Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by mistrial9 1280 days ago
> Believe it or not governments have a pretty strong interest in knowing this sort of thing so the data is certainly there!

professional researcher speaking -- your elementary-school approach is for someone else

> I last checked a few years ago, farms employing little or no outside laborers were a small minority.

news to no one

> You can twiddle with it if you want but to me that seems like a pretty reasonable definition of "hobby farming."

dismissal with faint praise, check

> The ideal of the small, self-sufficient, productive and profitable family farm is just that, an ideal and to a large extent a myth.

you now speak for all people in all ages, (edit) confident? If you want to show up as a voice of reason, you will need to show some better understanding of economic contexts over the last thousand years, not the latest NYTimes

1 comments

Lotta shit talk but not a single refutation of any of these points. I said I'm not an expert and you said you are, care to show us?
among attorneys, this is a "burden of proof" moment. So now the burden of proof is on me, to show the history of farming economics. hmm

I will offer this -- economics as a science was invented to explain food trade, not the other way around! Food trade is the basis of empires, armies and abundance.. speaking of which.. while "family farming is a myth" the violence of armed warfare, its destruction and death, is not a "myth" .. maybe those humans who chose to wage war might have literally killed off the ones who attempted to wage "family farms"? History is written by the winners so, "family farms" are a myth while War gets daily headlines and new fresh billions in weapons and monetization ?

The burden of proof to refute that "family farming is a myth" in the face of daily war news in a place that is renown for fertile soils?

rural Mississippi might be part of this discussion, but so are the plains of Canada, and Argentina, and Eastern Europe. I have no chance of accurately describing histories in South East Asia, big parts of Africa or South Asian subcontinent.. but those people have "family farms" right now?

let's agree to set aside the personal indignations -- this topic is massive and I suggest, not at all solved.