[quesera]

Obviously you're being glib, but the truth is that a lot of the "old" production and supply lines no longer exist. So ordering from afar (Amazon or its moral equivalent) has become necessary for some basics.

(If you're suggesting that farmers and ranchers should go back to the days before production of plastics, hard goods, petroleum products, and rubber materials...well then they will cease to be farmers or ranchers, because 1700s-era tech won't survive market forces today.)

Similarly, no one can build computers in the US any more. Apple's Mac Pro project is interesting, but very low volume and mostly just an assembly effort.

[dylan604]

>Obviously you're being glib, but the truth is that a lot of the "old" production and supply lines no longer exist.

I would counter that "old" farmers were able to use the seed from the current crop to plant for the next season so that it was self-sustaining. Now, with modified seeds from places like Monsanto where the plant from the seeds of this year's crop will not produce fruit. This forces you to need to buy new seeds each year.

I'm also suggesting that we go back to planting more than one crop per farm, and then even switching which part of the farm each plant is grown in. Crop rotation is such a huge concept that we've just thrown away. We can still use "plastic" and even "smart" equipment. We don't have to go back to stone age tools, that's just daft. We had that before July 5 1994 too.

[drdeadringer]

Long ago and far away I had an idea for a short story that touched on these issues of seeds gene-modified to be one-yield-only and multi-cropping. I fizzled on the story but not so hard that I shouldn't be able to pick it up again.

I'm glad for the research I did 15 years ago; I still encounter situations where it becomes relevant, e.g. this discussion here and why certain water pipes are colored purple [or other colors, but at this time I remember only what purple means].

[quesera]

You're right of course, and my comment was oversimplified.

But supply chains for agriculture are a lot more complicated than sourcing seeds.

I agree with you that the current state is unsustainable. On a more general level, again, it's similar in manufacturing. Seeds or other raw materials, tractors or other specialized equipment.

Globalization adds and subtracts different kinds of resilience. Specialization only subtracts resilience.

Neither of our points has much to do with AWS though. :)