first place. If you are a great runner, state champ, etc. you aren't good enough probably to beat a Jamaican, so just give up or cheat. We are not allowing ranchers to compete on a level playing field but insisting they cheat or get out of the market.

Do you really care if someone out of 6 billion people can run .01 of a second faster than another of the 6 billion people? We put such a huge industry behind it and cheat as much as possible to succeed, at what point do we ask, are there any ethics, or do we just care about selling tickets? When the problem comes so close to home and forces the issue of becoming a vegetarian who grows their own food or just accepting that you will eat shit so that others can profit, it doesn't seem that much progress has been made over the last ten thousand years.

[Funkyterrance]

_sabo,

I think I am getting what you are saying but doesn't limiting what you can put into a product drastically reduce the ability of all the varying consumers to get what they want? If you tell beef producers that they can only feed a specific kind of corn to their cows but people actually enjoy the flavor of beef fed another species of corn and there is no other difference in the two types of beef, doesn't this make for an inefficient market?
I'm saying let anyone put anything technically safe in their product and let the consumers know exactly what they are getting. If farmer A feeds his cows nothing but timothy hay and "jersey diamond" strain corn grown with fertilizer x, then he has to put all this on the label. If there are bits of brain and bone in the meat, he has to put that down as well. A surprise visit from the inspector will compare the info on the meat with what he/she deduces by observation and if the two don't mesh there are consequences.
I just feel that telling someone what they have to put in their beef is severely limiting to all the different tastes and income levels of consumers. A low income family might prefer to buy bone and brain laced beef if it's going to mean full bellies for all. If all beef is created equal in that it is palatable by all then some will undoubtedly have to go without who might have otherwise settled for an "inferior" product. Telling people what they can or can't pass as "product x" sounds like it would equate to murder on the market. As long as it's labelled as what it is I don't see the downside?

[_sabotage_]

Fair enough, but you are still looking at each piece as separate. If the system were to be effective, it couldn't just be limited to beef, it would have to encompass the whole nutritional spectrum as well as the delivery system.

I'm trying at the moment, far outside of this topic, but somewhat related, to look into a cradle to cradle solution for a university. Education is expensive, blah blah blah and my idea incorporates capitalism, democracy and sustainability, again blah blah blah.

Basically I'm trying to subvert the system by playing it's game a bit better than them and will likely fail miserably as too many obstacles will jump in front of me.

The more steps we create in a system the more expensive it is. As an example, coffee sells for around $2 a cup and getting it at that price involves a thousand small inputs, each at a cost. At the moment, I volunteer and serve free coffee. It of course isn't free, but by making it free many steps can be avoided. Rent, utilities, tax, accounting, licensing, inspection etc. People still pay for the coffee, they put perhaps a .50 towards a cup, but it can be deducted from taxes. My time as a volunteer is based on altruism and can't really be compared to the regular system of delivering coffee, space is still required, etc and so on.

Let's take it to the next step, full automation(this isn't far fetched as we have automated cocktail dispensers and MIT developed has a 3D food printer). If coffee could be delivered with full automation, that is the beans are delivered straight into a machine that then produces coffee on demand, removes me, we could say by example, that this would be bad for the economy. People handing the coffee to me would lose their jobs, people wouldn't rent sites for coffee shops, utilities would be diminished, taxes would be lost. But people don't like their jobs, people don't like their bills, people like coffee.

If we then traded some of our government funded medical patents, perhaps licensed out the US patent on medical marijuana in exchange for coffee from a grower, then we would have free coffee. If we took this to the next step and eliminated cost in other arenas, then we would be looking at free everything.

The scale of competition shouldn't be among people, or small individual businesses producing only a tiny sector of a product and passing on the costs to the government or banks or the environment, but among communities producing differing products. A community's benefits and resources should be the objective, the profit of the enterprise. We need to scale up the model of business to meet modern challenges and produce greater efficiency to maximize our limited resources. It's nice that capital gets to chill and we get to work for it, but it is a short term strategy that will ultimately fail.

The other road we will take is that things will be fully automated at the benefit of corporations and capital, that we won't have jobs but will still need to pay for things. We will be cut off from production and forced to pay for enormous prices for cheap crap. Which do you see as a better form of human progress?

