Farmers in the Netherlands revolting against WEF emissions mandates

[SoCal Deek]

10 minutes ago, The Frankish Reich said:

That’s kind of a functional definition of “intelligence,” isn’t it?

 

The discussion started with someone labeling Tucker Carlson as “Ivy League educated.” I said he isn’t. So … why would that matter?

 

1. We are in a world in which relying on  intelligence testing per se is illegal at worst, considered uncouth at best. So we use proxies for intelligence. One (for now at least) is whether you were admitted to a top college. And it’s a pretty good proxy since the Ivy League schools generally only admit the top 5% of SAT/ACT scorers. (Note: test optional crap may ruin this.) Economist Bryan Caplan puts it this way: Would you rather be admitted to Princeton and have a run of the mill public university education, or would you rather be denied at Princeton and get a superb, world class education at Southeastern Nebraska State College? That is the “signaling” importance of elite education. If I see Harvard on your resume, I immediately think “high IQ.”  Better to just ask the candidate to take an IQ test, but I can’t do that. 
 

2. High IQ — general intelligence, or “G” in the trade, is critical for many (most) important jobs in the non-manual labor sector.

 

3. Completing college is also a signal — a signal that one has the sticktoitiveness  that is critical to success in many challenging fields of endeavor. We are at an odd moment in history today: a Gates or Zuckerberg can also signal “I’m really smart, look at my Harvard acceptance, but my ideas are so awesome they can’t wait 4 years.” But that’s a modern anomaly that applies to the .01 percent. 

 

4. Many non college educated people are as smart or smarter than those with college educations, or maybe even smarter than those with elite college degrees. But it’s really hard to find that out until someone has a long, long history of sustained excellence. So we use college degrees, and elite college degrees particularly, as a proxy for an extended test run. 
 

i used to say being smart doesn’t correlate with being, say, a good President. I still think this is largely true. But our recent experience with some, umm, “non-smart” Presidents (Bush 43, Trump, Biden) is starting to make me reconsider that opinion. And yes, one of the above has that Ivy League undergrad degree, and one has an Ivy MBA. Hey, I never said it’s a perfect proxy. 

I’ve always found this to be an interesting topic. We don’t want or need. our President to be the smartest guy/gal in the country. What they do need is management experience. This is why Governors generally make functional Presidents whereas Senators do not. 

[Niagara Bill]

4 minutes ago, The Frankish Reich said:

That’s kind of a functional definition of “intelligence,” isn’t it?

 

The discussion started with someone labeling Tucker Carlson as “Ivy League educated.” I said he isn’t. So … why would that matter?

 

1. We are in a world in which relying on  intelligence testing per se is illegal at worst, considered uncouth at best. So we use proxies for intelligence. One (for now at least) is whether you were admitted to a top college. And it’s a pretty good proxy since the Ivy League schools generally only admit the top 5% of SAT/ACT scorers. (Note: test optional crap may ruin this.) Economist Bryan Caplan puts it this way: Would you rather be admitted to Princeton and have a run of the mill public university education, or would you rather be denied at Princeton and get a superb, world class education at Southeastern Nebraska State College? That is the “signaling” importance of elite education. If I see Harvard on your resume, I immediately think “high IQ.”  Better to just ask the candidate to take an IQ test, but I can’t do that. 
 

2. High IQ — general intelligence, or “G” in the trade, is critical for many (most) important jobs in the non-manual labor sector.

 

3. Completing college is also a signal — a signal that one has the sticktoitiveness  that is critical to success in many challenging fields of endeavor. We are at an odd moment in history today: a Gates or Zuckerberg can also signal “I’m really smart, look at my Harvard acceptance, but my ideas are so awesome they can’t wait 4 years.” But that’s a modern anomaly that applies to the .01 percent. 

