crazy idea, let's just feed people
crazy idea, let's just feed people
345 comments
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This is why the US government runs the mail service, since it guarantees delivery to every address, no matter how remote, even if at a loss.
This is why education should stay a government service, so that schools exist for every student, even when a given class is too small.
And this is why medicine will always need a socialized element, since rare diseases are not profitable enough to treat.
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Why is the literacy rate lower than it was before the DoE was created?
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Because it isn't? It's up by about 6%. The numbers are more accurate as well.
Frankly, even if your statement was correct, it would be the equivalent of asking why only people who go to the doctor have cancer.
Lastly, if we are throwing out random facts and trying to extrapolate the value of a system, why is Cuba's literacy rate always close to 100%?
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Probably some combination of our definition of literacy being adjusted, and the availability of more accurate data about populations and how educated they are.
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Great question, why is it always Republican States as well?
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All money is free. It is not taken from some limited store, but rather created by government, freely.
The value, stability, and legitimacy of money is sustained by the supremacy of state power. By such power, the government both determines the supply and shapes the distribution of money, and is assured never to be insolvent.
No distribution of money is natural or naturally superior.
Money is a social construct directed by political will.
Price inflation currently occurring is largely due to the political choice to distribute money to corporations.
That is, as a consequence of particular political choices, the already imbalanced distribution has become even more unfavorable toward workers.
If the political will were rather toward distributing money to workers, then prices may follow a pattern of gradual inflation, but as long as workers' income keeps pace, workers would not be harmed by it even in the slightly.
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You do seem offended. Whatever are you talking about?
I don't see your point other than an explicit joy in the suffering of others. Do I have that right? You think people should go hungry for your personal pleasure?
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I recommend you read about Modern Monetary Theory. The US has Monetary Sovereignty in a fiat currency, and therefore is not limited by taxation when it comes to federal funding. Instead, the US is limited by the real economy, which is worth trillions of dollars more than the federal budget. If the federal government stopped with the federal budget and just spent on the real economy, it wouldn't impact inflation in any way. We do this already with the military, like outspending the USSR on military tech for a decade, sending hundreds of billions of dollars worth of equipment to Ukraine, and spending billions to support Israel's genocide.
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The fuck you on about, mate?
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socialized healthcare will still be better at popular diseases. None of the approaches are particularly good for rare disease sufferers. But socialized is not a silver bullet.
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The point is that private healthcare is driven by the profit motive.
The state is the only institution under our current social organization both that carries capacities at the same scale as corporations, and that legitimately may be supporting the interests of the public.
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I'm not quite sure your point. Any medical care program will be better at treating common diseases than rare diseases. There's just more data to pull in research and development. We get more examples of what works and doesn't.
But the point of socialized services is to make sure everyone gets served.
One of the major concerns regarding any good or service that is essential (not just medical care, but food, water and power) is that selling it as a commodity is a moral hazard. Since the customer is obligated to buy (or starve, freeze in the elements, die of dehydration) an unchecked capitalist can charge any price and, historically, has.
Before the age of states and movements away from monarchy towards (more) public-serving governments, we depended on the Church's (meager) charity, and just accepted that a lot of people were going to die year after year, from famine, plague, freezing and so on. But I think we're trying to do better than the middle ages.
Here in the US, the federal and state governments are completely captured by plutocratic interests, and it's moving back towards autocracy. And our Republican officials have expressed that they're okay with letting small children work long hours in hazardous environments, and letting poor children starve.
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This reminds me of a quote from the Grapes of Wrath, (which is set during the great depression):
The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit- and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains. And the smell of rot fills the country. Burn coffee for fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire. Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out. Slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the earth.
There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificate- died of malnutrition- because the food must rot, must be forced to rot. The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quick-lime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.
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I've never gotten around to reading that book. Never knew enough about it to be interested. At the same time as I was eating on $50 of food stamps per month, I was the person who had to take out all the expired meat and stale bread and unsold, entire cakes down to the dumpster.