[Funkyterrance]

It's going to take me some time to digest all of the previous post but for now I'll respond to the beginning, on-topic part.
My example was in no way restricted to beef, I think it should apply to anything that comes into contact with our bodies, inside and out. As far as the cost of making these labels or data sheets or whatever you want to call them, that would of course be absorbed by the producer of the product but I believe in a system such as this it would be a worthwhile investment to hire a person whose job it was to write these data sheets in the most complete manner possible. I think that in a system such as this the contents of the products would become all-important and advertising would become more or less obsolete. Take the money previously spent on advertising and spend it on compiling real data about your product. If there is a label on something that tells you virtually everything about it, why do you need the company to convince you to buy it? Either you want it for what it is or you don't.

[betiko]

A question for our resident free market preacher(for lack of a better phrase, no offense intened):

Let's say, hypothetically speaking, there is a company that produces product A. Product A is known by the company to contain ingredients that while technically safe, are actually quite unhealthy. Product A also happens to be quite cheap to produce and therefore can be sold at an equally cheap price. No one is getting sick directly from this product but many people who use it on a regular basis are in generally poor condition which results in these people getting sick much more readily than if they were to use a similar product B which, while being a healthier alternative to product A, is slightly more expensive. Otherwise the two products are virtually identical to your average consumer.
As it turns out, the company who produces product A is actually using some ingredients that are borderline spoiled but once put into the product they are untraceable as such. The reason the company producing product A is able to get away with this practice which gives it an advantage at the expense of the consumer, unbeknownst to the consumer, is that both companies exist in a completely free market system. Does this not suggest a flaw in the free market model?

this kind of reminds me of something. In some regions in mexico, you can't drink tap water and you have to buy from the store. Only problem is that bottled water is hell of expensive and coke is the cheapest drink. As a result people are above average in obesity %. Appart from being an incredible dosis of sugar, the receipe of coke is unknown by the public and I'm not even sure the authorities that allowed it on the market even know all ingredients. Pembleton was a cocaine addict and did use coca leaves in the original receipe, I've heard that they still use some substances from coca leaves, even if way less stronger than cocaine. Red bull must have some pretty shitty stuff in it too, but hey, it's on the market and they got all these cool advertising an sponsorships, so it's 100% safe!!

other than this, for muslim/jews it's not a sin to eat pork if you had no way of knowing that the food contained some sort of pork meat. And as a frenchman, I got to say that horsemeat is excellent!
We have special butchers that only deal with horse meat here, and it's much more pricy than beef. I know it sounds awful, almost like eating dogs or cats, but why would it be ok to eat a beef or a chicken?

[BigBallinStalin]

Fair enough, but you are still looking at each piece as separate. If the system were to be effective, it couldn't just be limited to beef, it would have to encompass the whole nutritional spectrum as well as the delivery system.

I'm trying at the moment, far outside of this topic, but somewhat related, to look into a cradle to cradle solution for a university. Education is expensive, blah blah blah and my idea incorporates capitalism, democracy and sustainability, again blah blah blah.

Basically I'm trying to subvert the system by playing it's game a bit better than them and will likely fail miserably as too many obstacles will jump in front of me.

The more steps we create in a system the more expensive it is. As an example, coffee sells for around $2 a cup and getting it at that price involves a thousand small inputs, each at a cost. At the moment, I volunteer and serve free coffee. It of course isn't free, but by making it free many steps can be avoided. Rent, utilities, tax, accounting, licensing, inspection etc. People still pay for the coffee, they put perhaps a .50 towards a cup, but it can be deducted from taxes. My time as a volunteer is based on altruism and can't really be compared to the regular system of delivering coffee, space is still required, etc and so on.

Let's take it to the next step, full automation(this isn't far fetched as we have automated cocktail dispensers and MIT developed has a 3D food printer). If coffee could be delivered with full automation, that is the beans are delivered straight into a machine that then produces coffee on demand, removes me, we could say by example, that this would be bad for the economy. People handing the coffee to me would lose their jobs, people wouldn't rent sites for coffee shops, utilities would be diminished, taxes would be lost. But people don't like their jobs, people don't like their bills, people like coffee.

So capital and labor would go to more valuable uses. The same happened--over-time--to the horse and buggies when automobiles were on the rise.

What's the problem here?

If we then traded some of our government funded medical patents, perhaps licensed out the US patent on medical marijuana in exchange for coffee from a grower, then we would have free coffee. If we took this to the next step and eliminated cost in other arenas, then we would be looking at free everything.

What? There's nothing free about that. You're trading the revenues received from a patent for coffee.

