Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 40 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Komrade Kamela
Back in the USSR, forward into the past. Komrade Kamela is proposing price controls on groceries. The USSR had Five Year Plans. They failed, with the exception of vodka. Vodka dulls the pain and keeps the serfs too intoxicated to plan an overthrow.
They pretend to pay us and so we pretend to work. Free medical plans, free tuition and eventually a charity function like “A Taste of the Zoo” means eating the animals in the zoo.
What’s for dinner? Roadkill is on the menu. Slab of Lab for dinner and Possum Helper will disappear from grocery shelves.
I had to give up fresh bats during the pandemic and canned bats soon disappeared from the shelves. From headlines to breadlines. Maduronomics will soon be Kamelanomics.
I took the photo in this essay during the pandemic. Feel free to use it, and if you print it, add a little ketchup. I have to leave for a little while to check the trap I set for the poodle next door.
Bon Appetite!
Published in Humor
They have been pushing electric gear on farmers as well. Completely impractical.
Why Electric Farm Vehicles Ain’t Going to Happen Anytime Soon
GlennAmurgis (View Comment):
Women in the USSR used to walk around with a shopping bag in their purse. If they saw a line they jumped in, then asked what was available.
A similar tale was told by one of the KGB defectors. He was being debriefed by the CIA in Virginia somewhere. During one lunch break, he had them take him out into the country well beyond where he figured the CIA would have Potemkin-style “show” stores set up. He and his minders walked into a run-of-the-mill supermarket. He sat down in the middle of one of the aisles and started laughing. The entire aisle was full of pet food. When they asked him what was so funny, he replied “Your dogs eat better than we do.”
Many Americans will see pictures of hungry people scratching out a living in Africa and then go to the grocery store and not realize all the effort and technology it takes to turn raw earth into shelves of food. A lifetime ago, Americans knew the sentiment of Scarlet O’Hara saying, “As God is my witness, I’ll never be hungry again!” Now, Americans (K.Hive) want to ban natural gas and meat because of some autistic Swedish child.
Tucker Carlson would have us believe that under Putin, Russia is now grocery-store nirvana. So great that we should be furious.
I encountered such stories frequently in the 1970s from among escapees from behind the Iron Curtain. Others here on Ricochet have related similar stories from families they helped resettle into the United States during that era. I have lamented for several years that in recent decades younger people in the United States have not heard such first-hand reports on what life was like under a system of price controls.
The linked article says as a practical matter, battery-powered large-scale farming isn’t going to happen, and that farm equipment manufacturers aren’t really pushing it. But among the factors I have learned about farming equipment, at least in the large farms of the Great Plains (Nebraska, the Dakotas, etc.):
Soil compaction by field equipment is an important factor for farmers, so on-board battery weight would be an issue (batteries tend to be heavy);
Fields are often miles from home base; on-board Diesel tanks are often refilled in the field by bringing to the field a truck with a large Diesel tank (900+ gallons), without having to take the time to take the field equipment back to home base for refueling, especially during times like harvest when the farmers may be running equipment 16, 18, maybe even 24 hours a day; how would an electric battery be recharged in the field?;
How fast can the batteries be recharged, during which the equipment is idled? A field equipment on-board 250 gallon Diesel tank can be refilled in less than 30 minutes, even from a fuel truck in the field. Again, at times, farmers are trying to run the equipment 16, 18, 24 hours a day because harvesting ripe crops is a very time-sensitive activity.
Maybe the United States government, seeking to prevent “climate change” by reducing emissions by farming equipment they will just follow the European approach and decree that a designated portion of farmers must simply cease farming. Eliminating farmers wouldn’t have any impact on the supply of food, would it? <sarcasm off>
Most of the electric tractors I have seen reported on are compact tractors that might reasonably replace the tractor my son has on his ten acre ranchette. Small operations that are not running constantly, and are never far from home base.
An old favorite:
And because of intermediate losses, it would take MORE THAN 250 gallons of diesel to charge the battery.
It seems to be way too easy for people to not understand that for more capacity of diesel (or whatever) all you need is a larger vessel. For electric it requires more of the lithium etc complexity.
In the late 1970s I was a part of a small organization that helped resettle refugees from Vietnam. They had the same reaction to our material prosperity.
You’d think the Somalis brought to Minnesota would be more appreciative too. Instead they seem to think they need to burn it all down.
The Somalis have come from a failed state. It had also suffered under a Marxist state. Radical Islam has also taken root among many Somalis.
The Vietnamese migrants and many others came from failed states too, didn’t they? Yet somehow they’re able to appreciate being here instead.
It could be largely due to islam I suppose, maybe along with some other causes. But mostly it seems like they would prefer to go back.
We got a ton of Vietnamese refugees in OK in the ‘70s. They seemed to hit the ground running and motivated.
And on the other hand, we have the Somalis…
Representative Ilhan Omar has got to be the most ungrateful refugee ever.
Maybe so, unless the 9/11 guys were actually residents not just students/visitors.