[p2p-research] debate on open agriculture

[Kevin Carson]

On 7/17/09, Stan Rhodes <stanleyrhodes at gmail.com> wrote:

> Kevin, expertise is another huge difference, in all industries, and so the
> economies of scale created by centralization include the specialization of
> experts and the efficiency gains they make.  Specialization seems to be
> often ignored or trivialized in economic discussions on this list, which is
> a mistake.  The gains of trade from specialization can't be reasonably
> denied, so we should freely acknowledge them--from that acknowledgment
> follows the highlighting of gains enabled by sharing knowledge.
>
> Given what I've seen and experienced with farms, I'm highly skeptical that
> it's cost-effective for the majority of the population to make, rather than
> buy, most of their food (some herbs, a couple tomato plants, sure).
> Specialized producers with operations that are centralized to some degree
> strike me inevitable--that trend doesn't concern me.  What concerns me is
> the societal and governmental refusal to revise costs to reflect known and
> measurable externalities.  Essentially, subsidized and condoned destruction
> of common pool resources.
>
> Rising fuel costs will bring that destruction closer to home for those
> people that can do something about it, politically, so I see some hope
> there.

I'm not sure we disagree on all that much here.  The real question is
not whether economies result from division of labor, but the scale on
which they top out.  Depending on the cost of other factors in the
make-vs-buy decision, there might be rational economic incentives to
the diffusion of skill.  Just as a guess, the WWII Victory Gardens,
with some 40-50% of in-season veggies being produced at home, might be
a plausible levelling off point after several years of skill
diffusion.  For most of the rest of it, economies from division of
labor might be maximized by market gardeners at the community level.
At an intermediate scale, economies from division of labor and from
full utilization of specialized equipment might be maximized within a
neighborhood barter network.

-- 
Kevin Carson
Center for a Stateless Society http://c4ss.org
Mutualist Blog:  Free Market Anti-Capitalism
http://mutualist.blogspot.com
Studies in Mutualist Political Economy
http://www.mutualist.org/id47.html
Organization Theory:  A Libertarian Perspective
http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/12/studies-in-anarchist-theory-of.html