Theoretically, if we can crack fusion or some other source of abundant, cheap energy, we could build many of the bandaid solutions proposed today that are not feasible due to energy constraints, while transitioning society to a more sustainable path. Tilt the curve as it were.

Our psyches unfortunately aren't built for the globalized world we live in, and unless we figure out some sort of collective awakening to transcend our egos... Our best hope is likely solutions that allow the march of progress, while slowing, stopping, and eventually undoing a bunch of damage humans have done to the biosphere over our history. Definitely a moon shot, but hopefully we can figure something out.

And my rabbit hole over the last couple days has led me to spend a bunch of time looking into Fonterra, which is the farmers processing Coop that happened in NZ when they got rid of their quota system. It's turned NZ into the largest milk product exporter on earth, and their whole strategy is processing milk into more shelf stable products. Cheese and Butter is about 20% the remainder is skim milk powder, whole milk powder, whey protein, and caseins.

Anyhow, all of this is to say, that there are solutions that ensure no milk goes to waste by processing it into more shelf stable ingredients, all of which have massive demand on the global markets. Whether we do much of this in Canada, I am not sure, but, feels like a missed opportunity if not, and likely partially caused by a lack of necessity to innovate due to the artificial moat.

Eggs, haven't looked into but presumably similar to milk in that it can be processed into shelf stable powders.

But, on the poultry front, beef, pork, etc, are all in the 92% of farms group, managed by subsidies, so, while chickens have a shorter lifespan, I don't see why we can manage cow and pork farms with subsidies, but not chicken.

And I know nothing about the market, but I can't imagine it's overly liquid, the fact that all farmers would receive cash for their quota, would definitely be attractive to most. It's already heavily financialized and borrowed against.

And then, you could even do something like NZ did where all the dairy farmers got together and created a coop for processing, NZ is now the largest exporter of dairy in the world! If some of the quota levy went to getting this off the ground, you'd help the farmers retain a bigger piece of the pie with vertical integration of the supply chain. And, hopefully also compete globally and become net exporters, increasing the size of the pie.

I dunno, I have no idea what the fucking solution is, but after spending a bunch of time in the weeds of this shit over the past couple days, I am like, we have created a monster, this can't be the most effective way to achieve the underlying goals of the program.

For reference, there are about 190k farms in Canada, 8% of those farms are dairy, poultry, and eggs whose viability is ensured with supply chain management. The other 92% of farms, are managed with direct government assistance (AgriStability, AgriInsurance, AgriInvest, and AgriRecovery). The latter costs the government $1.5-$2 billion most years. While the recent report on supply chain managed farms suggests the cost born by Canadians to be around $10 billion. Even if that number is off by an order of magnitude, we're looking at $1 billion for 8% of farms, and $1.5-$2 billion for the other 92% of farms.

All I'm saying is it seems like the solution to help ensure viability in dairy, egg, and poultry farming is wildly inefficient and merits a look from first principles. Is there a solution to achieve the same outcome at a lower cost? The world has changed drastically since the policies were implemented in the 1970s.

I admit I am far from an expert, but I have spent an inordinate amount of time reading about this shit out of curiosity in the past couple days. Broke my brain when I saw the numbers around the costs born by canadians in the checkout aisle due to supply chain management.

I also have doubts that our current model is the best way of achieving the goals we had in mind when the programs were created in the 1970s. I know the error bars are quite sizeable, and it's not quite apples to apples, but recent studies that suggest our supply chain management in dairy, eggs, and poultry, costs approximately $244pp per year in higher costs. That's over $10billion per annum Canada wide, equivalent to 2% of the federal budget! I have been discussing this with someone in another thread for days, and the more I look into it, the more I feel like we really need to take another look at the implementation of this program. Dollar amount breaks my brain.

I agree generally that just looking at cost often misses the bigger picture, but it's the magnitude of it here that gets me. $10 billion is equivalent to 2% of the federal budget!

We spend a similar amount in the budget, $10.7 billion, to ensure the viability and sustainability of all our crown corporations with the exception of CMHC! So, a national railway, a national postal service, a public broadcaster, museums, infrastructure entities, finance institutions, housing institutions, export support, tourism, bridges, agricultural finance, and thirty other random Crown things… All made viable for approximately the equivalent of the cost born by Canadians to support chicken, egg, and milk producers.

And, it's not like this is our entire food supply. Massive error bars here, but based on the average consumption numbers for Canadians in the egg, poultry, and dairy categories, which, the dairy part is admittedly quite fuzzy... But my back of the napkin math suggests that's somewhere between 10-20% of the caloric/nutritional needs of Canadians, so it's not like it's securing the majority of the food supply for Canadians, we're very much still dependent on the global food production.

