Originally published at: From capitalism to banana-less society: the bizarre vision of socialists exposed! | Boing Boing
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As fun as these ideological debates are, the climate emergency will render a lot of them even more purely theoretical than they are now. At some point in our lifetimes the banana will indeed cost $10, assuming there’s one to be had in the store. Enjoy them while you can.
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The US definitely has played a dark role in the history of bananas, but currently the world’s 3 top banana producers aren’t in South America at all.
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I’m so happy to have not 1 but 2 varieties of bananas growing in my backyard I don’t always have fresh bananas on hand but I always have a gallon bag of frozen ones at the ready.
I’m gonna start my own banana republic now.
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When we live in this post-capitalist, bananaless society, surely a new tourism market will spring up. People will travel to South America, just to look at them!
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Comrade?
[ETA] Also… lol…
fully automated banana Keynesianism
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(insert “Hollaback Girl” quote here.)
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At what price does it become more sensible to just look at it than eat it, I wonder?
ETA - some of them were looked at very longingly after the war. (First link will not onebox)
https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/stories/37/a8153237.shtml
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The real question regardless of socialism or capitalism is: Should certain perishable products be available everywhere, yearlong? Maybe for certain things, but broadly speaking no. This brings about massive food waste and just general wastefulness as far as farming practices, unsustainable commercial practices, etc.
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$10? Billionaires will be in bidding wars to buy the last freeze-dried samples of the extinct species known as bananas.
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The top two of those – India and China – consume almost their entire domestic production.
Indeed, China is the 2nd-largest producer and the 2nd largest importer in the world. Still not the highest consumer per capita, though.
Safe to say, that the banana is so plentiful in the western hemisphere because of US military intervention.
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I remember as a child in the 60s in Europe that people saw the availability of bananas and other tropical fruit as an optimistic sign of good times returning. For a long time in Germany, the joke was that “haute cuisine” was anything with pineapple slices on top.
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… it’s like arguing about Star Trek, but without the celebrity gossip and the warp drives 
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was going to post something similar.
not to be all smug or anything, but i got bananas on trees right now! i take good care of my laborer. he only works when he wants to and he gets the entire crop (me).
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They took all the bananas, put 'em in a banana museum
And they charged the people a dollar and a half just to see 'em
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For the amount of space they take and how much they produce it’s amazing ROI. The stalks are kind of messy and heavy though produce lots of extra material but I try my best to use it as mulch. I can give away half and still have plenty.
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Yeah, from the headline I just assumed the discourse would be centered around the fact that capitalism has a tendency to destroy the most popular commercial species of bananas, and is currently rendering banana growing (and much of agriculture) unfeasible with climate change.
Ah, the old 18th century pineapple economy… You’d have to artificially preserve bananas to have them last long enough to rent them out, though…
There’s been an interesting counterpoint to the idea of only eating locally in recent years, with the acknowledgement that in many parts of the world, it’s not really an option. Growing crops in heated greenhouses is worse than shipping them, in terms of resource use, and in many places you just can’t grow enough crops, especially in winter, to feed the population. (E.g. the UK simply doesn’t have enough land, much less cropland, to grow all the food it requires, even if everyone was willing to accept a diet consisting of a lot of root vegetables and grains…)
Which is to say, there’s a growing recognition that there are no good options. With climate change disrupting agriculture globally, we’ve got a couple decades (at most) before major food shortages anyways.
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It’s a lot of fun, to be honest:
[The address is funny because the city of Fulton is split down the central street (State Line St) by the state line of TN/KY.]
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