Dear Mr. President from Rush Limbaugh

[Wes Tausend]

Originally Posted by Jamo

Wes...what the hell kind of farming are you talking about?

As Dan said, the farmer (even the smallest one) is the CEO of an operation that:

...must buy seed, transplants or grafts from someone, which means companies like Monsanto or Dow and everything involved with their seed products have to compete for the business, or nurseries who grow and sell live transplants or the farm labor contractors who cut wood and utlize their skills in making successful grafts.

...must rely on transportation providers to bring them their raw materials, from the growing stock noted above to the fuel needed to operate farm machinery to packaging materials to prepare the farmer's products to market...and transportation to get the farm products to market, farmers' markets notwithstanding (small percentages).

...must rely on various labor sources to grow and cultivate and harvest the product...tractor drivers, irrigators, thin/hoe and/or contractors with the crews and equipment to harvest and pack the farm products.

...must rely on sales staff or outside brokers to sell the farm product.

...must rely on banking institutions to loan the monies needed to even plant the crops, let alone for maintaining or replacing farm equipment.

...must rely on administrative staff or outside services to run the payrolls, invoice for the products, keep track of safety and human resource trainings, etc.

In other words, just what damn planet are you talking about where farmers do everything for themselves without affecting other businesses or relying on investments in order to farm?

Before one damn seed is stuck in the ground...you need money. Hell, you can't even buy sh!t (aka manure) without money.

Yes, labor is an essential component, but it is simply one link in the chain.

Jamo,

Well, I was talking about basic farming roots (pardon the pun ).

You are getting more complicated and cluttering up the logical simplicity of my Reductionism here.

The idea is that one can fathom how a complicated machine works by looking at it in its simplest form and applying these basic principles to all higher layers.

Labor is an essential component, but it is simply one link in the chain.

Reduced to bare bones, the other components (all support) are not essential in the most basic sense. Without labor, there is no chain. No wealth. Ever. Only labor, and labor alone, creates wealth or the foundation for a more complicated arrangement. All live off the one carrot that labor produces. There are never more carrots that field support pulls outa their ...um, you know.

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Boat rowing:
Men swim by themselves. Somebody notices logs floating by and invents a boat. Another guy, 1st stockholder, provides the investment in time to build it. They now swim together out of the cold, cold water. Stockholder favors one rower to call cadence and steer. Capitalism runs amuck. Stockholder buys government guy to restrict any rowers from building competitive boats and rides for free for a lifetime.

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Everybody picks their own berries at the community berry patch in spirit of socialism where everybody has equal opportunity. First entrepreneur privatizes the patch by simple declaration. Capitalism is born. Skims everybodies efforts by charging pickers part of picked berries thereafter. Enforces declaration by hiring govenment goon for fractional share of berries. Capitalism runs amuck. Doesn't do a lick of real work ever, and has bigger piece of the berry pie than anyone for a lifetime.

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I agree, nobody ever said the world was fair. Ninety-nine percent of the species that ever lived are now extinct. It's a dog-eat-dog world out there. And so the class struggle continues.

Wes

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