Had I taken anything and been seen, I would have been fired. A coworker was fired, for handing it out to the homeless shelter across the street instead. I've never forgotten that.
I'm going to read that book, I think.
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A friend of mine ran a grocery store in the 70s in Texas, and tells me it was routine at the time for grocers to hand out their unsold just-expired meat and vegetables out at closing time. There was always a line to a Dutch door where someone handed out the food by the bag.
It was also known to reduce shoplifting.
So yes, it's interesting that the practice of tainting discarded food has become acceptable again.
One of the USDA's responsibilities is to track food waste like this, since 30%-40% of all food in the US is wasted, and discarded food makes up the largest factor in our managed solid waste. I can't say it is a crime to mass-dispose of food in the US, but it is regarded as a harm, at least by the USDA.
It is certainly regarded as harmful when grocers and restaurants taint their disposed food to deter dumpster diving. But this is done to deter homeless people from trying to forage, e.g. disregarding the humanity of those desperate enough to eat discarded food.
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Make sure to get the unabridged version as theres a lot of abridged versions out there for the grapes of wrath.
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Yes things were really bad before Keynesian economic policy was invented. But fortunately they figured that out.
Since then most famines have been caused by political instability. The largest famine in the world since we figured out economic policy happened in a socialist country (China).
While socialism is beneficial in some sectors of the economy, historically socialism doesn't have a reliable track record when it comes to food production and distribution.
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The Keynesian theory that was enforced by the largest military in the world has arguably failed at this point.
Free markets don't exist. It's just a load of assumptions.
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Please explain why farmers in capitalist economies were grinding up crops after the lockdowns started.
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Socialism wasn't even mentioned, dipshit.
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'murica alone wastes enough food to feed ALL of their homeless population MORE THAN 10x OVER. Get the fuck out of here with your rightwing rethoric.
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Since then most famines have been caused by political instability.
Like you're so close. What causes the political instability?
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Just watched a thing yesterday about milk companies dumping tanker after tanker of perfectly good milk, because they don't want the prices to drop.
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that would be artificial scarcity
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Economists laugh when people believe they're moving away from the evils of money by not using "Dollar Bills".
You read a novel about a post-apocalyptic society where the government is giving out food vouchers just to try to maintain order, and people instantly start using the food voucher slips as currency.
Power dynamics, including the power of the person who farms the land, the person who trucks the food to a storehouse, the person who invests time and thought to design and builds the processing factory, can be expressed any number of ways. You just pick your poison about how you express that power.
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Socialism has consistently failed to do that too because it can't handle outside influence from foreign powers. Let's just freely distribute technology and let people farm for themselves again doing that. Highly organized societies are nothing but slave mills.
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I would suggest anyone concerned about food production under socialism look up Lysenkoism to find the real pitfall.
The fatal flaw in any collective system will always stem from authoritarian policies, but all you need to avoid the greatest errors is simply not, you know, rule by terror.
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Yes it clearly has and if it hadn't, they'd be the exceedingly rich countries with massive militaries, but they're not. The U.S., the corporate oligarchy, is. So their social structure loses, and the one we both hate wins.
Life just favors evil in that way.
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Arguably you are simply suggesting that a population may manage land usage cooperatively.
I would not find much promise, though, in lack of organization. Lands and other resources are finite, and many will want to have a lifestyle or occupation that is urbanized, requiring food to be shipped into cities.
For conflict over land usage not to escalate into harm, it may seem necessary that those affected by its usage participate in organization.
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Then let's just kickstart human expansion into space so resources and land can be unlimited. That would be the only highly organized society you could convince me is legitimate.
We have more than enough land mass for every single human being to have at least one acre to themselves and then some right now, though. We just can't distribute it evenly because humans are apes that form dominance hierarchies and control over the land goes to the dominant apes. Only when humans are genetically engineered to be egalitarian will it ever change, so I guess our debate is pretty moot.
