Message from @Arch-Fiend

Discord ID: 530814749831856128


2019-01-04 17:02:49 UTC  

```A 2009 Greenpeace report found that the cattle sector in the Brazilian Amazon, supported by the international beef and leather trades, was responsible for about 80% of all deforestation in the region,[
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2019-01-04 17:03:20 UTC  

80% for 1 part of agriculture

2019-01-04 17:04:05 UTC  

That doesn't include other parts, like farmland for crops.

2019-01-04 17:14:08 UTC  

`"you dont even need to be a capitalist state, the pressure of a """""global capitalism""""" with almost infinite power looking at your resources and coveting them will ensure no matter what your national policy is, you will obey or have every method imaginable to undermine your government employed to give globalism power over you."`

2019-01-04 17:29:30 UTC  

my argument is that the humans dont matter, humans are simply the tools of power of the internal capitalist market who's goals are to ever increase production and ever increase the height of wealth and power the individuals involved in it can sit on, like mountains being pushed up into the sky untouchable from anything on the ground. they see endless potential to do that in any area with an easily exploitable resource (even if its not a natural resource, as most livestock agriculture isint) and thus no matter who lives their they will put their vast economic weight behind influencing the extraction of resources so long as some goes under their pile.

keep the world hungry, keep the world gluttonous, keep the world envious, keep the little people in a place of mind where they constantly want something they have to do things for YOU in order to acquire, and keep the world willing to do anything and sacrifice priorities for the priorities you want them to care about. thats international capitalism.

2019-01-04 17:29:50 UTC  

my argument is that the humans dont matter, humans are simply the tools of power of the internal capitalist market who's goals are to ever increase production and ever increase the height of wealth and power the individuals involved in it can sit on, like mountains being pushed up into the sky untouchable from anything on the ground. they see endless potential to do that in any area with an easily exploitable resource (even if its not a natural resource, as most livestock agriculture isint) and thus no matter who lives their they will put their vast economic weight behind influencing the extraction of resources so long as some goes under their pile.

keep the world hungry, keep the world gluttonous, keep the world envious, keep the little people in a place of mind where they constantly want something they have to do things for YOU in order to acquire, and keep the world willing to do anything and sacrifice priorities for the priorities you want them to care about. thats international capitalism.

2019-01-04 17:38:14 UTC  

my argument is there is a consorted effort by investors into south american agriculture from outside south america to increase production. my argument is that this investment is extremely difficult to match by any forest conservative groups and that investors into south american agriculture have more than just investment to incentivize agriculture there and also undermine efforts to conserve the forest. they basically pull gay discord ops within brazil in order to get the policies and politicians that reinforce their investments and corporate relationship with brazil.

2019-01-04 17:39:44 UTC  

frankly they arnt hiding this and its just the free market doing whats best for the free market

2019-01-04 17:54:51 UTC  

Why would corporations focus on higher levels of agricultural output when they already overproduce and have to utilize quotas to prevent a race to the bottom?

2019-01-04 18:01:47 UTC  

anything that ive found on quotas of beef imports of anything related to agricultural has been protection for national markets competing with international. in america this makes some sense because the us has exploited what we can of land dedicated to pasteral farming far more than other countrys in the world, brazil frankly has more room even if the us maximized its utilization of land for production. the us is also prone to more random weather patterns than south america and is thus hurt more by changes in climate and year by year differences in weather than south america.

2019-01-04 18:03:15 UTC  

Your entire argument is predicated on the idea that without capitalism the demand for beef, leather, milk, produce, etc., would diminish., which is patently false.
If anything it would increase in excess of the existing supply.

@Beemann That is contradictory. The existence of surplus supply means you aren't making a profit on those goods. So you aren't being capaltistic if you're holding excess supply.

2019-01-04 18:03:39 UTC  

i dont think global markets are to worried about over production consitering the market hasent really reached anything like it is in the us in other developing nations like India and china

2019-01-04 18:05:34 UTC  

the international market still has billions of untapped demands in developing economcs and has a global population increase that doesent show signs of slowing down without an economic collaspe which wont be due to the market of food

2019-01-04 18:05:39 UTC  

That's why I asked. We produce a food surplus already

2019-01-04 18:11:20 UTC  

im not arguing that the demand for beef, leather, milk, produce, etc, would diminish if we stopped producing more of it, that's not my argument, i recognize that the capitalistic system within the united states and other western countries does promote a lifestyle within the population but additionally it seeks to exploit methods of producing what it also promotes demand for in the 1st world by any means necessary including VAST investment into deforestation agriculture.