Besides, this is inefficient exchange. Let people trade what they want for the coffee. Granted the government imposes a law which forces people to accept US dollars as legal tender, exchange is much more efficient with cash and credit--compared to this Patents For Coffee plan.

The scale of competition shouldn't be among people, or small individual businesses producing only a tiny sector of a product and passing on the costs to the government or banks or the environment, but among communities producing differing products. A community's benefits and resources should be the objective, the profit of the enterprise. We need to scale up the model of business to meet modern challenges and produce greater efficiency to maximize our limited resources. It's nice that capital gets to chill and we get to work for it, but it is a short term strategy that will ultimately fail.

The other road we will take is that things will be fully automated at the benefit of corporations and capital, that we won't have jobs but will still need to pay for things. We will be cut off from production and forced to pay for enormous prices for cheap crap. Which do you see as a better form of human progress?

So the robots are going to take our jobs, and humans could not exchange their labor for capital goods?

[_sabotage_]

I'm trying to put things in a nice way that is easy for people to come to grips with.

The reality is we will soon have the power of god. Some people may argue that we already do. We are working on programming in two directions, computer programming and genetics, it will eventually meet. We are working at Bringing these programs to life in three directions, 3D printing or additive manufacturing, self building mechanisms and evolving matter. Many people state that these technologies are in their infancy, yet NASA uses 3D printing to make engines that couldn't be manufactured in other ways. Soon, we will be able to reconstitute matter and patent the hell out of it.

Our current economic model is fucked. The US has no possible way out of debt. The only option will be to declare bankruptcy and letting the snarling dogs that we've created out of the world at us.

Corporations don't give a flying f*ck. They will feed us the dog meat. The global climate will likely cool based on history, or warm based on current theory, our resources are getting scarcer and as a people we have almost no control.

In this situation, when we do have the power of god, to build and destroy as we wish, to mold our environment at will, who do we want in charge? But more to the point I have been trying to make in a nice and agreeable (for me) manner above, what results do we want to see? Do we want to see the continued profit of the few, or are we at some point going to direct this technology, our economic system, and our resources at our own good?

We face perpetual enslavement or perpetual abundance, what road do you think will be chosen by the powers that be? Why is a person no longer of any value and has no say in their future? We have been lead to the base, we have been asked to build the steps, we now look into the fire, are we going to continue to listen when they say push them and then jump?

[TA1LGUNN3R]

I'm trying to put things in a nice way that is easy for people to come to grips with.

The reality is we will soon have the power of god. Some people may argue that we already do. We are working on programming in two directions, computer programming and genetics, it will eventually meet. We are working at Bringing these programs to life in three directions, 3D printing or additive manufacturing, self building mechanisms and evolving matter. Many people state that these technologies are in their infancy, yet NASA uses 3D printing to make engines that couldn't be manufactured in other ways. Soon, we will be able to reconstitute matter and patent the hell out of it.

Our current economic model is fucked. The US has no possible way out of debt. The only option will be to declare bankruptcy and letting the snarling dogs that we've created out of the world at us.

Corporations don't give a flying f*ck. They will feed us the dog meat. The global climate will likely cool based on history, or warm based on current theory, our resources are getting scarcer and as a people we have almost no control.

In this situation, when we do have the power of god, to build and destroy as we wish, to mold our environment at will, who do we want in charge? But more to the point I have been trying to make in a nice and agreeable (for me) manner above, what results do we want to see? Do we want to see the continued profit of the few, or are we at some point going to direct this technology, our economic system, and our resources at our own good?

We face perpetual enslavement or perpetual abundance, what road do you think will be chosen by the powers that be? Why is a person no longer of any value and has no say in their future? We have been lead to the base, we have been asked to build the steps, we now look into the fire, are we going to continue to listen when they say push them and then jump?

lol. Every generation ever thinks they're on the precipice of complete disaster as new advancements come around or "mores" decay. Pretty much it's been the same thing throughout our time as a sapient species, just differing in the details. People live, they die, some grab the power and exploit the weaker, countries form and fail and populations get decimated, etc. etc. ad nauseum. I, for one, am glad that I was born into an age where I'm not stuck into a soil-tilling station living on scraps granted by my feudal master. I'm also glad that advancing tech in biological sciences and manufacturing will eventually lead to self-determination.

3d printers? Bring 'em on.

There was this poster I saw once that I can't seem to find online. It had a picture of a stegosaurus with a quote, "History is full of giants who could not adapt."

-TG