Why is greed always looked at as a purely evil motivator?

[Kenny]

I always hear people talking about greed as if without it the world would be a beautiful utopia where everyone would be happy and lead perfect and wonderful lives.  I don't understand this thinking.  While I won't deny that greed has led to a great deal of horrible things throughout history, it's also responsible for pretty much everything good we have.

 

Look at your local supermarket.  There is significantly more than enough food there to feed everyone living within several miles, with more food trucked in on a daily basis, because thousands of farmers, packagers, truck drivers, entrepreneurs, and who knows how many others, coordinate to make, process, package, and ship the food, all of whom have the exact same thought in mind; make money.  You don't get this kind of effective coordination without the people involved being personally motivated to get their jobs done properly.

 

Throughout history, millions, maybe even billions of people have died from thirst.  Today, we get an infinite amount of water pumped into our homes, and we don't even have to think about it aside from the monthly water bill.  Why?  Because there are people whose paycheck is dependent on water making it through underground pipes and into your home.

 

How about this fucking snow?  Thousands of tons of society-crippling frozen death falls from the sky, and before the storm clouds roll in we have trucks dumping sand and salt on all the roads, and when the snow falls we have snow plows roll out and make the roads usable and safe.  Why?  Because every town has an asshole politician or two that know that they won't get re-elected unless they get someone to organize all of that.

 

Your favorite book?  Printed, packaged, shipped around the country, and possibly even written, because some people wanted to make a lot of money off of it.

 

Vaccines.  Antibiotics.  Cancer treatments.  Your computer.  Your favorite video-game.  Your car.  Your home.  The clothes you're wearing.  The condom that broke and got your mother pregnant with you.  Every necessity in your life.  Every luxury in your life.  All of these things exist simply because someone, somewhere, wanted a fat stack of cash in their pocket.

 

Basically, what I'm trying to say is that greed fucking rocks, and stop hating on it.

[Kenny]

In what way(s) does the food industry "ruin" the environment, exactly?

[Übereil]

I'm going to let Sarah answer that one, since she's the one who made the claim that it is.

[Sarah Norman]

Well, I could give you a few examples but I guess I'll start with beef because that's the one that really grinds my gears.

First of all, evolution created a beautiful process in which cows eat grass, their manure fertilizes the soil, they eat more grass etc. It's very efficient. However, people wanted more cows to grow faster that were fatter. Now, wanting more cows in order to feed more people is not a bad thing, but the way that it's been executed is not good. Cows spend their first couple of weeks of life on a feedlot. Here they actually eat grass. But they are weaned from their mother's milk way too early and it's pretty traumatizing for both parties. Then, the cows get shipped to a different lot. On this lot they feed the cows a mixture that is mostly corn. Cows are not supposed to eat corn. In fact, corn makes them sick. Their stomach's pH is naturally neutral, but corn is acidic. They can't eat it. So, they put antibiotics in the food. Yuck. They should not need antibiotics to be alive. America eats sick cows. (Some people also put bits of beef fat in the mixture which can lead to mad cow disease and is also...very wrong)

So, as the cows are eating this food that makes them sick and staying alive because of their antibiotics they poop...a LOT. But when they do, it isn't nice manure. Ideally, they would be able to sell the manure to neighboring farmers, but they can't because this manure (because it's loaded with traces of antibiotics and all the other crap that cows get fed) will kill crops. So the cows stand in it or they drain it into some lakes. In one lot in Iowa it all drained into a lake. Yuck. Meanwhile, the cows are constantly standing in a couple of inches of their own crap. Now, when they get cleaned some of their crap is so caked onto their hide that they can't really get it off. This can sometimes lead to E.coli in humans.

So, the food industry took a perfectly lovely evolutionary process and ruined it. Then they used TONS of energy to process and transport a food that makes them sick and can make humans sick as well.

[Kenny]

There are less than 5000 cases of E. Coli a year, out of hundreds of millions of Americans who eat beef.  Not a significant enough number to be cause for alarm, especially considering how many of those cases could be prevented with proper preparation.

 

And the rest has nothing to do with how the food industry is "killing the environment", just how much a cow's life sucks.

[Sarah Norman]

Not a significant number? It shouldn't be happening at all. Ever.

And I would argue that it does. They changed the cow's life very dramatically and it's only harming the environment with the huge amounts of unusable manure and all of the energy that's used for transportation. So, yes. It's harming the environment. That and a ton of other processes linked to the food industry.

[Kenny]

Not a significant number? It shouldn't be happening at all. Ever

 

Making sure that no bit of food ever gets anyone sick is completely unfeasible.

 

Also, I misread the statistics earlier.  Apparently, each year, 5000 Americans total are killed by food-caused illnesses, many (possibly even most) which could have been prevented with adequate preparation and cooking.

 

E. Coli kills about 20 people a year on average.  

 

And I would argue that it does. They changed the cow's life very dramatically

 

Again, sucks for the cow, but making cow's lives' sad isn't "killing the environment".

 

and it's only harming the environment with the huge amounts of unusable manure and all of the energy that's used for transportation.

 

I've been researching it, and I can't find any proof that cow poop is killing the environment.  Feel free to back that up with some facts, and maybe even a source or two.

 

As for transportation, please show me some evidence that the transportation of food burns enough fuel and creates enough CO2 that your assertion that doing so is "killing the environment" is true.

[Sarah Norman]

http://www.globalissues.org/article/240/beef

I think this will give you more than enough information. I was using manure as an example, not as the sole example. There are many things that, when added together, are taking a huge toll on the environment.

[Sarah Norman]

This is also pretty informative:

http://michaelpollan.com/articles-archive/power-steer/

[Kenny]

Yes, those are lovely links, but if I wanted to search for the answer myself I would have googled it.

 

So for the fourth time, please, pretty pretty please, explain to me how the food industry is "killing the environment".

[Übereil]

I've been researching it, and I can't find any proof that cow poop is killing the environment. Feel free to back that up with some facts, and maybe even a source or two.

...but when she posts links you go:

Yes, those are lovely links, but if I wanted to search for the answer myself I would have googled it. So for the fourth time, please, pretty pretty please, explain to me how the food industry is "killing the environment".

I have a suggestion if you want an explanation: read the fucking links. I'm pretty sure they explain it, considering she posted them once you said you wanted an explanation.

[Kenny]

I have a suggestion if you want an explanation: read the fucking links. I'm pretty sure they explain it, considering she posted them once you said you wanted an explanation.

 

I'm not going to read through those two incredibly long walls of text to find the few bits of relevant data.

[Sarah Norman]

Maybe it's a bigger problem than I can state in a concise paragraph. Sorry. Big problems call for big explanations. Don't patronize me for trying to explain something to you. You asked for facts, I gave them to you. If you don't want to take the time to learn the facts...then I guess that is your choice.