2019-01-04 18:13:05 UTC  

You've got it backwards

2019-01-04 18:14:56 UTC  

Say NA consumes 100 units of product X
NA also produces, say, 120 units, so you have a small surplus that essentially gets wasted because putting it on the market would devalue the 100 units that do get sold. Knowing this, why would X production get expanded?

2019-01-04 18:26:08 UTC  

But what i'm saying is that those "methods to exploit" would exist *with or without* capitalism. They exist independent of it.
Yes, capitalists to seek out the cheapest way to produce and deliver those goods, but its not *capitalism* doing that. That is true for any business, regardless of their model. To deliver a product at scale requires it, even when you remove the profit motive.
I would even argue that greater exploitation happens when people aren't free to own property. Under other systems, if the government demands that X happens, X happens.

2019-01-04 18:27:40 UTC  

so im stealing some points from this article https://www.e-ir.info/2016/07/07/agricultural-overproduction-and-the-deteriorating-environment/

but here are some highlights to how the international and national markets that are at the head of the international market manage overproduction in order to maintain progressive economic growth

2019-01-04 18:27:55 UTC  

In order to counter overproduction, producers will act in three ways: exploit old markets, i.e. finding new ways of making profit with old consumers; create new markets; and/or dispose of the excess productive forces.

Turning to the US’ agriculture market, this process indeed emerges. Due to years of domestic lobbying and other historical factors, US farmers have benefitted from a less competitive internal market, meaning the market is quite established and difficult to enter. With the advent of the organic food label, US farmers have successfully widened their old market with the growth in popularity of organic food. In the past decade alone, the organic market has grown exponentially. In 1997, retail sales of organic products were $3.6 billion, and by 2008, sales had increased to $21.1 billion (Dimitri & Oberholtzer, 2009, p.iii). The overall increase in purchasing organic food has risen from 54% in 1997 to 63% in 2008 (Dimitri & Oberholtzer, 2009, p.6).

according to Ha-Joon Chang (2008), author of Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism, the “rich nations” give out an estimated $100 billion worth of agricultural subsidies every year, which is technically against WTO rules. In addition, the institutions will grant loans in exchange for a country’s internal economic restructuring along neoliberal lines. Supporting free trade, particularly for agriculture, has created a new market for the US and EU.

2019-01-04 18:28:18 UTC  

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was signed in 1993, came into effect 1 January 1994 for Canada, the United States, and Mexico. At the time, Mexico was heavily in debt and saw an economic partnership with Canada and the US as beneficial. The US was attracted by the plentitude of cheap labor in Mexico, as it was worried about competition from Japan and Europe (Payne, 2013, p.174). Under NAFTA, protective trade policies are illegal, such as tariffs and subsidies. Mexico even reformed its agricultural sector to align more with US policy. It abolished the ejido law, or the law allowing for the communal ownership of farmland among Mexican peasant farmers. Carlos Salinas, the Mexican president at the time, claimed that the ejidos were old fashioned and inefficient, and he privatized the land (Kingsnorth, 2004, p.14). With the influx of corn from the US and Canada, millions of Mexican peasants lost their land, as the ejidos were no longer protected or profitable (Kingsnorth, 2004, p.15). The United States, however, continued and continues to enact protective policies, such as subsidies to its farmers (Farm Subsidies, 2015). The subsidies allow US farmers to flood the Mexican market with cheaper food products with which Mexican farmers cannot compete (Baumann, 2013). Mexico, like most developing countries, cannot afford to subsidize its farmers and usually rely on quotas or tariffs (James, 2011). A study by Timothy Wise estimates the cost to Mexican producers at around $12.8 billion from 1997-2005. He concludes that approximately 2.3 million people left Mexico because they lost their agricultural jobs (Baumann, 2013). Due to the US subsidies, many Mexican farmers did not benefit from NAFTA but rather lost their jobs and the competitive edge on a main export.