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I did and I got a 14 day suspension from League of Legends.
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Funny how communist countries have the worst track record of famines killing millions.
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Meanwhile the billions starving under capitalism because it's cheaper to let people starve than ship food, even a few miles to a food bank:
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Are you braindead? Millions are starving under capitalism right now.
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Learn about the Irish Potato Famine, the numerous famines under the British Raj in India. Count the millions who died under them, and try to resolve for your own understanding how they were caused by countries you are characterizing as communist.
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What does that have to do with the post?
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Under capitalism, food isn't produced to feed people, it's produced to make a profit.
The only way to make a profit under capitalism is to satisfy the needs of your consumers, regardless if you want or not.
When it's not profitable to feed people, we let them starve.
Hunger is literally an innate need. It will not be profitable if other external factors arise, just as regulations, licences, government-granted privileges that squash other competitors... any violation of the right to self-ownership and private property is detrimental and coercive.
Even when our labor has conquered scarcity, capitalism must manufacture it in order to justify its existence.
Scarcity is not something you can "conquer". Resources are scarce and all have alternative uses. Any time we consume any good, it comes as an expense to someone.
"The unplanned order of markets is the greatest achievement of mankind. It enables us to prosper. It is the foundation of civilization. It has no real alternative, and emerges spontaneously, so it costs us nothing. Fear and loathing of this self-imposed and unintended gift threatens our well-being, even our very lives."
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Do you have a point or are you just nitpicking?
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I think the point is that capitalism may be wonderfully humane, as long as it is confined within a mental box, and never touched by daylight.
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The only way to make a profit under capitalism is to satisfy the needs of your consumers, regardless if you want or not.
This isn't true. This isn't close to true, not even a little. Rent seeking, manufacturing wants/needs, extortion, the list goes on and on, but...
It will not be profitable if other external factors arise, just as regulations, licences, government-granted privileges that squash other competitors
...Yep. You've defined capitalism so that all these inevitable features of a capitalist economy are "external factors". What a stroke of genius. But much like the extraction and consumption of fossil fuels, the myriad ills that inevitably accompany it are "external" only because capitalists have named them so.
Scarcity is not something you can “conquer”.
It's not something capitalism can conquer, because any solution that would end scarcity for a good or service would thereby end profitability for the same. No capitalist would provide it; they'd sooner let their capital collect dust than be used without profit. Or in the case of the Great Depression, they'd sooner set fresh produce and livestock on fire than let other consume it without profit to themselves.
The unplanned order of markets [...] emerges spontaneously, so it costs us nothing.
Markets cost us nothing because they emerge spontaneously? Things that emerge spontaneously cost us nothing? I'll leave it to the reader to poke holes in this obvious nonsense. I'll merely point out that capitalists have proven themselves masters at turning a profit from things that "emerge spontaneously", costing everyone a great deal in the process.
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Rent seeking, manufacturing wants/needs, extortion, the list goes on and on, but…
Aside for your idea of "manufacturing wants/needs" (as they are unlimited), rent seeking and extortion (such as subsidies and taxation) are not legit means to profit in a market-setting.
"Those who particularly flourish on the free market, therefore, will be those most adept at production and at serving their fellow men; those who succeed in the political struggle for subsidies, on the other hand, will be those most adept at wielding coercion or at winning favors from wielders of coercion."
You’ve defined capitalism so that all these inevitable features of a capitalist economy are “external factors”.
Corporatocracy is not the same as capitalism. The state is not intrinsically bounded to the formation of markets and voluntary exchange.
because any solution that would end scarcity for a good or service would thereby end profitability for the same.
There is no such thing as a permanent solution to the economic problem of scarcity. Any superabundance theory is destined to fail, such as keynesian economics.
Or in the case of the Great Depression, they’d sooner set fresh produce and livestock on fire than let other consume it without profit to themselves.
