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[Doomblade187]

We're not debating that demand is lower, Reelya. We're not saying that needs to be fixed. All we're saying is that some of the milk that would otherwise be dumped be used to feed people who can't afford milk.

[Reelya]

You need a spending program to enact that though, so that would need to come out of state or federal budgets.

And that's what I was getting at before. There are a number of things additional tax money could be spent on. Distributing this milk is just one of them. Before spending a cent on it however, you need to show, for a fact, that there isn't any more pressing need for that tax money.

[bloop_bleep]

You need a spending program to enact that though, so that would need to come out of state or federal budgets.

Or, you know, the government can actually make corporations do things like in the good ol' days. Or like in Europe. I think in France supermarkets are required to donate excess produce to food drives.

[Reelya]

That's a good idea, however it's still unrelated to this matter. Giving away retail milk wouldn't increase the demand on the farmer's end enough to cover transport costs, because fullfilling the needs of the people who can't afford milk at all from the retail side isn't something that would increase overall demand.

[SalmonGod]

You're twisting yourself in knots trying to Well Actually so hard into capitalism making sense.

The thing about the dairy thing is that this demand-crash was inevitable, capitalism or not. People just aren't going out to eat anymore. Capitalism didn't cause that.

You're ignoring that there's not a demand crash - there's a demand shift.  People aren't going out to eat as much, but there's still the same amount of people still needing to eat.  If all that food was previously going to restaurants and subsequently feeding people, then all those same people are now either getting the same amount of food by other means, or they're just not eating.  If other sectors of the food industry aren't ramping up production to match, then the obvious answer is people aren't eating.  And it's an extension of a pre-existing problem that has only expanded in scope due to current circumstances, and your posts have all in subtle ways removed the current context from your depiction of things.  Also hyper-focusing on a single type of produce that is coincidentally the most resource-intensive to ship, which makes it easier to deflect from the overall issue.

[Iduno]

The problem with being a billionaire, is that by the time people reach this level of wealth concentration, they have so much power - as mentioned, much of Bezos' wealth is in stocks, which directly translates to leverage at publicly traded companies - and they go to seemingly endless efforts to keep anyone else from reaching similar levels of helath and wealth.

Additionally, billionaire philanthropy is often used to generate policy effects favorable to them, as opposed to actually fixing immediate issues in the world - Bezos could easily fund a new water system for Flint Michigan, but instead everyone with less resources have to do so. Many of the upper crust give more to think tanks and lobbyists than to charity.

Isn't Bezos the one who started a charity that exists only to lobby to make sure things like rent control and public housing are defeated (mostly active in Washington state and California)? He gets a tax break for his generosity in donating to that charity as well.

[SalmonGod]

but it costs money to distribute. Which is a way of saying we need to burn fossil fuels to distribute it. The milk doesn't walk by itself. That's my point. Distributing it is an investment of additional resources, and you need to justify using those resources, and who's going to pay for it.

Also remember this is wholesale milk in huge barrels probably. It's not bottled, so you have to pay for bottling, you have to use plastic packaging etc. Other poster said it was milk intended for the restaurant industry.

Also, if you reeeeaaaallllly want to have a discussion so bad about market forces encouraging pragmatic expenditure of shipping and storage resources, can we talk about how those same market forces incentivise raising and slaughtering chickens in the USA, shipping them to China for processing, and then shipping the processed chicken back to the USA to sell?

[Reelya]

Isn't Bezos the one who started a charity that exists only to lobby to make sure things like rent control and public housing are defeated (mostly active in Washington state and California)? He gets a tax break for his generosity in donating to that charity as well.

Is there any source that says rent control actually does more good than harm? Rent control is widely considered to be a terrible idea by actual economists, and has been shown by a number of studies to actually raise average rents, but is considered a great idea by a (subset of) politicians.

Shouldn't we go with the experts there? If there was some idea popular with Republican politicians but the economists all said the idea was terrible, we'd be calling out the Republicans to get with expert consensus and stop pushing terrible ideas.

Rent Control is a thing because it sounds good in a speech and wins votes, not because it's actually any good as an idea or policy.

https://freakonomics.com/podcast/rent-control/

* note some of the likely effects of rent control include demolishing buildings because they're not viable and building something else there, less rental stock and probably indirect effect such as increasing commute times because people can't find a place in the city now, so they have to rent further away, adding unnecessary gridlock to the roads.

[bloop_bleep]

Jeff Bezos doesn't get tax breaks. He gets tax donations. Amazon paid around -1% federal tax recently; 0% base tax plus somehow a rebate.

Honestly, at this point, I feel like it would be satisfyingly ironic if the federal government declared that Amazon is basically a public company at this point anyway and seized control.

[Reelya]

but it costs money to distribute. Which is a way of saying we need to burn fossil fuels to distribute it. The milk doesn't walk by itself. That's my point. Distributing it is an investment of additional resources, and you need to justify using those resources, and who's going to pay for it.

