Posts by BenWilson
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Hard News: Fact and fantasy, in reply to Farmer Green,
That’s slightly encouraging even if 92 of them were from Farmer Green who will shortly depart fom here, taking with him the realisation that the rural/urban divide is a formidable obstacle ;
I've appreciated your input and hope you're not leaving because of perceived antipathy. I don't know what kind of engagement you expected, in a thread that is primarily about the question of whether NZ is 100% Pure or not. There aren't a whole lot of farmers in the commentary pool here, although there are quite a few scientists. Your efforts sound righteous, and not totally isolated either - I've met a few Kiwi farmers who have made the effort to transition to permaculture principles.
I think you're most likely very much aligned with predominant views here, and if there's any trouble, I'd say it's come from the manner of engagement. You've kind of laid out your whole world view across a number of posts, and there is much to agree with, and disagree with in there, but the point is, it's too much, too untargeted to get the detailed feedback you seemed to want. I'd be surprised if many people here didn't think that dropping your stocking levels isn't righteous-as, for example, but the waters get muddied when you suggest that you're looking forward to global warming. You're not going to have too many people here thinking that's cool, because it's not just your farm at stake.
But yes, rural/urban is quite a divide. To me, that's a pity, because we are in it together, as a nation.
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Hard News: Fact and fantasy, in reply to Matthew Poole,
At the thorough expense of our economy
Of course. I really should put <sarcasm> on the appropriate comments to make it clear that I don't think depopulating my city is a good idea. In fact, I'm not a fan of making things more costly just to change people's behaviour at all. Not when the justification of the cost isn't tied in to the "cost" of whatever it is you're trying to discourage. I'm a carrots guy, sticks, not so much.
If you want dense urban living, the place to start is housing. It doesn't matter how punitive you get on transport, if there's nowhere good/affordable to live in the center then people will commute. You don't build houses buy taxing cars, that's ridiculously circuitous.
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Hard News: Fact and fantasy, in reply to Farmer Green,
So your greater profit per liter is based on a different usage for the milk? Why does that require flat production? I most certainly agree with adding more value to to the product is something we should do, but I don't see that it's necessarily coupled with flat production. I don't dispute it either, I just don't automatically see your point, not being in the dairy industry myself. Are you saying that the seasonal alignment of milk production (this still happens? It's been 20 years since I was scheduling trucks, don't know what's changed in the industry) is something dictated by the fact that we turn most of it into powder? How does that work?
Flat production would have a number of transport cost reductions. The fleet would be stable in size, as would the pool of drivers, and the runs would probably be the same every day. Not sure about the effect on total mileage. Presumably if you halve the milk to be collected you roughly halve the cost of collecting it.
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Hard News: Fact and fantasy, in reply to Farmer Green,
Has FG got it wrong?
Hard to know unless you show the calculations. How you got 50% more money out of 50% less milk needs clarification. Presumably with all year round milk you're also calving all year round, so the beef supply is less seasonal too?
It was always my understanding that the flush was aligned with spring, that you want to take advantage of the time of year when the grass grows the most rapidly, and the climate is less harsh on the calves.
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@Sacha That reasoning is identical in structure to Pascal's wager, if you substitute God for climate change and eternal hellfire for environmental catastrophe. It won't work on deniers just like the wager doesn't work on atheists. They're not afraid of something they consider fictitious.
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Hard News: Fact and fantasy, in reply to Angus Robertson,
Depopulating Auckland is a plan I'd never considered.... hmmm, that might work.
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@Amy Gale
Since this is my 6666th post, I have to put it here, so that I can execute Order 66 twice on the prequels. I read that entire link of yours. It came to unintentionally parody the prequels in a most ironic way.
1. It was about 3 times longer than it needed to be
2. It recycled nearly 100% of what it was inspired by, the DM of the Rings series
3. I stuck at it with morbid fascination, long beyond the point where I was enjoying it.<spoiler alert>
That said, it had some very clever concepts. The idea of taking a movie series that fanbois hated passionately and making into the ultimate RPG campaign, was inspired. It really does smack of how the scripts were written, as if Lucas did actually game it out with some kids. The gender reversal of the love interests was a fantastic touch, to explain how frikken awfully the respective genders in the actual film were scripted. That they managed to make Jar Jar loveable was brilliant, by handing it over to a little girl to play out.The GM who does the opposite of railroading the players through their script is so not how I remember it ever going down, though. I almost felt nostalgic for RPGs, until I remembered how for me it turned out that reading about and imagining playing the game was always a lot more fun than actually playing it. That was what was so clever about DM of the Rings. Mind you, if there had simply been more female humans*, it could have been different. Certainly seemed more fun.
Thanks for the link. I'll never get that 20-odd hours back :-)
*ETA By "more" I mean "any that weren't my sister".
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Hard News: Fact and fantasy, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
We have the sixth lowest fuel tax in the OECD. A lot of the problem is urban sprawl, making public transport inefficient and slow and leading to extensive car commutes.
OK, by heavily I meant "compared to other taxes we have to pay for stuff", rather than "compared to the same tax everywhere else". I agree with the rest of what you're saying there. However, I'm also not in control of urban sprawl, certainly not in control of my complete inability to afford property within 10km of the city. I am in control of my car use, and if the "tax the rational consumer" ideology is to transform my behaviour, it's going to have raise tax a hell of a lot. Just on cost alone, they'd have to nearly double the cost of fuel to make the bus competitive, which would involve raising taxes around 5-fold.
Which is meant to be a reductio ad absurdum on the idea of solving global warming by taxing the pollution. Even with the tax, I've still got very little choice about producing the pollution. Which is not to say that we shouldn't tax the pollution, of course we should. But it's not the whole solution.
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Hard News: Fact and fantasy, in reply to Angus Robertson,
My 2c answer - tax the consumer.
It's a partial answer. But giving the consumer viable alternatives is a pretty big part of it, too. Petrol is already heavily taxed here, but it would need to be a hell of a lot more before it made a real dent in my car usage, because the alternatives are pretty dire. It's not the cost of petrol that stopped me taking my car into the city every day - it was the cost of parking. Petrol, which I worked out was costing me 25c/km, made the round trip to the city $5/day, which is much less than the bus. Add on the inconvenience of the bus, which is approximately an extra hour per day, and you're talking one heck of a lot of petrol tax to get me back on the bus. Or you could make the bus better/cheaper.
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Hard News: Fact and fantasy, in reply to Farmer Green,
Sorry I don’t get it.
It was hyperbole with a Simpsons reference. I don't really think you've got a mutated third eye from swimming in the Manawatu. Thanks for your contributions, was actually what I meant to say.
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