Siraj Izhar | publiclife on Wed, 4 May 2016 15:58:26 +0200 (CEST)


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Re: <nettime> Live Your Models

some problematic assumptions re. food production and the future. Ample studies show small plotholder farms to be significantly more productive per acre than large industrial farms (cf Amartya Sen and many following him) with a vastly lower ecological footprint. All this aside from large scale industrial farming's invisible externalities and dependence on capital subsidies (eg CAP).
Also check the food production stats in the large Soviet collectivised farms; without the private allotment holdings the social order would have collapsed. All this points to a very different social model vis a vis "Folk Politics".
One advantage with industrial food production is the capacity to mobilise production fast eg Samir Amin's studies on post war China's food output but it's exceptional and has its costs. China is already working to redress the balance in particular in demographic terms
Don't know how to interpret Srnicek Williams' Invent the Future, it's very bound by the institutional and demographic context in which it was produced. In what it leaves out, it's not too difficult to see connotations of increasing monoculture and totalitarianism for such a future; hopefully "Folk Politics" may yet be there to save us (again). 

Siraj


On 03/05/2016 11:00, [email protected] wrote:


Message: 3
Date: Mon, 2 May 2016 17:31:11 +0200
From: Florian Cramer<[email protected]>
To:[email protected]
Subject: Re: <nettime> Live Your Models
Message-ID:<[email protected]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8

    > More importantly, Rifkin's strategic aim in calling for an investment
    wave centered on solar power, micro-manufacturing and smart grids is to
    undo the hegemony of the giant corporations, particularly the oil
    companies which are directly responsible for climate change and which
    also constitute the civilian component of military imperialism.?

<...>

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