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Thanks for sharing :) I have very little context but it's interesting that, presumably, the lower profit industry was replaced with the higher profit one. And

Thanks for sharing :) I have very little context but it's interesting that, presumably, the lower profit industry was replaced with the higher profit one. And on top of that the higher profit one is probably of less value to society.

dijit 10mo ago
The highest value thing you can do in this life is produce food. The second highest value thing you can do is produce machines that help produce food (or other raw materials). The least value thing you can do is the services that are needed to support the production of machines that produce food. This is an uncomfortable thing to read for someone (such as myself) working in tech, in fact that's where the "sectors" comes from. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_sector https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_sector The goal of each sector is to make the previous sectors more productive, and so they're squeezed to become commodity. We therefore intentionally incentivise de-valuing the things that bring us value as a civilisation, and over-valuing the things that don't.
- theptip 10mo ago
  Seems like you’ve smuggled in your conclusion with your definition of “highest value”? Using the normal definition (how many dollars we will pay for it) the statement is of course objectively false. Agriculture is certainly necessary, but to take a more extreme example, is air valuable?
  - mrguyorama 10mo ago
    >Using the normal definition (how many dollars we will pay for it) Ah, pot calling kettle black! The "normal" definition you claim is smuggling the equivalent of an entire cultural ideological framing.
- dylan604 10mo ago
  > The highest value thing you can do in this life is produce food. Talk to a non-corporate farmer today, and ask them how valued their production of food is. Society, however, does not agree with your sentiment. Obviously I'm nitpicking, but if society agreed with your proposed value, the billionaires of the world would be farmers and not tech people. That's how weird and out of balance we seem to be today.
  - dijit 10mo ago
    I think you missed my point. My point is that we’ve inversed the “value” of each sector. The highest good you can do for civilisation/society is also the least profitable. The lowest good you can do for civilisation is the most profitable. Thus our incentives are opposed diametrically from the benefit of society.
    - tim333 10mo ago
      I'm not sure going into farming is even good for society at the moment. My dad was a farmer for a while and there was mostly a food surplus with the EU paying him to set aside land to control that. You do good for society by providing things it's short off.
      - spookie 10mo ago
        You should take a look at the price of food after Russia launched their full scale invasion in Ukraine. A significant increase, 15% at its peak and lowering thereafter to about 5%. Still, it is above pandemic levels. You rise food prices and there's a domino effect on the economy, everything else also increases in price. It is important the EU is able to produce its own food at acceptable prices.
        pas 10mo ago
        if food security is important then the EU should pay for cost-effectiveness, economic sustainability, ecological resilience, storage capacity, and so on. AFAIK right now it pays the same for a huge unproductive monoculture of non-edible corn (ie. for bioethanol) as it pays for wheat. (though there's finally talk about some changes to CAP, mostly to stop paying already rich big farms.) food prices are pretty volatile anyway, and as you see even a war only moved them 15% whereas in Hungary inflation was more than 20%.
        spookie 10mo ago
