XPost: alt.politics   
   From: k8mn@frontiernet.net   
      
   Nate Edel wrote:   
   > In rec.arts.sf.misc Dave Heil  wrote:   
   >> Nate Edel wrote:   
   >>> That's easy, in part, because we've got the FDA to insure that one of the   
   >>> questions you have to ask when buying butter is not "which one of these is   
   >>> least likely to poison me" and you have a reasonable hope that if it says   
   >>> butter, it actually is.   
   >> Oh my!  I've lived in many places where I bought butter from a farmer or   
   >> beef straight from a farmer.   
   >   
   > Both vastly less likely to poison you(/make you sick) and to be what they're   
   > sold as when compared to butter from a factory or beef from a meatpacking   
   > plant in a case absent regulation and inspection for either.   
      
   That might seem to be a safe guess but it doesn't jibe with reality.   
   Guinea-Bissau is a country where there are thousands of things which can   
   sicken or poison a person.  A guy walking down the road might find a 55   
   gallon drum which had held a toxic substance.  He then takes it home,   
   rinses it with contaminated water and uses it to make cashew wine.   
      
   Beef cattle may eat in contaminated fields.  A cow may have cancer.   
   There are no inspections of any kind of beef sold to the populace.   
   Local milk in Bissau is not pasteurized.   
      
   There is a bakery in Bissau which turns out the city's bread.  It was   
   typical to purchase a loaf with weevils baked right into the bread.   
      
   There is no water treatment in Bissau.   
      
   > Indeed, both somewhat less likely to make you sick than the factory stuff,   
   > even WITH FDA regulation.  Which avails you very little, if you don't have   
   > access to the farmers.   
      
   I've pointed out that there are places with no equivalent of the FDA.   
   We Americans have it very good.  There is government regulation and   
   inspection.  Our food is magnitudes safer than in many other places.   
      
   >> Have people really become so timid and isolated from the source of   
   >> production that they worry about which product is less likely to poison   
   >> them?   
      
   > Nothing to do with timid, but yes, people were rapidly becoming isolated   
   > from the sources of production around the end of the 19th Century.   
      
   I think it does have something to do with being timid.   
      
   > The   
   > US became majority urban around, oh, 1920?   
      
   I've lived in towns where it was quite common for the butter and egg man   
   to visit homes each week.  There were also fellows going door-to-door   
   selling tomatoes and other vegetables.  Nowadays, many towns and cities   
   have farmers markets.   
      
   I retired to a rural area.  It is possible to buy beef, mutton, pork,   
   vegetables and the like directly from a farmer at prices much lower than   
   supermarket prices.  The beef is not inspected by anyone other than the   
   slaughterhouse owners who kill, cut, wrap and freeze the animal.   
      
   > Ever read _The Jungle_?   It's fiction, and pretty much outright propaganda,   
   > but there's a fair bit of fact mixed in.   
      
   I assume you mean the Upton Sinclair tome.  I'm not a fan of socialists   
   or socialist authors so I've given it a pass.   
      
   >>> I don't think our implementation of it is great, but it could be a LOT   
   >>> worse... in general, I think a mixed economy is the right approach   
      
   >> We in the United States do not not yet live under socialism.  I mean to   
   >> spend my remaining years ensuring that we never do so.   
   >   
   > We're less likely to "live under socialism" in either a good or bad way   
   > than we are to suddenly move to an utterly laissez-faire libertarian system   
   > or to go back to the days of the robber barons. Neither one seems terribly   
   > likely.   
      
   I don't believe that there is a good way to live under socialism.  That   
   doesn't mean that I believe that all social programs are a bad idea.   
   There should always be a safety net for the poor.  We should never make   
   the poor so comfortable that they have no desire to work toward pulling   
   themselves out of their situation.  We have an entire underclass of   
   people living in our nation who believe that government owes them a living.   
      
   > The slippery slope is largely a myth made up to scare little children, and   
   > there is no longer a Soviet Union who even MIGHT conceivably impose it on us   
   > by force.   
      
   I'm not suggesting that socialism would ever be forced upon us.  I'm   
   suggesting that there are mainstream forces at work to lead us into it   
   *voluntarily*.  I'll state that I believe that many, but not all, in the   
   Democratic Party are part of those forces.  They are backed by some   
   groups who are much farther left than the party itself.  You'll see some   
   of those elements protesting the Democratic National Convention.   
      
      
   Dave Heil   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)