 

4. Many non college educated people are as smart or smarter than those with college educations, or maybe even smarter than those with elite college degrees. But it’s really hard to find that out until someone has a long, long history of sustained excellence. So we use college degrees, and elite college degrees particularly, as a proxy for an extended test run. 
 

i used to say being smart doesn’t correlate with being, say, a good President. I still think this is largely true. But our recent experience with some, umm, “non-smart” Presidents (Bush 43, Trump, Biden) is starting to make me reconsider that opinion. And yes, one of the above has that Ivy League undergrad degree, and one has an Ivy MBA. Hey, I never said it’s a perfect proxy. 

Seriously. Schools are a gauge of intelligence? Have you watched college sports, basketball, football, or notice the number of people charged with falsely getting into schools?

College education in the US is likened to being a royal in England not a commoner.  College is worn as a gold star, social status. It is announced with elitism at events and parties. It gives you the right to party at age 65 because of a sporting event on a distant campus. College has made the phrase " alma mater" important in social settings.  But it has nothing to do with intelligence. 

 

Me thinks😅

[The Frankish Reich]

1 hour ago, SoCal Deek said:

I’ve always found this to be an interesting topic. We don’t want or need. our President to be the smartest guy/gal in the country. What they do need is management experience. This is why Governors generally make functional Presidents whereas Senators do not. 

I agree in principle, but may I mention:

- Governor Jimmy Carter

- Governor George W. Bush 

[SoCal Deek]

1 hour ago, The Frankish Reich said:

I agree in principle, but may I mention:

- Governor Jimmy Carter

- Governor George W. Bush 

Excellent points

I’m guessing they weren’t very good Governors.

[aristocrat]

 

[B-Man]

 

 

Pay Attention To The Dutch Farmer Protests Because America Is Next

BY: JOHN DANIEL DAVIDSON

 

The same climate policies that are set to destroy private agriculture in the Netherlands are eventually coming to America.

 

https://thefederalist.com/2022/07/29/pay-attention-to-the-dutch-farmer-protests-because-america-is-next/

 

 

 

.

[The Frankish Reich]

On 7/28/2022 at 10:03 AM, B-Man said:

 

 

 

 

 

American agriculture has been a tremendously profitable industry for a long time. Long gone are the 1980s days of Farm Aid.

And government aid during COVID was a huge boon for farmers:

 

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-02-16/u-s-farmers-won-t-see-profits-like-2020-for-decade-usda-says#xj4y7vzkg

 

And this one is just downright stunning - take a look at the hockey stick graph of increasing subsidies:

 

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/L312041A027NBEA

 

Yes, we may certainly expect farmers to whine when Uncle Sam takes a tiny portion of the feedbag away. Agriculture in the USA is one of the most insanely subsidized industries in the world, from price supports (a depression/WWII era invention that proves there is nothing harder to eliminate than a government program), to below-market prices for irrigation water (the California Central Valley would have been out of the farming business decades ago if it had to compete on the open market for scarce water resources), to special tax treatment for a whole host of agricultural uses.

In the "I knew a guy" category:

- Price supports: a knew a lobbyist for the Hawaiian cane sugar industry. This industry would have completely died around 1970 but for special protections Congress gave it -- the guy was rightfully proud of his achievements in making that happen. Why the special protections? Well, like everything else, a stable sugar supply was treated as a national security concern.

- Special tax treatment: a know a guy who keeps a tiny (I think the minimum number is eight) herd of bison on his ranchland in Colorado. I tried to wrap my head around this, since he says he makes no money off them. The purpose: tax incentives. I knew a guy who's uncle made more money taking his dairy farm out of production in Michigan than he did actually keeping dairy cows.

And on and on...

I don't mind farmers bellyachin about hard times. It's part of the trade. But when it comes time to talkin about getting the govment off their backs, well lets remember that they owe a lot of their success to that same government.

Shocking revelation: the Dems subsidize people who vote for them. Let's forgive that student debt!

The Repubs subsidize people who vote for them. Let's help the struggling Great American Family Farm!

Edited August 3, 2022 by The Frankish Reich

[B-Man]

 

Why Dutch Farmers Revolt.

 

https://www.battleswarmblog.com/?p=52180

 

 

[The Frankish Reich]

23 hours ago, B-Man said:

 

Why Dutch Farmers Revolt.