2019-01-04 18:28:35 UTC  

On the other hand, US farmers benefitted greatly from NAFTA. As Wise (2010) writes, “High U.S. farm subsidies for exported crops, which compete with Mexican products, have prompted charges that the level playing field NAFTA was supposed to create is in fact tilted heavily in favor of the United States”. With NAFTA, the US created a new agricultural market. According to Richard Payne, agricultural subsidies have caused overproduction, and “this overproduction problem is solved partly by encouraging Americans and Europeans to consume more food and by dumping agricultural products in developing countries’ markets, selling them for below-cost prices”

2019-01-04 18:28:49 UTC  

the producers must dispose of excess productive forces in order to maintain the capitalist system. In the case of the EU and US, the level of food waste is alarming high, and their agricultural excesses are disregarded by giving donations or destroying goods. Until recently, the US had not even measure or study the amount of domestic food waste (Gunders, 2012, p.16), although environmental NGOs have conducted their own studies. Only 10% of edible surplus is recovered in the US (Gunders, 2012, p.17). The EU’s CAP, as aforementioned, not only floods the market with cheaper agricultural products, but it also physically eliminates extra produce (Arguments, n.d.). The EU also pays farmers to keep part of their land uncultivated, destroying the potential productive forces (Yumi, 2006). Lately, the EU has somewhat addressed these problems, and it has made 2014 the “European year against food waste”

Developed countries also have a long-standing history of donating food abroad. In principle, the idea of donating food to starving or impoverished people is generally seen as a good act. However, the basis for food donations came from an overproduction of agricultural goods. Frederic Mousseau, an economist focused on international relief, has stated "International food aid was initiated at a time when a policy of price support for agricultural commodities generated large surpluses of cereals. The disposal of surpluses through food aid made it a crucial instrument to support North American farmers because it reduced storage costs and opened access to new overseas markets "
Mousseau makes it clear that food aid was initiated because North American farmers were facing a crisis of overproduction. The US to this day buys the agricultural surplus and pays to ship it abroad. Initiating food aid not only destroyed the excess in the domestic markets, but also created new markets overseas.

2019-01-04 18:29:01 UTC  

(end)

2019-01-04 18:30:51 UTC  

buying surplus is done all over the world to protect production

2019-01-04 18:31:03 UTC  

here in the netherlands we had that problem with milk

2019-01-04 18:31:37 UTC  

so the gouvernemt garantees a minimum price at which they buy all the surplus milk to ship it to countries like china or africa

2019-01-04 18:31:58 UTC  

so our milk farmers can keep their job

2019-01-04 18:33:35 UTC  

im not saying this system is sustainible but it IS what is going on right now

2019-01-04 18:33:46 UTC  

"I'm stealing some points"
>quotes 8 paragraphs verbatim
My dude Brazil's big crop is soy, which they ship to China. It's not NA companies paying to get more food into one of the biggest overproducing food markets, like you insisted prior, nor is it based around beef, which was also suggested. The US and Brazil were in a battle over production, one that Brazil has won

2019-01-04 18:33:59 UTC  

It's also been causing deforestation through logging

2019-01-04 18:34:13 UTC  

Which is what the recent spike has been blamed on

2019-01-04 18:34:17 UTC  

im not saying american companys im saying american investors

2019-01-04 18:34:34 UTC  

investmant IS the international market

2019-01-04 18:35:27 UTC  

heck we even have investment companys literally just to invest in things and make money by making other people make money at any cost

2019-01-04 18:35:27 UTC  

American investors are also not investing in Brazil to get more food dumped into America. It's going to China

2019-01-04 18:35:59 UTC  

im sorry but i dont see any problems with funding other countries who have it worse

2019-01-04 18:36:02 UTC  

when did i say more food dumped into america? i mean WE DO dump a lot of brazilian food into america but im talking about international capitalist markets

2019-01-04 18:36:04 UTC  

Also America has ridiculous amounts of agricultural "room", it's just that soy competes with corn there

2019-01-04 18:39:13 UTC  

your assuming that what america does is has other countries make more food for it, while it does do that america is running up to the edge of what we can actually demand produced for us, thus investment into other economys produce for a world market but what also happens is that in order for the us market to maintain exports we import some from that world market to account for what we dont maintain domesticly and thus has our own export of the eact same product we are importing. this is to keep a larger economy on a global scale intigrated

2019-01-04 18:39:48 UTC  

" i recognize that the capitalistic system within the united states and other western countries does promote a lifestyle within the population but additionally it seeks to exploit methods of producing what it also promotes demand for in the 1st world by any means necessary including VAST investment into deforestation agriculture."
US and Western/Central Europe are the First World. The idea that the US is causing deforestation in Brazil to produce food that the First World has in excess is absurd