On Wed, 2004-03-17 at 22:53, Miguel de Icaza wrote: <snip/> > So at this point, you might want to consider a career switch. Growing > corn and pigs seems to be a fairly safe industry.
You would think so! :-) But obviously, you'd be wrong if you've been paying any attention to slashdot for the past few years. Monseto (spelling?) has been trying to patent genes, splicing them into plants, and selling plants *under license*. As a farmer, you are NOT allowed to follow the several millennium-old practice of *saving the seeds from the previous years crop to use in the following year*. When using genetically-engineered seeds, anyway. Of course, nature knows nothing of patents, so the genetically-engineered plants cross-pollinate with other plants in the surrounding area, thus violating the patent. And wind can spread the seeds onto surrounding fields, causing *others* to violate the patent. There has been a suite over this in Canada a few years ago, though I'm not sure how it ended (or even if it has). So growing plants isn't a safe practice anymore, either. And as for pigs, big-business seems to have taken over, leading to numerous environmental effects (giant shit-holes, horrible smell, etc.), and there is little room for individual farmers anymore. 60-Minutes has covered stores about this. Though that's true for most farming now anyway. The individual farmer can't make a living anymore; it's all big-business. Lots has been written about both these issues; Google should bring up lots of articles. The only safe industries are ones where (1) patent's can't apply, which is hard to do since government keeps expanding the areas that patents can apply to (business-method patents, anyone?), and (2) you don't need to be gigantic to avoid fearing "death" via lawsuits. All that comes to mind for me are the legal-related (lawyers, politicians, police), taxes (IRS and related), and death-related (coroners, undertakers, etc.). And education (teachers, etc.). And... - Jon _______________________________________________ Mono-list maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.ximian.com/mailman/listinfo/mono-list