 

https://www.battleswarmblog.com/?p=52180

 

 

Remember that old, ridiculed Obama line: "You didn't build that!" 

Well, in the case of much of the farmland of the Netherlands, that is absolutely true. This is the best short summary I've found:

https://alltrades.substack.com/p/wonders-of-our-world-4-the-delta

 

And this:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polder

 

The Netherlands is frequently associated with polders, as its engineers became noted for developing techniques to drain wetlands and make them usable for agriculture and other development. This is illustrated by the saying "God created the world, but the Dutch created the Netherlands".[2]

The Dutch have a long history of reclamation of marshes and fenland, resulting in some 3,000 polders[3] nationwide. By 1961, about half of the country's land, 18,000 square kilometres (6,800 sq mi), was reclaimed from the sea.

 

 

The Dutch government quite literally created much of the farmland these "get the government off our backs" farmers are working. It was "reclaimed" from the sea by a vast system of dikes and drainage.  So shouldn't the Dutch people as a whole have some voice in how that land they created (through taxes and borrowing) be used?

I'm not taking sides here. I don't know enough about the issue to say whether more or less land should be devoted to farmland, or whether there should be limits on fertilizer usage, etc. This is for the Dutch people to decide about their own man-made (much of it) land. But it does strike me as more than a bit hypocritical for the farmers whose very existence depends on government projects over the centuries (intensifying in the last 60 years or so) to be claiming that the government is the problem. 

Edited August 6, 2022 by The Frankish Reich

[All_Pro_Bills]

18 hours ago, The Frankish Reich said:

Remember that old, ridiculed Obama line: "You didn't build that!" 

Well, in the case of much of the farmland of the Netherlands, that is absolutely true. This is the best short summary I've found:

https://alltrades.substack.com/p/wonders-of-our-world-4-the-delta

 

And this:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polder

 

The Netherlands is frequently associated with polders, as its engineers became noted for developing techniques to drain wetlands and make them usable for agriculture and other development. This is illustrated by the saying "God created the world, but the Dutch created the Netherlands".[2]

The Dutch have a long history of reclamation of marshes and fenland, resulting in some 3,000 polders[3] nationwide. By 1961, about half of the country's land, 18,000 square kilometres (6,800 sq mi), was reclaimed from the sea.

 

 

The Dutch government quite literally created much of the farmland these "get the government off our backs" farmers are working. It was "reclaimed" from the sea by a vast system of dikes and drainage.  So shouldn't the Dutch people as a whole have some voice in how that land they created (through taxes and borrowing) be used?

I'm not taking sides here. I don't know enough about the issue to say whether more or less land should be devoted to farmland, or whether there should be limits on fertilizer usage, etc. This is for the Dutch people to decide about their own man-made (much of it) land. But it does strike me as more than a bit hypocritical for the farmers whose very existence depends on government projects over the centuries (intensifying in the last 60 years or so) to be claiming that the government is the problem. 

The fundamental problem is all these government edicts worldwide have negative impacts on productivity.  Higher productivity, whether through the use of more efficient energy sources or improvements in technology or methods, are directly responsible for social and economic progress and improvements in the standard of living of everyone.  If you lower productivity you are going to lower the standard of living.   

 

Democracy aside, the only way you sell that to people aware of that linkage between these actions and lowering their standard of living is through force.  How much force are these governments willing to exert?  And what happens when the force against these initiatives is greater than the force the government can exert?  A lot of bad stuff can happen.  Because what they're pushing is a lower standard of living for everyone, everyone of course but themselves, the other political elite, and the ultra-wealthy.  A return to Medieval feudalism and an end to democracy,

 

When the light bulb comes on in the heads of the majority of populations around the world and they see their personal situation getting worse, and they decide my government is not my boss, there are going to be a lot of ex-leaders and their political cronies hanging upside down from lampposts. 

