Growth in Domestic Food Production in Britain During & After WW2

[barnhart]

Try listening. You might like it. Nuance is good sometimes.

[JohnH]

I have never heard the argument that US food production was aimed at communism. I would always have attributed it to the FDR era subsidies inflating the market (which still exist) and artificially driving down prices. But that said New Deal subsidies were well intentioned...though perhaps, from my perspective, ill advised.

https://freakonomics.com/podcast/how-th ... -cold-war/

The freakonomics episode summary says:

Aisle upon aisle of fresh produce, cheap meat, and sugary cereal — a delicious embodiment of free-market capitalism, right? Not quite. The supermarket was in fact the endpoint of the U.S. government’s battle for agricultural abundance against the U.S.S.R. Our farm policies were built to dominate, not necessarily to nourish — and we are still living with the consequences.

That strikes me as simplistic and historically suspect. It would be worth reading the ChatGPT response to the question of whether that summary is true. ChatGPT rates the claims in that paragraph respectively as No, Partly True, Mostly False, True, False/misleading, Substantially True, True, Simplistic.

It wouldn’t be the first time Freakanomics is misleading, leaves out important details, or is just plain wrong.

The most egregious claim was that legalising abortion led to less crime because more future criminals were aborted.

[mike]

Try listening. You might like it. Nuance is good sometimes.

I tried listening to it today while driving, but my content filter restricted it for some reason. Curious if the show has a lot of bad language or something. This happens once in a while for particular episodes of shows I listen to regularly, for no reason I can figure out. But it wouldn't let me even open the Freakonomics podcast page at all.

[barnhart]

Try listening. You might like it. Nuance is good sometimes.

I tried listening to it today while driving, but my content filter restricted it for some reason. Curious if the show has a lot of bad language or something. This happens once in a while for particular episodes of shows I listen to regularly, for no reason I can figure out. But it wouldn't let me even open the Freakonomics podcast page at all.

I don't know, I listened to it long ago and have forgotten most of the specifics. Maybe freakanomics has changed since I used to listen.

[JohnH]

Try listening. You might like it. Nuance is good sometimes.

I tried listening to it today while driving, but my content filter restricted it for some reason. Curious if the show has a lot of bad language or something. This happens once in a while for particular episodes of shows I listen to regularly, for no reason I can figure out. But it wouldn't let me even open the Freakonomics podcast page at all.

Were you listening to Swearing Is More Important Than you Think?