        Hungary is facing a stagnant economy, with poorly targetted subsidies and overall high corruption. Inflation was already high since 2019 compared to other OECD countries with similar GDP per capita (checked Estonia, Poland, Portugal and Slovakia). They have also continued to engage with Russia economically despite sanctions (even outside the energy sector) leading to sometimes having exemptions or attempting to use that as leverage against EU policies. All of this has further destabilized their economy, given neighbours will hesitate in trade. Hungary is the worst example you could pick from the EU.
- showerst 10mo ago
  Do we need more farmers, or for food to be more 'valued' in a monetary sense? The developed world is awash in affordable food. Even machine tools are incredibly cheap and accessible, the issues around those are related to where they're built and creating skilled labor to run them. I work laughably far from anything that provides basic needs to anybody, but that's not because I don't value food, it's because our system is _incredibly_ successful at creating it so I can go do other stuff. I do agree we have some huge policy issues to deal with around food affordability and skilled labor and supply chains, but I don't think it's because we've de-valued food production.
  - dijit 10mo ago
    ehhhh, lets be real. I’m a dyed in the wool meat eating junk eater. But, a lot of how we produce food today is not humane or sustainable, and a lot of the food itself is so poor in nutrition that it leaves us unhealthy and unbalanced. This isn’t a lecture, just an observation, I am guilty of eating (almost exclusively) poor quality, over processed, mass produced foods. But realistically speaking, if we solve the worlds hunger, what should be left is the pursuit of art and science. Not whatever we seem to be doing with Excel; how can that be more valuable than feeding and healing humanity?
    - pfdietz 10mo ago
      Why isn't it sustainable? All the inputs can be derived from non-fossil sources. Maybe N2O emission? But I think that could be addressed technically.
      - dijit 10mo ago
        Not sustainable due to the fossil-fuel laden garbage we feed to bovine stock. Not sustainable because it causes major health issues which stress the healthcare system and limits quality of life - especially the affordable stuff that people tend to think is “normal value”
        pfdietz 10mo ago
- pjc50 10mo ago
  That rather implies a society of subsistence farmers is the "most valuable", which is the one thing everyone in every society runs away from as fast as possible when technology prevents economic alternatives.
  - dijit 10mo ago
    just because people don’t wanna do it doesn’t mean it’s not important. It’s interesting that we would care about monetary value more than societal value- that kind of leans into my point don’t you think?
    - HeyLaughingBoy 10mo ago
      IME the people who care about societal value more than monetary value either already have plenty of the latter or aren't going to be the ones doing the work.
    - johnnyanmac 10mo ago
      Charity fails when the charitable can't even pay rent. Offer $40/hr to these "essential workers" and suddenly people will be charitable again.
- DonHopkins 10mo ago
  What is the lowest value thing you can do with your life? Props comedian who destroys good food with a sledge hammer? Bill Hicks on Gallagher and Carrot top https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJjgFcJ0DoQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJjgFcJ0DoQ
- nine_k 10mo ago
  > The highest value thing you can do in this life is produce food. This highly depends on the actual productivity. Producing food by subsistence farming barely feeds you and your children. Making something that improves food production, from ploughs to better seeds to fertilizers, has a significantly larger impact, even if you're not directly producing something edible.
- pas 10mo ago
  People change their diets to live longer, and in general medicine seems more valuable. People happily pay a lot for more QALYs. Having food security is important, just as having warm clothes and shelter too, right? Providing what people need is value, just providing "food" can lead to a lot of negative value (see the obesity epidemic).