Edited August 7, 2022 by All_Pro_Bills

[B-Man]

 

[B-Man]

 

Pay attention to what’s happening to Dutch livestock farmers

By Andrea Widburg

 

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/08/pay_attention_to_whats_happening_to_dutch_livestock_farmers.html

 

 

 

[B-Man]

 

 

The Green War on Dutch Farmers Should Concern Everybody
American Thinker ^ | 10 Aug, 2022 | James Bascom

 

Dutch farmers are fighting for nothing less than the survival of modern agriculture as such.

 

Over the past few months, thousands of Dutch farmers have blocked highways and staged protests. Hundreds have been arrested, and one was even shot at by a police officer. Dutch farmers have been protesting in the streets on and off since 2019.

 

Why are the farmers so outraged? They’re fighting for nothing less than the survival of modern agriculture as such. In the name of “sustainability” and fighting “pollution,” Green activists are trying to do to agriculture what they have been doing to the power grid and the oil and gas industry. In the name of highly questionable environmental goals, Green activists want to destroy the ability of farms to produce high-quality, abundant, clean, and inexpensive food.

 

Although the Netherlands has a population of 17 million and is only slightly larger than the U.S. state of Maryland, it is the second-largest agricultural exporter in the world after the United States. Dutch farms produce enormous quantities of beef, pork, dairy products and many other agricultural goods that are sold all over Europe and the world. The Dutch can produce so much food in such a small country thanks to the application of technology to farming methods. Dutch farms are perhaps the most advanced in the world. Thanks to the latest technology, Dutch food is not only plentiful but also inexpensive, efficient, and clean without sacrificing quality.

 

Green activists claim that this agriculture produces too much pollution and thus must be drastically reduced. At the behest of the European Union and Green groups, the Dutch government is imposing a plan to reduce nitrogen oxide and ammonia pollution by 50% by 2030. If carried out, this draconian plan would force Dutch farmers to reduce their herds by one-third

 

 

(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/08/the_green_war_on_dutch_farmers_should_concern_everybody.html

 

 

[All_Pro_Bills]

17 minutes ago, B-Man said:

 

 

The Green War on Dutch Farmers Should Concern Everybody
American Thinker ^ | 10 Aug, 2022 | James Bascom

 

Dutch farmers are fighting for nothing less than the survival of modern agriculture as such.

 

Over the past few months, thousands of Dutch farmers have blocked highways and staged protests. Hundreds have been arrested, and one was even shot at by a police officer. Dutch farmers have been protesting in the streets on and off since 2019.

 

Why are the farmers so outraged? They’re fighting for nothing less than the survival of modern agriculture as such. In the name of “sustainability” and fighting “pollution,” Green activists are trying to do to agriculture what they have been doing to the power grid and the oil and gas industry. In the name of highly questionable environmental goals, Green activists want to destroy the ability of farms to produce high-quality, abundant, clean, and inexpensive food.

 

Although the Netherlands has a population of 17 million and is only slightly larger than the U.S. state of Maryland, it is the second-largest agricultural exporter in the world after the United States. Dutch farms produce enormous quantities of beef, pork, dairy products and many other agricultural goods that are sold all over Europe and the world. The Dutch can produce so much food in such a small country thanks to the application of technology to farming methods. Dutch farms are perhaps the most advanced in the world. Thanks to the latest technology, Dutch food is not only plentiful but also inexpensive, efficient, and clean without sacrificing quality.

 

Green activists claim that this agriculture produces too much pollution and thus must be drastically reduced. At the behest of the European Union and Green groups, the Dutch government is imposing a plan to reduce nitrogen oxide and ammonia pollution by 50% by 2030. If carried out, this draconian plan would force Dutch farmers to reduce their herds by one-third

 

 

(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/08/the_green_war_on_dutch_farmers_should_concern_everybody.html

 

 

The government wants Medieval subsistence farming methods which result in lower crop yields and less food for the people which will result in government induced starvation.  You can only hope that the first to starve to death will be government officials and the police that enforce their edicts.   

Edited August 10, 2022 by All_Pro_Bills

[nedboy7]

You people are ignorant. 

