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yes.

anthropology:
class distinctions arise from the specialization of labor made possible by agriculture and the food surplus it provides. Ergo: AGRICULTURE.

Who needs agriculture, it's f*cking stupid. We can just get food from grocery stores.

When I was a kid we learned that class distinction happens because of the inherent superiority of the wealthy. Then the communists started taking over.

And that's when things got bad.

Originally posted by Lord Lucien
Who needs agriculture, it's f*cking stupid. We can just get food from grocery stores.

Amen brother/sister. Also let's get rid of these darned cows. We can get our milk from the market, who needs cows they just dump smelly stuff all over the place.

Biological in-group/out-group tendencies mixed with the natural schema forming and classification powers of the human brain.

Originally posted by coberst
Amen brother/sister. Also let's get rid of these darned cows. We can get our milk from the market, who needs cows they just dump smelly stuff all over the place.

Excellent idea, let's just synthesize all (not really all of them) the components of milk and combine them with water so we never have to milk a cow again.



While we're at it, let's grow our beef in a lab. (This was actually done with some success, already.)




On top of that, let's geneticelly engineer bacteria or a single cell algae that can recapture green house gases.



HOOORAY FOR TECHNOLOGY!

Frak that. Let's re-engineer ourselves to not need food.

Originally posted by Symmetric Chaos
Frak that. Let's re-engineer ourselves to not need food.


But that isn't as "close" to reality as what I put in my post. All of mine either happened or are in the works.




But yours is MUCH better.

Originally posted by dadudemon
But that isn't as "close" to reality as what I put in my post. All of mine either happened or are in the works.




But yours is MUCH better.

It was on my mind. I've been doing research for a not quite hard science story, reducing the weight of food to be carried is very useful. Getting rid of it is pretty much impossible but probably wouldn't be all that hard to reduce it.

What would the major theoretical difficulty be with eliminating food?

we know what ratios of nutrient type to body weight people need...

It seems to me that it is more of a problem with mechanics or miniaturization of technology, or even some form of nutrient delivery system.

But like, a shot that A) Gave us our daily nutrients in a time release form B) Prevented to secretion of stomach acid/basically shut down the digestive system C) reduced the neurological feeling of hunger.

These aren't even just lab ideas. AFAIK, with the possible exception of B, all of those are available to some degree on the market anyways.

Originally posted by inimalist
What would the major theoretical difficulty be with eliminating food?

Thermodynamics?

Reducing it would be easy (the theoretical minimum should be around 450g/day plus air and water if you gave nothing but the requirements for life) but until we invent magic it would be impossible to eliminate food.

Originally posted by Symmetric Chaos
Thermodynamics?

Reducing it would be easy (the theoretical minimum should be around 450g/day plus air and water if you gave nothing but the requirements for life) but until we invent magic it would be impossible to eliminate food.

you mean food as "energy source" rather than food as "physical materials from organisms which are prepared" then?

Well, we could change the biology entirely.


Make it to where cells don't need to divide by adjusting their self repair mechanisms and divide mechnisms...growth mechanisms, etc.



Change how energy is produced in the system.





Change the tolerance to heat on the low and high end.


Make it to where we don't lose moisture at all.


Eliminate toxin production. Everything could be useable by something.










We'd still probably need to put outside sources of food in our bodies. Maybe call it material, instead of food.





We can do all of this with nano-technology. Teehee.


And if we can figure out how to digitize our brains, double teehee.

originally, labor division and private property gave rise to it.

Originally posted by 753
originally, labor division and private property gave rise to it.

Isn't private property, as we would recognize the term, relatively recent? Division of labor seems sufficient anyway.

"I am a soldier and you are a farmer."

Instant creation of class distinction right there.

I was thinking of early private property as the power to exclude others (within the same society) from access to and use of land (or other natural resources) within one's political control, which I believe is an older phenomenon. though such property could be held by an upper class collectively instead of by individual members.

yes, labor division is enough for it.

both phenomena are related to the emergence of agriculture as someone else has mentioned, though many agricultural societies remained largely egalitarian.

'Twas interesting how quickly wealthy neighborhoods appeared after the founding of the original North American colonies. No time wasted separating the rich from the poor.

Thanks for sharing it really helpful for me.

Which is incidentally the most powerful emotion.

Originally posted by Symmetric Chaos
Frak that. Let's re-engineer ourselves to not need food.

Or we could at least eat recycled food

Soylent Green?