but what's the difference between 'productive' and 'extractive'? Clearing huge swaths of land for agriculture is highly productive, in terms of making crops. Likewise irrigating huge swaths of arid land for agriculture is also highly productive. Are those 'extractive' or not?

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cestith an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Let’s try to keep productive and extractive to their economic meanings, and not talk about the exploitative practices with natural resources for a moment.

A farmer puts products that people buy into the marketplace. Many actors in the financial sector make their money by micro-timing trades in securities and commodities markets that are already liquid enough they don’t need the additional activity. Others buy up stock of housing just to control enough to raise the prices. They are literally just taking other people’s money out of the economy for their own gain, and the economy does not function any better due to their activity. In fact, when housing is overly tight the economy suffers.

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Paradigm2020 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The original turning the none used resource into a productive resource (your eg clearing land, irrigation etc etc) is productive.

Big land owners / PE / ... cornering all the available agricultural land / needed supply chain / economies of scale etc etc to extract more and more value of Scarce resource that has already been optimized is extractive.

The thing is that the word extractive makes it hard to have a good debate because pure extraction is rare (aka no need to add any extra labor to have the possesed "good" maintain or exceed its value vs inflation...

Personally in general I would prefer more usage of the word rent seeking (aka legally and finite resource captured market) and others.

As the current biggest problem in most countries in the world is housing and its cost for those who are renting and without any (realistic / statistical...) hope of ever entering the owners side that seems like something worth talking / voting for.

(I can get my beef from brazil / australia / ... But i can't get my land from there while living here.)

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sidewndr46 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Your argument is just one of perspective. From my view, clearing of land & irrigation is one of the greatest disasters of modernity. Extracting everything from land and rendering it barren and featureless. We traded biodiversity and ecosystems for increased food production. All to support a population of humans that is nowhere near any kind of population threat level. On the opposite exactly, human population has risen to levels unimaginable.

Your remaining arguments are endless handwaving and use of 'etc' so I won't be responding to those.

	▲	Paradigm2020 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Well state that you care about animal and nature wellfare right after your own welfare and before other humans welfare ? Or just add that to the original post would help clarity - would make everything comm wise easier. (there's a 1% chance that I'm wrong here - please accept my apologies if you're a vegetarian, sub 30m²/person living in an apartment not using cars / ubers and intentionally living near public transport - or the closest equivalent available to you / your families financial status as of this moment, you are also donating at least 6% of your money to buying up farmland to convert it to pristine wilderness --- i am definitely not but my order is me - friends family - other humans - a more beautiful planet for the most of those other humans) But yeah, personally I'd gladly make beef that are feed lot fed a lot more expensive with every house hold getting a check in advance for what would be a fair share of beef for all... Make it so only american beef is allowed (american farmers are happy) and make it a slightly diminishing amount every couple of years as farmers age out... It would be slow but the value of beef would massively increase and i think a lot ot poorer people (and myself) would put my money where my mouth is) You'd also have to ban the export/import of feed for cattle fattening and presto - 10% or land available for none extractive uses... In the same way that delmonte closing canned peaches results in a vast monoculture being cut down and that right now with the right externalities / support "human focused demand" you could be setting up / buying some of it up and paying rent every year to keep it pristine ~ or a bigger a one off payment... Anyway, again - noone states their values and most people think their values are duh and only dumbasses would disagree - hence why only conversation especially in a thread of a story tends to be rather difficult as everyone tries to defend their pov without stating it or dio mio asking the other person why (which would have been a better option from my part as well but again medium/message etc. Looking forward to your reply and have a great day wherever you are. I'm off to zzz