Comments on: Why Jews Don’t Farm

By: Steve Landsburg

Steve Landsburg — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 02:22:09 +0000

sean:

no mention of KIBBUTZIM???

No, not no mention of kibbutzim.

By: sean

sean — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 00:02:44 +0000

no mention of KIBBUTZIM???

By: Bill Miller

Bill Miller — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 01:42:39 +0000

I spent my formative years working on a Jewish-owned dairy farm.

I had the opportunity to return home after a 30 year hiatus. I was happy to see the farmer’s son working the farm and his son tending a small John Deere dealership.

Every single farm in that area (now mostly corn) is jewish owened.

Plenty of jew farmers out there.

By: Fred Sanford

Fred Sanford — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 00:16:25 +0000

Jews don’t farm because that is hard work. They have always preferred to be parasites, and to live off of the local population.

By: lou

lou — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 22:22:50 +0000

Re: Cos:
A better question that should be asked and never is” What do Jews do or what did Jews do that would cause them to be forced to move to a different land every few centuries?”

By: Mark Levit

Mark Levit — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 21:49:51 +0000

My unfashionable family had a working chicken farm in Toms River New Jersey from 1946-1956. In the surrounding area there were many Jewish farmers.

By: The Tall Thin Guy

The Tall Thin Guy — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 20:37:19 +0000

I was sure the answer was Comparative Advantage. Jews got educated and did so many higher value jobs. Trade is good.

By: Blissex

Blissex — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 20:36:11 +0000

Interesting details about jewish history. I had assumed that Jews had only started going into professions when restricted to ghettos.

After that let me address the offtopic post about Godel: I am not a professional logician, but I seem to be one of the few people who understands Godel’s theorems and their importance, and both are vastly misunderstood.

Their importance is purely technical, as an investigation as to whether Hilbert’s aim of finitary proofs was achievable.

Their main import is whether finitary induction can be used to prove both the consistency and completeness of arithmetic within the same theory, and the answer is “no”.

Godel’s theorems have been superceded a few years later by the far more interesting Gentzen theorems, which clarify that completeness and consistency of a theory are provable together only in a theory that is more “powerful” than that theory, so the theory of arithmetic can be proven consistent and complete, if it is indeed consistent and complete, by using non-finitary induction, and indeed it has been proven so. Some people object to non-finitary induction, but Gentzen theorems prove that it is either that or nothing.

There is no infinite regress because the theory used for the proof needs only to be proven consistent, and that can be done in itself, because what cannot be proven is both consistency and completeness.

That’s all. Nothing to do with God or intuitive grasp of mathematical truth by human consciousness.

By: Gus

Gus — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 20:07:50 +0000

I think Cos has gotten the nub of it, although I would reverse the drivers.

The Jewish population has not had a homeland since the Jewish-Roman wars. It is difficult to farm when you don’t have land. So the diaspora survived through non-agricultural jobs.

Without a doubt, the literate and educational traditions of the Jews assisted in their survival and success in these non-agricultural jobs. With this success, the cycle became self-reinforcing.

Later discrimination, such as being exiled from Spain in the 1400s only reinforced this position. But keep in mind, many Jewish communities did farm, particularly in Russia. I’m thinking of Fiddler on the Roof.

By: 10 Monday Afternoon Reads | The Big Picture

10 Monday Afternoon Reads | The Big Picture — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 19:02:43 +0000

[...] Some reads for the holiday: • U.S. manufacturing sees shortage of skilled factory workers (Washington Post) see also Can Obama’s Manufacturing Initiative Really Work? (Fiscal Times) • San Francisco Foreclosure Audit Elicits Predictable Responses from Securitization Mess Deniers (Naked Capitalism) • Felix Zulauf: Why You Need to Own Physical Gold (Financial Sense) see also Central Bankers Rub Gold Bugs the Right Way (WSJ) • The Internet is a Major Driver of the Growth of Cognitive Inequality (MoJo) • After Bailout of Auto Industry, Detroit Fallout Trails Romney (NYT) see also Two Charts That Should Terrify Republicans (TPM) • Iron Lady Merkel Bucks German Street on Greek Aid (Bloomberg) • John Galt Is A Crybaby And So Are You (Campaign For America’s Future) • Modern Monetary Theory, an unconventional take on economic strategy (Washington Post) • Economics Made Easy: Think Friction (NYT) • Why Jews Don’t Farm (The Big Questions) [...]