Ultimately, I believe what it comes down to, is that a different system that would likely be more effective at achieving similar outcomes, would force some level of support onto the federal government and hit the budget. Whereas the current system allows the government to say, we've created a system that doesn't depend on government subsidies! Yes, we've done that, but it's effectively a regressive tax that hits consumers at the checkout.

Anyhow, I am not an expert on food supply, so I don't know what exactly a better solution would look like. But, we're currently all in on a system that was developed in the 1970s, and it has a feeling of 'too big to fail'. That to me, is a recipe for horrible inefficiency, and given the magnitude of the numbers, I can't help but feel that we'd be well served to take a deeper look at the situation and consider whether there's a better way to achieve the outcomes at lower cost to Canadians. Hell, even if we determine, nope switching over to a subsidy model paid by the government would cost the exact same amount for the same outcome, at least it would achieve a more equitable outcome for Canadians in switching from a regressive to a progressive tax.

I'm just saying, and I know this is an estimate, but if you take the $244/annum/pp estimate from studies as to the cost of supply chain management... you're looking at about $10 billion per year.

Broadly, I think the goal of our supply chain management is to preserve a robust domestic dairy, poultry, and egg industry, maintain emergency production capacity, support rural communities, smooth out extreme price volatility, and ensure farmers can survive downturns.

I'd just be very surprised, if we asked ourselves, ok, how can we most efficiently achieve the above, and actually tried to solve the above problems from first principles today, we'd land on the current solution. It just feels like we should be able to achieve a much better outcome for $10 billion dollars, or we should be able to achieve the equivalent of the current outcome for far less than $10 billion.

I just don't like how opaque the whole thing is and I don't think most Canadians have an understanding of the impact on their pocketbook.

I know I was not alone in being wired that way, obviously not a conversation you have with random strangers, but in conversation with people I know well, it would appear it's fairly common in the world we live in. Or perhaps I've just got a uniquely disfunctional group of friends hah. But, work on the Meaning Crisis as John Vervaeke calls it, increases in mental health issues, and declining birth rates, lead me to believe this is endemic.

I've been fortunate to have been able to spend the past 15 months fucking off and looking inside to wrestle with this and I'm fairly convinced our HumanOS or whatever you want to call it, the ego, is no longer fit for purpose for a lot of people in modernity.

Before I go further, I'll acknowledge that our ego has served us well for most of human history, it's driven progress to this point that has, for a large swath of the population, eliminated hunger, and we're much more secure than we've ever been generally.

But, I'd argue it's become increasingly problematic since somewhere around The Enlightenment / Scientific Revolution, very problematic in the past 100 years or so, and quite frankly, supercharged since the advent of the internet, smart phones, and social media.

Our ancient ancestors were influenced by people in their immediate orbit, and it was a symbiotic relationship of sorts, everyone had a vested interest in the success of those around them and vice versa. As our society has evolved, this alignment has dwindled, and with the advent of the internet, we're constantly being blasted by attempts to influence us, that no longer have our best interest at heart, but our programming hasn't caught up.

So now, this programming that once provided a stable sense of self, is now constantly being blasted with conflicting ideas of the self, it's increasingly difficult to keep the inner and outer world in alignment, and well, the ego is an engine that is burning up. For a lot of us, this manifests with the negative self talk that we'll all do anything we can to avoid, and one of the most effective ways to do so, is to avoid being idle, anything we can do to keep the mind focused outward rather than inward.

Those of us that are alive today don't have the luxury of waiting for evolutionary pressures to 'solve' this problem for future generations. In my personal experience, the solution seems to be waking up to these machinations of ego. Don't fully understand how it works, but it seems that awareness of said machinations can act as a recursive loop to silence them.

Even if we could completely rewrite our programming with each new generation, think about how much the world changes in a single lifetime these days.

Also, not everyone has the same values system. Your post implies that you value minimizing criminality over civil liberties, which, fine, everyone has their own value system. But, other people clearly use different weights in their values, and view this as an unacceptable trade off.

In my case it turned out that all my discontent and not fitting in was a blessing rather than a curse. Kept me untethered so when I finally hit my breaking point I could look inside until I found peace.

Took almost 40 years to reach my breaking point, but I've pretty much done a factory reset on my internal OS in the past year and a bit, been wonderful.

edit: Ok, I have been reflecting for a bit. This article really irked me and I realize now it's because I see a lot of a former version of myself in it.

Anyhow, to the author, I implore you to take a step back and look at what your mind is doing. Humans love prediction, and we love optimization, I get it. But, you're effectively rewriting history, and holding yourself to an impossible standard of perfectly optimizing past decisions with future information. As a result, you're sucking the joy out of pursuit that you seem to love.

I know it's easier said than done to not have your mind work against you like this. But, I think you might benefit from taking a step back and asking what your actual goals are in the work you're doing, and what sufficient value to justify the $100/mo subscription looks like in terms of output or work. Playing the token consumption optimization game is a losing battle that has turned a free gift into a source of angst.