Comment by hluska
20 hours ago
Uh yeah, this was Del Monte’s business model.
The issue is that the company that owns the canning plants (Del Monte) went bankrupt. There is no canning capacity available to do this.
How did you possibly miss the point by this far? It’s like trying to drive to Los Angeles and ending up on Pluto.
The government would step in and take over operations. This is why we don't need profit-driven companies responsible for food supply. By all means let Del Monte's managers try their hand in some other industry if they couldn't make it work (or not, because they couldn't make it work).
What makes you think the government is remotely qualified to run a canning operation, a logistics operation, a warehousing operation, an HR operation, and a finance operation for peaches?
Also which government? Because there are at least 3-5 relevant ones here, maybe more.
>What makes you think the government is remotely qualified to run a canning operation, a logistics operation, a warehousing operation, an HR operation, and a finance operation for peaches?
That'd actually be quite easy for this particular federal government actually (current administration aside). And probably California too.
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The government is able to do all of this for an entire literal army of people, spread across the entire world. And for an additional smaller army we call the Marines. Only difference is we add peaches on top of the canning of lead.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_City_Army_Ammunition_Plan...
> What makes you think the government is remotely qualified to run a canning operation, a logistics operation, a warehousing operation, an HR operation, and a finance operation for peaches?
The DoD (for one) runs lots of logistics, warehousing, HR (2.8M), and finance stuff.
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I'm not saying this is a good idea, but the government doesn't need to know how to micromanage these operations. The company already has employees who can do these things. All they need is to get paid. If the government decided that the final harvest of peaches needed to be canned, they could take over the business and pay to make it happen.
edit: Actually, they don't even need to take over the business. Another company is already operating it. The government could simply sign a contract to buy the 50,000 tons of canned peaches and the company would can them. Again, not to endorse the idea, but it is very straightforward logistically.
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When governments take over food production the people starve.
>The government would step in and take over operations.
No. A government shouldn't do this unless canned peaches are especially important for national security or something like that.
Do you really want a world without any fast food or snack foods? I mean, I think we consume way too much as a society, but I'd rather not have the government decide what I'm allowed to eat.
Have a conversation with someone who grew up in communist USSR/Russia sometime... It definitely isn't cool.
If we had govt controlled food supply, we'd never have the likes of hot sauce (sriracha, pace, etc) and would likely never have seen a lot of options form. For better and far, far worse.
>but I'd rather not have the government decide what I'm allowed to eat.
I don't know how it'd get to that if we had even more supply. I'm saying we'd be better off dealing with the problems of overproduction rather than the problems of unprofitable businesses and killing production capacity because it isn't profitable in the short-term.
I also never said you couldn't have non/not-for-profit food production, just that they shouldn't be for-profit.
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Uh, didn't they have "Southern sauce" for lack of a better translation?