That’s just historically untrue. 500 years ago we didn’t have much of the technology needed for reliable harvest. Many farms were still highly dependant on rain. No rain, no crops. A late freeze, no crops. Locusts, no crops. You starve.That simple.
This doesn’t include the absolute necessity of artificial fertizlier in maintaining the modern population.
Maybe your statement could be true if we had the ability to move crops from areas not expirencing a disaster that could have fixed it, but would have been very difficult and required a global effort. So technically humanity may have produced enough food, but there was not a real way to move it. Even ignoring profit incentives that control logistics and assuming a altruistic system of redistribution, it could take weeks for messages to arrive in areas that did have food. Then it would take weeks to move it. No refrigeration, the fastest you could move is horse.
The fastest you’d need to move is by horse or ship. Food preservation has been a thing since the discovery of salt. And we didn’t need artificial fertilizer centuries ago, because we didn’t need to support this many people on limited land, that’s a very recent problem. Also cities grew near water for a reason, that’s how they got their food. Ships moving food supplies.
Right so how are we increasing salt production? You’ll need more workers, which leaves less people available for farming. Could salt production even be scaled to match that demand given the technology? You’ll now need an increased network capacity to move the extra salt. More horses, more pots, more baskets, more drivers.
What about places without access by water?
Artificial fertilizer does however allow for a reliable surplus. Something necessary for a redistribution network. You need some kind of fertilizer and natural sources for scalable farming are rare.
You’ve created a fictional understanding of logistics that sums up to “just move the stuff” without considering the consequences.
You’re misunderstanding my statement, there is no need for increased production, because it already existed. There is no need for an expanded distribution system, it already existed. There is no need for more of anything, because it was already sitting there, just going to somewhere else. The only changes needed were which wagon, or which ship, the only consequences were who made how much profit, and who got credit for it.
Oh no I understand your statements, it’s just they are inherently wrong.
Honestly if you said in the last 200 years (maybe even 300) we wouldn’t be arguing. I think you’re severally over-estimating the surplus created by pre-industrial farmers and the amount of the economy engaged in luxury or profiteering. Most people then produced what they needed and little more. Yes there were portions of the economy tooled to serve the needs of the elite, but I’m not convinced that is enough labor to completely eliminate hunger even if redistributed to production and logistical networks.
We’re not even getting into how common slavery was for agricultural production. If we are creating a new system to ensure everyone is fed how do we deal with that?
That’s just historically untrue. 500 years ago we didn’t have much of the technology needed for reliable harvest. Many farms were still highly dependant on rain. No rain, no crops. A late freeze, no crops. Locusts, no crops. You starve.That simple.
This doesn’t include the absolute necessity of artificial fertizlier in maintaining the modern population.
Maybe your statement could be true if we had the ability to move crops from areas not expirencing a disaster that could have fixed it, but would have been very difficult and required a global effort. So technically humanity may have produced enough food, but there was not a real way to move it. Even ignoring profit incentives that control logistics and assuming a altruistic system of redistribution, it could take weeks for messages to arrive in areas that did have food. Then it would take weeks to move it. No refrigeration, the fastest you could move is horse.
Seems very unlikely
The fastest you’d need to move is by horse or ship. Food preservation has been a thing since the discovery of salt. And we didn’t need artificial fertilizer centuries ago, because we didn’t need to support this many people on limited land, that’s a very recent problem. Also cities grew near water for a reason, that’s how they got their food. Ships moving food supplies.
Right so how are we increasing salt production? You’ll need more workers, which leaves less people available for farming. Could salt production even be scaled to match that demand given the technology? You’ll now need an increased network capacity to move the extra salt. More horses, more pots, more baskets, more drivers.
What about places without access by water?
Artificial fertilizer does however allow for a reliable surplus. Something necessary for a redistribution network. You need some kind of fertilizer and natural sources for scalable farming are rare.
You’ve created a fictional understanding of logistics that sums up to “just move the stuff” without considering the consequences.
You’re misunderstanding my statement, there is no need for increased production, because it already existed. There is no need for an expanded distribution system, it already existed. There is no need for more of anything, because it was already sitting there, just going to somewhere else. The only changes needed were which wagon, or which ship, the only consequences were who made how much profit, and who got credit for it.
Oh no I understand your statements, it’s just they are inherently wrong.
Honestly if you said in the last 200 years (maybe even 300) we wouldn’t be arguing. I think you’re severally over-estimating the surplus created by pre-industrial farmers and the amount of the economy engaged in luxury or profiteering. Most people then produced what they needed and little more. Yes there were portions of the economy tooled to serve the needs of the elite, but I’m not convinced that is enough labor to completely eliminate hunger even if redistributed to production and logistical networks.
We’re not even getting into how common slavery was for agricultural production. If we are creating a new system to ensure everyone is fed how do we deal with that?
I’ve made a simple historically verifiable statement, if you had any case what so ever, you’d be able to point to a counter example.
Can you provide a source then?
You did the opposite. You insisted that your version was true and that re-tooling an entire supply chain is easy.
Your entire arguement is hypotheticals with no source.