Haha. I'm not sure what we're doing but I'm happy to sign one and send you some random stickers we're making too. Just shoot me a DM.

I'm so sorry to hear this. I hope the therapies you write about can beat this.

who is this?

we're out here.

beltless too. good shit.

But with that being said, some of the ideas in the visioning documents about municipal grocery stores being hubs of values-based procurement and other experiments, while noble, might risk defeating the purpose, which is low-cost healthy staples.
climatecommunityinstitute.substack.com/p/its-time-f...

In other words, the debate should not be - or at least not primarily - about "Can the government do grocery stores better?" but rather about "What can the government do when the grocery stores choose not to open?"

... the sort of food abundance that exists in corporate chain stores because you won't sell the fancy/regenerative/etc stuff that has foodie appeal. These stores should focus on affordable produce (too expensive for bodegas to stock cause of waste) and affordable staples.

*worn-out ground.

The thing is that grocery stores have relatively small margins, so this may be a very rational decision. In this case, a public good (fresh food) is not being provided, so gov't should step in. But you also can't expect, as some proponents do, for these to be havens of ...

A lot of this municipal grocery store debate treads work-out ground about gov't v private role in providing for the public good. But the thing is that large grocery chains are probably the best bet for getting healthy food into *any* neighborhood. The problems arise when they choose not to.

Also the category of "farmer" as an identity category is so easy to exploit. Imart worked for Price Waterhouse Cooper as a Consultant and took over her family's industrial farm. Miss me with the "protect small farmers and cultural traditions like meat" line from a member of the consultant class.

"In today’s Brussels, appeals to heritage and identity land more softly than calls for food system innovation. In that climate, that's all even a fringe idea needs to survive."
www.politico.eu/article/vegg...

Some details on EU farm politics here (from me last year):
www.vox.com/future-perfe...

A tiny constituency that constitutes only a tiny percentage of EU GDP but has oversized political clout is sinking environmental policies, banning cell ag, and now waging a war on language. People focus on industries like oil and gas, but farmers are a brutally regressive political bloc.

And, incidentally, when the meat industry organized (unsuccessfully) against Question 3 in 2016, they created a cynical astroturfed alliance of hardline ag interests with poverty advocates to try to sink legislation to stop battery farming chickens over scaremongering over price increases.

I realize this sounds like both-sides snark, but what I mean is that the idea that regulation is undesirable - even regulation that serves the public good - when it raises consumer prices traps us in a classical economics race to the bottom; it leads to positions like "less biosecurity on farms."

We all miss both old twitter and gabe when he was a real poster.

And by good I mean 10% funny and 90% soul crushing.