Gas Prices

[Atrocities]

Cars get you from point A to point B. Here everything is so spread out that walking or biking it just isn't practicle unless you live within 10 miles of your destination. Where I live it rains 85% of the year so that factors into things as well.

Just invent a cheap, renewable, environmentally friendly, low cost fuel source that works in all current gas or desiel powered vehicels and call it Good Gas. This way we can tell the Arabs to go with Ala and not have to interfer in their interal business and the way they live.

[El_Phil]

Xrati said:
Thanks Baron, that was an interesting article. I believe that all corporations, including agro-business are going to price themselves out of the market. As they become larger they keep adding on more office jobs and lose the extra profit they may have gained from growth. They keep blaming THE WORKERS while most big companies are so top heavy they can no longer profit until they reduce the non-product related jobs. This article confirms it on these farms that use horses. They are tripling their profits (far better then corporate farms) by getting away from mechanization of their farm equipment which is reducing their maint. bills and no overhead.

**bangs head into wall**

So going back to Agricultural revloution farming is the way forward is it?

So 90 hours work for 100 boxes of corn is better than 2.5 hours work for the same amount? That's the difference mechanisation makes. Yields of corn are tricky, I assume these farmers do you fertiliser, pesticides etc? If they do they shold get good yeilds, if if they don't it will be far lower.

Anyway with a small farm you can spend hours on one acre, when your farming thousands of Hectares of land in fields bigger than most of these horse farms it just isn't practical.

Oh and that's triple per acre NOT triples profits, if its true. Which I doubt as its from a self confessed bias source who has no reason to be positive about agri-biz.

The corporation still has so many advantages over small scale that they aren't going out of buisness. All those extra office jobs aren't for fun, they're what the law requires. Health and Safety, pensions, tax deductions, etc. No-one wants them, but you have to have them to stay in buisness.

I would put money that is the US version of the health and safety boys turned up on any of those farms they would tear them apart. They are going to be breaking dozens of rules and regulations. I'm not saying they're dangerous, but I bet they don't have risk assessments, impact plans and all the paperwork a company has to have by law.

All that paperwork is a waste of space, but that doesn't make it any less a legal requirement. One man and his horse can hide under the radar and not bother with it, a large corporation can't.

[Xrati]

ZERO gas = ZERO mechanization = Zero Food
Most large companies now hire through contracted 'Head-Hunters'.
Pensions are being forfeited in place of bankruptcy.
OSHA plans are administered by department supervisors along with the workers. They are overseen by outside consultants.

Horses are the future unless you want to go to a camel?

[El_Phil]

Bloody hell, petrol gets a bit more expensive and suddenly the world has ended. There is still decades of oil, at least, left. What's next? We're all going to have to live 'Fallout' style?

Horses are not the future, at all. I doubt anyone bar those hores farmers family actually get fed from the food they make. Even then it requires someone, somewhere, to do a real job to buy that food from the farmer.

It's a nice story, but even mechanised farming is very hard work, during harvest and planting time at least. For a horse farmer it'll be back breaking, or you're farming bugger all land.

You hire head-hunters so you don't hire an internal HR goon to do it. If the firm goes down the pan, there is no pension. OSHA is an evil invention, its just about paperwork nothing else.

[Xrati]

El_Phil says: "OSHA is an evil invention, its just about paperwork nothing else." Good point. I agree!

El_Phil says: "There is still decades of oil, at least, left." So you have a gauge that lets you know how much we have left? Oil consumption is growing exponentially, we will continue to use more oil then we can produce. With all the uses for oil products we need to find another source for transportation. Are we going to end up waiting for the last drop of oil to be pumped from this planet before we look for an alternate source? It's a win, win situation to get away from oil. While we may never see the end of oil use in our life there is only so much left in the entire world!

[El_Phil]

I'm not saying keep going till it runs out, but equally don't luck at misleading solutions. Farming with horses is nice for local TV items, but it's not a serious idea.

Oh there are decades of oil, for a given value of oil. If you include coal to oil plants and oil shale/sands (which I know are pricey, although perhaps not now compared to $70/barrel) then that exponentialy increases oil stocks.

[Atrocities]

Steam power - nuff said.

[El_Phil]

But what's powering the steam engine? Coal! But we've only got lots of coal, so it'll run out and we'll all die slowly and painfully unless we all become vegans and have solar powered Sinclar C5s!

[Xrati]

LOL I've just realized that this thread is starting to resemble that "Monty Python" episode about a Department of Argument!!! (something along those lines)

I think 'nuff said" covers it. Well just have to solve all the worlds problems some other time. Till then "Hi Ho Silver!"

[Atrocities]

"But what powers the steam engine?"

Presto Logs!