dijit 10mo ago

The highest value thing you can do in this life is produce food. The second highest value thing you can do is produce machines that help produce food (or other raw materials). The least value thing you can do is the services that are needed to support the production of machines that produce food. This is an uncomfortable thing to read for someone (such as myself) working in tech, in fact that's where the "sectors" comes from. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_sector https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_sector The goal of each sector is to make the previous sectors more productive, and so they're squeezed to become commodity. We therefore intentionally incentivise de-valuing the things that bring us value as a civilisation, and over-valuing the things that don't.

theptip 10mo ago
Seems like you’ve smuggled in your conclusion with your definition of “highest value”? Using the normal definition (how many dollars we will pay for it) the statement is of course objectively false. Agriculture is certainly necessary, but to take a more extreme example, is air valuable?
- mrguyorama 10mo ago
  >Using the normal definition (how many dollars we will pay for it) Ah, pot calling kettle black! The "normal" definition you claim is smuggling the equivalent of an entire cultural ideological framing.
dylan604 10mo ago
> The highest value thing you can do in this life is produce food. Talk to a non-corporate farmer today, and ask them how valued their production of food is. Society, however, does not agree with your sentiment. Obviously I'm nitpicking, but if society agreed with your proposed value, the billionaires of the world would be farmers and not tech people. That's how weird and out of balance we seem to be today.
- dijit 10mo ago
  I think you missed my point. My point is that we’ve inversed the “value” of each sector. The highest good you can do for civilisation/society is also the least profitable. The lowest good you can do for civilisation is the most profitable. Thus our incentives are opposed diametrically from the benefit of society.
  - tim333 10mo ago
    I'm not sure going into farming is even good for society at the moment. My dad was a farmer for a while and there was mostly a food surplus with the EU paying him to set aside land to control that. You do good for society by providing things it's short off.
    - spookie 10mo ago
      You should take a look at the price of food after Russia launched their full scale invasion in Ukraine. A significant increase, 15% at its peak and lowering thereafter to about 5%. Still, it is above pandemic levels. You rise food prices and there's a domino effect on the economy, everything else also increases in price. It is important the EU is able to produce its own food at acceptable prices.
      - pas 10mo ago
        if food security is important then the EU should pay for cost-effectiveness, economic sustainability, ecological resilience, storage capacity, and so on. AFAIK right now it pays the same for a huge unproductive monoculture of non-edible corn (ie. for bioethanol) as it pays for wheat. (though there's finally talk about some changes to CAP, mostly to stop paying already rich big farms.) food prices are pretty volatile anyway, and as you see even a war only moved them 15% whereas in Hungary inflation was more than 20%.
        spookie 10mo ago
        Hungary is facing a stagnant economy, with poorly targetted subsidies and overall high corruption. Inflation was already high since 2019 compared to other OECD countries with similar GDP per capita (checked Estonia, Poland, Portugal and Slovakia). They have also continued to engage with Russia economically despite sanctions (even outside the energy sector) leading to sometimes having exemptions or attempting to use that as leverage against EU policies. All of this has further destabilized their economy, given neighbours will hesitate in trade. Hungary is the worst example you could pick from the EU.
showerst 10mo ago
Do we need more farmers, or for food to be more 'valued' in a monetary sense? The developed world is awash in affordable food. Even machine tools are incredibly cheap and accessible, the issues around those are related to where they're built and creating skilled labor to run them. I work laughably far from anything that provides basic needs to anybody, but that's not because I don't value food, it's because our system is _incredibly_ successful at creating it so I can go do other stuff. I do agree we have some huge policy issues to deal with around food affordability and skilled labor and supply chains, but I don't think it's because we've de-valued food production.
- dijit 10mo ago
  ehhhh, lets be real. I’m a dyed in the wool meat eating junk eater. But, a lot of how we produce food today is not humane or sustainable, and a lot of the food itself is so poor in nutrition that it leaves us unhealthy and unbalanced. This isn’t a lecture, just an observation, I am guilty of eating (almost exclusively) poor quality, over processed, mass produced foods. But realistically speaking, if we solve the worlds hunger, what should be left is the pursuit of art and science. Not whatever we seem to be doing with Excel; how can that be more valuable than feeding and healing humanity?
  - pfdietz 10mo ago
    Why isn't it sustainable? All the inputs can be derived from non-fossil sources. Maybe N2O emission? But I think that could be addressed technically.
    - dijit 10mo ago
      Not sustainable due to the fossil-fuel laden garbage we feed to bovine stock. Not sustainable because it causes major health issues which stress the healthcare system and limits quality of life - especially the affordable stuff that people tend to think is “normal value”
      - pfdietz 10mo ago
pjc50 10mo ago
That rather implies a society of subsistence farmers is the "most valuable", which is the one thing everyone in every society runs away from as fast as possible when technology prevents economic alternatives.
- dijit 10mo ago
  just because people don’t wanna do it doesn’t mean it’s not important. It’s interesting that we would care about monetary value more than societal value- that kind of leans into my point don’t you think?
  - HeyLaughingBoy 10mo ago
    IME the people who care about societal value more than monetary value either already have plenty of the latter or aren't going to be the ones doing the work.
  - johnnyanmac 10mo ago
    Charity fails when the charitable can't even pay rent. Offer $40/hr to these "essential workers" and suddenly people will be charitable again.
DonHopkins 10mo ago
What is the lowest value thing you can do with your life? Props comedian who destroys good food with a sledge hammer? Bill Hicks on Gallagher and Carrot top https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJjgFcJ0DoQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJjgFcJ0DoQ
nine_k 10mo ago
> The highest value thing you can do in this life is produce food. This highly depends on the actual productivity. Producing food by subsistence farming barely feeds you and your children. Making something that improves food production, from ploughs to better seeds to fertilizers, has a significantly larger impact, even if you're not directly producing something edible.
pas 10mo ago
People change their diets to live longer, and in general medicine seems more valuable. People happily pay a lot for more QALYs. Having food security is important, just as having warm clothes and shelter too, right? Providing what people need is value, just providing "food" can lead to a lot of negative value (see the obesity epidemic).