| HN Mirror

>With the terrifying state the planet is in, we should all be upset.

Eh, really?

What I find so amusing about people like you and me (and OP) whining about how imperfect the world is that the world has gotten so much better, even in our lifetimes. And yeah, if you are a white American-born male, it might not seem that way- in fact, the world might not have gotten better for you. If you aren't skilled, it almost certainly has gotten worse for you; you've got to compete against a huge pool of people that were simply not in the running before. But for the masses of humanity that weren't lucky enough to be born an American white guy? eh, I think things are better than they were. And really, things aren't so bad for us, either. Maybe not quite as cushy as they were; but eh, I'm still a long ways from pretending to be Chinese, or even wanting to learn a language other than American English for business reasons. Things aren't so bad, at least from where I sit.

But yeah. Getting upset, first, takes a lot of personal energy; and quite often is dangerous.

more to the point, quite often, it's counterproductive. The food riots all over the middle east? (I'm sorry. Look at food prices[1] Then tell me, with a straight face, that poor people are okay with the cost of living going up 4x, but have a problem with a high-school talent-show quality video. I mean, I guess it's possible that it really is the video? but it sure seems unlikely, compared to the much more reasonable explanation that people get unhappy and violent when they can't get enough to eat.)

I mean, sure, they are upset, it's difficult to afford food. A perfectly understandable thing to be upset about. But, is this going to help them? probably not. I mean, it's going to be bad for us, too... but for us? bad means paying a little bit more in taxes, maybe, or dealing with fewer public services. Worst case, we experience more inflation than we'd like. For them? I suspect it will be much worse. Yeah, getting upset isn't helping them. (One could argue that it's actively hurting them even if we don't retaliate. We are a major exporter of grain and soy. By destabilizing us, they are destabilizing one source of food, and thus driving global prices up further. Of course, especially in the case of Egypt, well, there's something else going on; Throughout history, Egypt has been a major exporter of grain. I don't know what happened to cause that to change, or if our presence in the area has anything to do with it, but it certainly is... an odd situation that Egypt can't even feed itself. It's possible that if they could get us to leave, they would be better off. I'm certainly not in any position to weigh in either way on that one.)

I mean, I'm not saying you should never work to change anything, but quite often? pretending that there is not a problem does less damage than getting upset and 'taking action' without really understanding the situation or the consequences of those actions.

But yeah; all I'm trying to say is that before you "take action" on a global issue where you don't have all the facts (and that is any global issue; none of us have all the facts. On most issues, even if you combined all human knowledge, we'd still have missing pieces.) you should step back, and make sure you aren't firebombing an American embassy, if you know what I mean.

For example, some suggest that part of why agricultural commodity prices are through the roof is demand for biofuel. Sure, biofuel is a great thing- the people working on that are trying to solve important problems that are real problems. But... as an unintended consequence, they are driving up the price of food.

Go look at graph 1 again. god damn. The thing is, for me? And probably for you, grains are so cheap that they could go up 10x without really altering what I pay for my prepared food. I mean, even now, you can get a bushel of soy for $17. A bushel is a lot. like 35 litres. 150 cups. A metric fuck-tonne of tofu. Man, that sounds so cheap to me. I mean, I could go work at McDonalds for a month and buy enough soy and rice to live for a year, easy. I mean, in theory, I could support myself on one day a year of consulting work, if I had a place to sleep and cook.

but... that same bushel? set you back about five bucks a few years back. I mean, imagine living somewhere that the actual cost of the soy or the wheat or whatever your food was made out of was what you paid for? where four hundred bucks really is your yearly budget? I don't think the biofuel folks gave that too much thought.

(Of course, many people believe that the commodity price inflation has more to do with qe3 than with biofuels. The fact that metals have been inflating right alongside the edible commodities would support this theory. I'm just throwing out biofuels as an example of a rational and well-meaning attempt to solve one problem could cause another problem. I have no proof that it /did/ cause that problem that it could have caused.)

Really, from that point of view? OP's whining about small problems, maybe, is the sort of thing OP ought to be worrying about and focusing on? These are problems that can actually be fixed, and that can bring a small amount of happiness and productivity to the world, and at the very least, probably won't make anything worse.

Personally, I think OP was being a little dramatic. But that's okay. I mean, I actually had the same problem opening a word file today, but I was using LibreOffice, so I figured that was the problem and made the sender send me a text version. I probably would have been a little steamed if I had paid four hundred bucks for office.

[1]http://www.indexmundi.com/commodities/?commodity=soybean-mea...