 

Moving on from Covid, the conspiratorial wing of the populist Right has a new cause célèbre on which to hang its fears of global governance and the Great Reset purportedly being plotted by Klaus Schwab from his Alpine lair. This time, it’s Dutch farmers, whose protests against their government’s plans to force them to curb their use of nitrogen-based fertilisers and lower the polluted runoff from their farms has seen them lauded by Right-wing commentators across the Anglosphere as some form of modern peasants’ revolt.

As a recent UnHerd explainer made clear, the Dutch government may have handled the process badly, but the problems are clear enough: the Netherlands’ hyper-intensive form of agriculture is ecologically untenable, severely harming the tiny country’s biodiversity and locking the country’s agricultural sector into a system of overproduction of livestock for export. This entails dangerously low profit margins for farmers themselves, and a system reliant on imports of chemical fertilisers.

Partly as a result of the country’s painful experience of famine during the Second World War, Dutch agriculture has long pursued maximum efficiency, making the Netherlands a food exporting powerhouse second only to the vastly larger United States, but locking farmers into a cycle of dependency on globalised agribusinesses. All of the UK’s problems with intensive farming practices that have lowered farmers’ incomes while harming animal welfare and polluting Britain’s landscape are displayed to a significantly heightened degree in the Netherlands. The country’s food production system relies on what are essentially green factories or giant warehouses for livestock, packing animals together four times more densely than in the UK, rather than the small family farms many outside supporters seem to imagine.

The current system in the Netherlands is simply unsustainable, but the Dutch government’s abrupt approach to solving the problem has turned it into a political crisis. As the Dutch spokesperson for the World Wildlife Fund, Natasja Oerlemans observes, the problems now are “the result of 30 years of inaction, despite all of the scientific reports and warnings”. “We as a society have allowed this broken food system to happen,” she added, “and we are responsible for providing farmers alternatives”.

As the Guardian noted last year, while the Dutch government’s proposals include paying off farmers to reduce production or leave the industry, it also includes billions of Euros of aid designed towards “helping others transition to more extensive (as opposed to intensive) methods of farming, with fewer animals and a bigger area of land”.

The goal of the Dutch government’s proposals is aimed to bring Dutch farming closer in line to British farming, where herds of cows roam freely on wide pastures, and away from the American agribusiness model, where cattle live on feedlots eating imported grain. However badly the transition has been handled — and Dutch farmers should be better supported in their shift to a more sustainable model — this goal is, in itself, a welcome shift towards a better functioning food model. Excitable conservatives of a conspiratorial bent should think carefully about which they prefer: a world of small farms producing high-quality food while shepherding the natural environment, or the continuation of a fragile, globalised food system in hock to giant corporations.

[Big Blitz]

No need for farmers....

 

 

 

[Andy1]

36 minutes ago, Big Blitz said:

No need for farmers....

 

 

 

Where are chicken wings?

[B-Man]

 

 

.

[aristocrat]

 

[B-Man]

 

 

As has often been noted, environmentalism is, for many, a religion. It now appears that it is a religion that demands human sacrifice.

 

Agricultural productivity depends on fertilizers. The world cannot be fed without them. Yet, when it comes to a tradeoff between carbon dioxide and mass starvation, the “green” left is OK with starvation. Reuters reports:

 

The European Union is divided on how to help poorer nations fight a growing food crisis and address shortages of fertilisers caused by the war in Ukraine, with some fearing a plan to invest in plants in Africa would clash with EU green goals.

***
At a summit of EU leaders later this week, the EU was planning a new initiative that would structurally decrease poorer nations’ reliance on Russian fertilisers by helping them develop their own fertiliser plants.

 

But at a meeting with EU envoys last week, the EU Commission explicitly opposed the text, warning that supporting fertiliser production in developing nations would be inconsistent with the EU energy and environment policies, officials said.

 

The production of chemical fertilisers has a big impact on the environment and requires large amounts of energy. However they are crucially effective in boosting agriculture output.

 

 

Yes. See: Sri Lanka. Green zealots threaten the lives of millions.

 

 

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/eu-split-over-fertiliser-plants-poorer-nations-food-crisis-bites-2022-06-20/