Also remember this is wholesale milk in huge barrels probably. It's not bottled, so you have to pay for bottling, you have to use plastic packaging etc. Other poster said it was milk intended for the restaurant industry.

Also, if you reeeeaaaallllly want to have a discussion so bad about market forces encouraging pragmatic expenditure of shipping and storage resources, can we talk about how those same market forces incentivise raising and slaughtering chickens in the USA, shipping them to China for processing, and then shipping the processed chicken back to the USA to sell?

You didn't factor into that that each American worker or Chinese worker you pay also has a carbon footprint that's embedded in their wages. The average person in China produces only 20% of the carbon as an average American, so it may well be that shipping stuff to China, having it processed there, then shipping it back produces less total carbon, because it de-incentivizes some American carbon use.

So adding in the carbon for shipping isn't being rigorous enough. Maybe that American worker drives a clunker to work while the Chinese guy takes the train or rides a bike. If you employ 100 Americans then switch to employing 100 Chinese people, then the carbon footprint for the workers you employ in your process dropped by 80%. Part of the reason that Chinese labor is cheaper is that they consume far less resources per person, which includes carbon emissions. That could more than offset the increase carbon costs of shipping.

[Naturegirl1999]

but it costs money to distribute. Which is a way of saying we need to burn fossil fuels to distribute it. The milk doesn't walk by itself. That's my point. Distributing it is an investment of additional resources, and you need to justify using those resources, and who's going to pay for it.

Also remember this is wholesale milk in huge barrels probably. It's not bottled, so you have to pay for bottling, you have to use plastic packaging etc. Other poster said it was milk intended for the restaurant industry.

Also, if you reeeeaaaallllly want to have a discussion so bad about market forces encouraging pragmatic expenditure of shipping and storage resources, can we talk about how those same market forces incentivize raising and slaughtering chickens in the USA, shipping them to China for processing, and then shipping the processed chicken back to the USA to sell?

I didn’t know this was a thing that was happening, don;t we have companies here that can slaughter and process chickens? Why would it be more profitable to ship to a country on the other side of the world? *remembers outsourcing* oh right, there are lower wages for workers in China, I still don;t see how that weighs against the fuel costs of shipping though

[SalmonGod]

but it costs money to distribute. Which is a way of saying we need to burn fossil fuels to distribute it. The milk doesn't walk by itself. That's my point. Distributing it is an investment of additional resources, and you need to justify using those resources, and who's going to pay for it.

Also remember this is wholesale milk in huge barrels probably. It's not bottled, so you have to pay for bottling, you have to use plastic packaging etc. Other poster said it was milk intended for the restaurant industry.

Also, if you reeeeaaaallllly want to have a discussion so bad about market forces encouraging pragmatic expenditure of shipping and storage resources, can we talk about how those same market forces incentivise raising and slaughtering chickens in the USA, shipping them to China for processing, and then shipping the processed chicken back to the USA to sell?

You didn't factor into that that each American worker or Chinese worker you pay also has a carbon footprint that's embedded in their wages. The average person in China produces only 20% of the carbon as an average American, so it may well be that shipping stuff to China, having it processed there, then shipping it back produces less total carbon, because it de-incentivizes some American carbon use. So adding in the carbon for shipping isn't being rigorous enough. Maybe that American worker drives a clunker to work while the Chinese guy takes the train or rides a bike.

I'm sure that's what the executives are thinking 

It's also a pretty roundabout way of in essence saying that Chinese workers are poorer, and making American workers also poorer is good for the environment.

[Reelya]

The executives don't have to be thinking that for it to be true.

If something uses less resources it'll generally be cheaper, and people will switch to dong that. It means they wanted to save money, but saving resources is the by-product.

EDIT: but the point stands, you made the point that shipping back and forth used more carbon, I made the counter-point that the people working on the other end actually use less carbon, so in effect one offsets the other, and that's not actually evidence of your original point: that the capitalist system caused resources to be wasted unnecessarily.

"Cheaper way to do it" pretty much always means that less total resources were inputted into the system, and if it seems that it's caused them to spend more on resources then you probably haven't looked at the process holistically (end to end) enough.

[misko27]

Is this the time to bring up that New York City has a program offering free meals to everyone during this crisis? Probably serves double duty since they are in essence school lunches, and I note from the writing on the packages that the stuff is produced upstate (probably why so much milk and applesauce is in it). My family has been getting them for about a month. Lot of milk in our fridge.

[Doomblade187]

Is this the time to bring up that New York City has a program offering free meals to everyone during this crisis? Probably serves double duty since they are in essence school lunches, and I note from the writing on the packages that the stuff is produced upstate (probably why so much milk and applesauce is in it). My family has been getting them for about a month. Lot of milk in our fridge.

That is a very cool program, and excellent example. Good extension of the quarantine school lunches