Starvin Larry

Recently, a man decided to make a sandwich from scratch. He grew the vegetables, gathered salt from seawater, milked a cow, turned the milk into cheese, pickled a cucumber in a jar, ground his own flour from wheat to make the bread, collected his own honey, and personally killed a chicken for its meat. This month, he published the results of his endeavor in an enlightening video: making a sandwich entirely by himself cost him 6 months of his life and set him back $1,500.

(It should be noted that he used air transportation to get to the ocean to gather salt. If he had taken it upon himself to learn to build and fly a plane, then his endeavor would have proved impossible).

The inefficiency of making even something as humble as a sandwich by oneself, without the benefits of market exchange, is simply mind-boggling. There was a time when everyone grew their own food and made their own clothes.  It was a time of unimaginable poverty and labor without rest.

Say you wanted mayo on the sandwich-then you would have to raise the chickens,collect the eggs,separate the yolks from the whites,press the oil out of some soybeans,or olives that you grew,slowly whisk the oil into the egg yolks,add some vinegar that you made from some wine that you made from some grapes you picked,add a little bit of ground mustard from the seeds you collected from the mustard plants you grew…

Say you wanted some potato chips with that sandwich-after you grew the potatoes,and dug them up,washed them off,peeled and sliced thinly,fried them in some of the soybean oil you pressed out of the soybeans you grew,then let the excess oil drain off on some paper you made from some hemp you grew-or you let them drain on some linen you made from some thread you made from some flax you grew that you wove together on the loom you made…