What's wrong with regulating farming practices and, if food prices rise, give the poorer consumers more money (as in negative income tax, basic income, whatever) so they can choose to spend on food or anything else? How does subsidizing producers help regulate their practices?

For a single 100 acre field there might be as many as 4 different areas that need a different regulation. You cannot bring that national scale, it requires humans on the ground running soil tests and looking at the results.

Yup.

Supply side policies have greatly distorted many of our markets. What is the true price of anything any more? How are we supposed to manage stuff if all the numbers are make believe?

I support price transparency, accountability, information symmetry.

The cost of food goes up, so we give say 40% of the population money to spend on food. This increases the demand so the cost of food goes up again, so we increase the benefit. This goes on forever, take a look at student loans in the US before federal intervention and now.

What if you tax it back?

You give the money, they spend it on the providers of their choice, and then you tax the money back out.

You say, why would the providers accept it? Because they have to. It would only get the minimum a person needs to survive.

Or a better way with less force on producers: a single payer system like SNAP program, that mandates producers sell basic food amount for a certain price if someone comes with food stamps. Because everyone needs food. Why would proucers accept this? Because they make up for it on volume of everyone who has the food stamps (in this scenario, everyone).

Same as why doctors currently accept Medicare even though it pays less on average.

> and then you tax the money back out.

What do you mean by that? Tax producers at a higher level to remove the subsidized profits from the system? That will have the same effect as before except higher taxes and decreased supply will be the cause of the price increase instead of simply decreased supply. As prices rise more people will need that assistance, thus causing prices to increase faster and faster.

Tuition went up because the feds and states stopped subsidizing tuition. Student loan burden skyrocketed because the feds privatized the game.

Tuition costs seem to follow the enrolment rates pretty closely. It seems the biggest factor is the fact that almost nobody attended postsecondary schools in the past, and now almost everyone does. Supply and demand.

Yes they can, and I benefit from that kind of subsidies (Integrated Farming: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_farming).

Also, a completely free market doesn't just lead to the tragedy of the commons, but to the rape of Nature.

There is no tragedy of the commons here. The person most incented to care for the soil is the farmer, because their future yields depend upon it.

The truth is soil is likely less important than this article would have you believe. Modern farming and fertilizers have rendered it obsolete.

> The truth is soil is likely less important than this article would have you believe. Modern farming and fertilizers have rendered it obsolete.

This can be true to some farmers, but it is not to the big ones. Sure you can apply fertilizer, but you pay for that. If you build your soil the first 7 years you will spend more money for less yields, but after 7 years your better soil will yield more than someone who tries to just apply fertilizer.

The other problem with the apply fertilizer theory is you can only apply so much. Corn needs nitrogen, but too much will kill (or stunt) the corn. Good soils will produce nitrogen every day in smaller amounts.

Of course with we are talking about potassium, that is a mineral and you need to replace what you take off the land either way. So soil health alone cannot be the answer, soil health with fertilizer is ultimately a much better answer.

>The truth is soil is likely less important than this article would have you believe. Modern farming and fertilizers have rendered it obsolete.

Having lived around farming for a few years and known / worked with many farmers, this isn't true at all. Soil and soil health is incredibly important.

How do you figure that? Tragedy of the commons happens in the absence of ownership.

You are right, but that is just the case of rivers, phreatic water and the deep subsoil.

It must be the State reclaiming ownership of those commons, making people that benefit from them pay for their maintenance.

Why must the State own them in order for that to happen? History - especially that of the USSR in recent times - suggests that there are better alternatives.

The State owning them is a proxy for shared responsibility. Because in democracies, the people controls the State by means of parliaments/senates/etc.

Besides, the State doesn't have to own everything. There's a middle ground between the flexibility of private ownership and the rigorousness of public management.

In the USSR everything was controlled by the State, and the State wasn't accountable by means of democracy.

I must say that from were I come, I have some pretty good examples of good public management, like healthcare and water management.

Yea, totally, the commons existed for thousands of years because it isn't sustainable.