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I have bracketed your responses too.
[I wouldn't think that having a small home garden would require all this, do you? ]
Yes, it does. Although a person can live off of the product of less than 2 acres, that requires intensive fertilization, pesticide use, modern grains bred for excess productivity (and, as a side effect are often sterile, meaning you can't be self supporting), and specialization. I will hazard that most people own less than one acre of land. Thus, AT MINIMUM, we would have to have different land distribution if each individual was to raise enough food to feed themselves. Distances between households would increase, which makes it harder to get any cash crop you raise to a suitable market.
Note that this sort of process greatly reduces the variety of foodstocks you will have available, which greatly increases the chance of malnutrition and vitamin deficiency. This is not mentioning the additional land required for livestock. Even under the best of commercial conditions, chickens (one of the "cheapest" meats to raise industrially) require about a pound and a half of grain for each pound of usable protein you'll get out of them. Again, to attain this rate you have to have commercial cages, temperature regulation, modern breeds (which aren't very hardy, which leads to...), medications, supplements and today's high quality animal-grade foodstuffs.
So yes, I do think that a "small home garden" sufficient to support a person would require this. The hang up in your scenario is not that it requires all this stuff for a small home garden - it's that it requires all this stuff for ONE PERSON to handle, raise and grow ALL the food they eat year-round. God forbid you become sick during a critical time (planting or harvesting). Or the weather is bad, or the grasshoppers overproduce, or a mystery fungus lands on your crops like blighted all my zucchini plants last year.
[Doctors and medications can be replaced with natural remedies. Education is a nice and noble goal and we do need more of it and less national defense. Again, I don't think that having a small personal garden in the back yard would lead to all this. ]
No, having a small personal garden in the back yard doesn't lead to all this, but a widespread attempt to have EVERY PERSON (that includes the teachers! They're people too, and so are the students) grow, raise and handle their own food, all the food, DOES lead to this. Natural remedies. Ha. The reason why we have medicine is because in general it works better than nature. Death is natural. Tuberculosis is natural. Small pox is natural. Malnutrition is natural. Death by exposure is natural. "Natural" does not automatically mean "good".
[Those factory workers don't need more work, they need more income. It's seems that their too damm busy working instead of demanding an income.]
You do understand the link between working and getting an income, right?
[Even a small garden produces more food that one person or even a family can reasonably eat. If each of us would donate, even 1 hour per week, nobody would go hungry. Best of all, there would be no profit to pay for, just cost and labor, if applicable. ]
No, a small garden does not produce more food than a person could eat in a year. As I've remarked and the current numbers show, it takes about two acres to feed a SINGLE person for a year. The average family of four requires at least eight acres. Back in the day when we had less yield and larger families, it was judged that a person needed 20-30 acres to raise enough for their family to eat, plus 10-20 acres for saleable livestock and cash crop. "40 acres and a mule" - remember that from history class?
Plus, if we're only donating an hour per week (or five hours, or whatever), then we aren't the only person handling, growing and raising our food. Already we are at the mercy of the other people who are donating their efforts.
Profit exists to cover times when things go wrong. It exists to fund research into better ways of doing things. It exists to enable investments in capital, be they a new plow, a tractor or a good draft horse. Even in the most subsistence agriculture, you need to be making a profit and laying up enough extra stores to guard against calamity. If you don't, then the first bad year will kill you.
[I would generally agree, providing that these people care about you. Those "butt scratching profit pimps" only care about what's in your wallet. If you got the money, they got the time. ]
Money represents effort and smarts. That's why it matters. It is a high-tech barter system, where when I give the grocer $5 for some apples and a bag of lettuce, he can take that $5 and apply it to his lighting bill, or pay the clerk for spending time minding the store and checking customers. It's more convenient to use dollars than rutabagas or salmon or conch shells. Money is easily divisible and most people agree on what it's worth on a national scale. That people want money is unsurprising. Most people want to eat. They want a warm place to sleep at night. Thus they can either spend their effort and smarts to have these things, or they can spend money (which is the same thing). If I can spend my effort and smarts on something I do well - say, contracting - and get someone else who is skilled in house building or crop growing to spend their effort on that enterprise, then I can take a part of my salary and trade with them.
I've already mentioned why everyone needs a profit. It's to cover for catastrophe. It's also used to raise the standard of living - that old pleasure principle. I could eat oatmeal for cheap or artisan bread for expensive. If whatever I do is valued real high and I get paid a lot for it, then I'll have enough profit to cover catastrophe plus have my artisan bread. There's nothing evil, butt-scratching or pimp-ish about wanting to have extra money to blow on the good life.
Mary Baker East Side
I have a garden and I grew up on a farm.
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