| HN Mirror

> Utter, pompous nonsense. And I say that as a software engineer.

One hundred years ago maybe. Not today. And the Exxon scientist/Deere engineer is meant to be read in a prototypical way. The point is, modern food security depends on the proper functioning of a lage, inter-dependent system.

It would be pompous to claim that the average software/petro engineer understands farming better than a farmer. But I didn't make that claim. I made the claim that some of these folks understand a related industry that is as important to US food security as is the actual act of farming a particular piece of land.

I also provided concrete and specific ways in which Farmers rely on a larger social fabric and, in particular, engineering/scientific/financial expertise that tends to concentrate in large cities.

Instead of calling names, provide counter-points those concrete and specific dependencies. Explain how a modern modern farmer could do his work, in an economically and ecologically sustainable way, without those other industries.

Also, in addition to the dependencies I've already pointed out, I'll provide an actual counter-example to your claim. Plenty of countries with many more farmers per capita than the USA have far worse food security than the USA, even given excellent farmland. So clearly, farmers are only part of the story!

And also a counter-example in the other direction: plenty of countries that don't use insane gerrymandering to give a minority of voters out-sized political influence have excellent agricultural systems. So clearly, farmers don't need minority rule in order for a society to enjoy a stable agricultural sector.

So no, we are not going to starve if rural folks lose their ability to push policy on abortion and bathroom usage. Both rationally and empirically, the claims you're making about the supremacy of the farmer's vote don't hold up to observed reality.

> What they don't deserve to be is permanently dictated to because their profession requires that they live in less population dense areas.

That's true. But they also don't deserve more say because they live in a less dense area, which is what you were originally claiming.

And even if farmers did have some unique secret sauce understanding of the inter-connected system that ensures US food security, your argument still does not justify giving rural folks in general an out-sized voice in governance. You do not make the case that the average rural McDonalds employee should have more voting power than the average urban McDonalds employee. The proposition that your argument actually defends is that that (farm) land ownership/stewardship should determine voting power.

Ew.

Each person should have one vote, equally weighted, and without respect to geographic location. No?

> What percentage of people living in New York have worked a farm? I think you're pulling your conclusions out of thin air.

Well, New York has a lot of agriculture ;-)

WRT NYC, That's not the correct question. The correct question is: what percentage of people in New York understand OR[1] contribute to some industry or process that's critical to US food security? That's a good question, and sounds difficult to answer with any specificity, so I stand by my original claim: "a lot".

[1] Mere understanding is sufficient here, because your claim was that farmers need a bigger electoral voice to ensure food security. My claim is that many people in cities understand what's necessary for a functioning agricultural system, and will vote accordingly (seeing as they like eating and all)