Comment on Tariffs on Canadian goods having a 'devastating effect,' U.S. farmers say
adespoton@lemmy.ca 1 week ago
Why are farmers, who are generally very intelligent people holding together a mini financial empire always on the brink of destruction, so often staunch conservatives who fall for populist rhetoric?
Actual spread of farmers.
5% intelligent well educated people with an above average understanding of their business.
15% solid businessman with a good understanding of economics and business.
20% mechanics who run large equipment and farm on the side.
60% drooling idiot welfare babies sucking on the teat of government subsidies.
Farming has always been a bit precaurious, where bad seasons can fuck you up financially, and where needed hardware to remain competitive is extremely expensive to purchase and maintain. On top of that, if you are a smaller farmer you have to compete against other farmers, plus much larger companies. Either by selling your stuff yourself or selling it to them.
Keeping even a mini empire plus working the land can be difficult and time consuming. Plus, not everyone wants to be a farmer so your kids may not want to follow the trade which was not the case 50+ years ago. So, just lots of challenges.
I mean lots of reasons, but primarily I’d say its because the concept of a general measurable intelligence is an illusion. People can be skilled at something, and can be quick to learn new skills, without any correlating ability for problem solving or reasoning. And because its generally an inherited position, most farmers may see learning their trade as more important than any other kind of formal or informal education. Why pay attention in school when you’re just goibg to work on the farm, or when you already are expected to work on the farm before and after school. Also what are you basing the idea that farmers are ‘very intelligent’ anyway? Even by most of the illusory mechanics we use to measure intelligence, why would farmers be any more intelligent than any other subset of the population? They just need to be capable. And capability in any skill is a poor measure of intelligence. There are plenty of doctors or researchers who are great at memorization or excel in a certain field but have no critical thinking skills.
It depends on some degree on the type of farmer, but most farmers are required to be generalists. Their “trade” involves being capable veterinarians, businesspeople, market analysts, engineers, researchers and more, who at the end of the day produce a reliable stream of consumable product and don’t get wiped out by unexpected circumstances.
The reason I made a call to intelligence was in response to the “dumb farmer” caricature — the idea that, because they don’t specialize, they aren’t very intelligent.
But you make some good points — critical thinking can be lacking in any field, even when problem solving and general reasoning are requirements for the job.
However, the original question wasn’t “why would farmers be more intelligent” but rather “why would farmers behave consistently in a more conservative manner AND be more prone to falling for populism?” It’s obviously not their intelligence, so what is it?
Then again, as we’ve seen recently, businesspeople in general appear to have fallen for populism, so maybe that’s where the connection lies?
SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Brown people scary
peregrin5@lemm.ee 1 week ago
This. They live in nearly entirely all white communities and rarely see anyone that doesn’t fit the community norm. They have zero empathy for brown people, queer people, etc. because they don’t know any and have been programmed by Fox News to refuse to associate with any even if they came across them.
Bo7a@lemmy.ca 1 week ago
You don’t even need to be that different. I showed up in a western farming town at 15 years old. My hair was long for a boy, and my ‘city’ clothes got me harassed from the first day I arrived in that town. Isolated morons. The lot of them. They fear anything that is not exactly like they are.
adespoton@lemmy.ca 1 week ago
Farmers employ lots of brown people and even act as refuges for illegal immigrants. They may take advantage of brown people and be racist, but they’re not afraid of them.
Any other ideas?
shittydwarf@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 week ago
Brown people with rights are scary
Seleni@lemmy.world 1 week ago
They fear brown people taking over (aka the ‘great replacement theory’) and doing to them what they do to brown people.
They also see PoC as lesser and therefore needing to be lower on the totem pole; if they get rights, or even (gasp!) high-level jobs then they move up the totem pole, which is a violation of the ‘natural order’. And they believe that if the natural order is violated, society itself will collapse.
TheBat@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Boo!