"Balzer, Ben" wrote:

> I am not a Marxist. The corporate kleptocracy was a tongue-in-cheek
> reference to Jared Diamond's Gun Germs and Steel, which is on most
> Paleo-dood's essential reading lists. Diamond takes us on a quick tour of
> how things change as societies get more complex. The book got the Pulitzer
> prize.

Diamonds stuff is always good reading, but in another book
he pooh-poohs the idea that humans ever were big game
hunters. His reasoning was that since the people he lived
with in New Guinea fantasized a lot about hunting big game,
but were hardly ever successful, nobody ever must have done
so. Pretty poor reasoning, I thought, given the vast
evidence to the contrary.
>
>
> It remains interesting that the economics work so that grass fed grain is
> far cheaper than grain fed in Australia, but far more expensive in America.
> I can't recall if Jo Robinson discussed that (I'll email her and see what
> she says). Maybe it's got to do with government subsidies. Grain fed animals
> require far more labour and veterinary care and drugs etc, and their meat
> spoils more quickly. On paper, grain fed should be far more expensive.

It is mainly a question of market size. Aussies love a
different style of meat than the average American. There is
plenty of grass fed beef in America too, but it is usually
either ground up into hamburger, or sent to a feedlot the
last few months for fattening. Not enough people want it for
there to be well developed market channels.

It is getting a lot harder recently for ranchers to produce
range beef. Most of the west is controlled by the federal
government, which is getting more and more hostile to
ranching, so many old ranching families are having to shut
down as their grazing lands are closed to human uses. It is
especially sad because the government agencies that control
this land have truly amazingly poor records at sound land
management, from the indian days onward. Every fad that
comes down the pike is pursued to its illogical conclusion
(in the past they buldozed forests to create grasslands for
cows). The current one is a kind of simple-minded anti-human enviromentalism.