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54 points pythonic_hell | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.201s | source
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thisislife2 ◴[] No.43684799[source]
I can certainly understand the government predicament around the world on why they are so hesitant to give up pesticides. Modern agriculture today is unfortunately heavily dependent on pesticides and fertilizers. Before India become one of the top 5 producers in the world and became self-sufficient to feed its billion+ population, we literally begged for food from other countries. The humiliation of doing so, and political price we had to pay to get such "food aid" was instrumental in driving us to become self-sufficient. I doubt whether any politician really has the political will to experiment with how farming is done today because of such international and domestic political factors. I guess the slow death of someof its citizens through pesticide-linked diseases is certainly more acceptable for them (in the cost-benefit analysis they do) than even contemplating or dealing with the uncertainty of the political disruptions any shortage of food or increase in food prices can cause domestically, not to mention the international repercussion of having to be dependent on another country to feed your population.
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Imustaskforhelp ◴[] No.43685705[source]
I am misquoting a famous quote so pardon me but

a revolution is three meals away.

Whereas pesticides death are so much easier to control since they don't happen simultaneously, they happen way less and is overall net positive.

Accidents happen on roads with cars, that doesn't mean we should ban cars though (though in all honesty, maybe we should all use buses and use less cars, maybe this is a shitty argument?)

I am personally a two wheeler electric kind of guy since electric cars are way too expensive and I actually want to have cheap transport and I am comfortable for 99% use cases otherwise for the rare cases, I might use Uber and I am still net positive.

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1. SideburnsOfDoom ◴[] No.43685862[source]
> I am misquoting a famous quote so pardon me but "a revolution is three meals away."

Funnily enough, I was looking at this saying recently. There are several variations so it's hard to find the "one true version".

The canonical version is more likely: "There are only nine meals between mankind and anarchy. " - Alfred Henry Lewis, 1906

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Alfred_Henry_Lewis

Implying that roughly three days of total breakdown of essential systems would cause societal breakdown. One day wouldn't do it, but it wouldn't last a week.

Is it true? That's not for me to say, and lets not run the experiment. The versions where the quote is "three meals" and the version where Lenin or Stalin said it don't appear to be accurate.