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Vaniver comments on Vegetarianism - Less Wrong Discussion

29 Post author: Raemon 24 December 2010 04:57AM

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Comment author: Vaniver 28 December 2010 08:20:21PM 1 point [-]

Which is to say that a farmer that may go bankrupt in 20 years because the farm will no longer be able to sustain production is not going to increase prices unless the farmer is quite cognizant of the fact and is planning for it. Most won't.

So, new American tractors are now satellite-driven to ensure they don't take the same path, in order to decrease the amount of soil they kick up and erosion that happens. I find it unlikely many American farmers are oblivious to these issues.

Comment author: datadataeverywhere 28 December 2010 08:49:48PM -1 points [-]

That's pretty cool.

Part of my reply to Vladimir addresses your question; I think [North] American farmers aren't all that oblivious, but I suspect that they are still more optimistic than they ought to be. 20 years also might be too short a time window; 50 years might be more appropriate, and the problem still remains.

If nothing else, psychology tells us that once we start talking about a 50 year time window, we should have a very high prior for people being overly optimistic and insufficiently discounting future costs.

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