The Great Depression represented the most visible sign of a necessary correction in an economy artificially inflated by expansionary monetary policy. The interventionist measures made to boost the economy only drove it further into depression.
"Future recessions can be prevented by reforming the monetary system that creates the boom in the first place."
Markets cost us nothing because they emerge spontaneously? Things that emerge spontaneously cost us nothing?
"We might object to this on the grounds that markets, like any other construct, are man made, and therefore entail a real cost. While it is true that markets are a human construct, we must bear in mind that they are, as Hayek put it, the result of human action, but not the result of human design."
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The only way to make a profit under capitalism is to satisfy the needs of your consumers,
I think this may be the most stupid thing I've read today, and I've already read three headlines about Trump!
I guess capitalism would never dream of creating monopolies and artificial shortages to increase profit? And it wouldn't dream of trying to trick customers to pay more for less?-
I guess capitalism would never dream of creating monopolies and artificial shortages to increase profit?
The only way to be a monopoly is to have a government-grant privilege, for gaining legal rights to be a preferred producer is the only way to maintain a monopoly in a market setting.
"Artificial shortages" are created by the mere existence of intellectual property. Even what you define "artificial shortage" is probably not artificial at all, as the price of a final consumer good is not determined by its cost of production.
And it wouldn’t dream of trying to trick customers to pay more for less?
"Prices are only incidental manifestations of [economic] activities, symptoms of an economic equilibrium between the economies of individuals." This means that the emergence of a realized price […] coincides not only with the consummation of the exchange process but also with the attainment of a momentary state of rest by the parties involved in the exchange.
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No. You can also profit by appropriating the fruits of somebody else's labor and taking advantage of market failures. Often times, actions that benefit consumers fail to receive adequate funding due to involving public goods.
Capitalism violates the ethical basis of property rights of getting the positive and negative fruits of your labor. In the capitalist firm, the employer solely appropriates the whole product of the firm, which workers produce but are denied the legal rights to
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No. You can also profit by appropriating the fruits of somebody else's labor
Capitalism violates the ethical basis of property rights of getting the positive and negative fruits of your labor.An entrepreneur can't "appropriate" somebody else's labor if the employee who agreed to work for a wage did it voluntarily. Denying this would imply denying the natural right of the worker to free will. Social cooperation is not the same as slavery.
and taking advantage of market failures.
These so-called "market failures" are the product of an utilitarian and scientific economic theory to understand the causes and effects of economic relationships, as it ignores completely the difference between the study of Human Action and economic history.
In fact, the intervention of the government makes it more difficult to have a good allocation of resources.
Often times, actions that benefit consumers fail to receive adequate funding due to involving public goods.
"Every good is useful "to the public," and almost every good […] may be considered "necessary." Any designation of a few industries as "public utilities" is completely arbitrary and unjustified."
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Food is not scarce. Rising food prices are not because of food scarcity. Milk hasn't nearly doubled in price in the past two years because of a scarcity of dairy cows.
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Food is not scarce.
Food is not a superabundant resource. If it was, then the ends it satisfies would already have been attained, and there would be no need for action. Resources that are superabundant no longer function as means, because they are no longer objects of action.
An example of an actual superabundant resource is the air:
"Thus, air is indispensable to life and hence to the attainment of goals; however, air being superabundant is not an object of action and therefore cannot be considered a means, but rather what Mises called a "general condition of human welfare." Where air is not superabundant, it may become an object of action, for example, where cool air is desired and warm air is transformed through air conditioning."
Rising food prices are not because of food scarcity.
Of course. Rising the price of something could be caused by a lot of things. However, we should differentiate a change of the price caused by voluntary exchange of it caused by institutional coercion.
Milk hasn’t nearly doubled in price in the past two years because of a scarcity of dairy cows.
Descriptive economics is not the same as explanatory economics.
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One example alone I can think of of how privatisation is bad is that redundancy is ignored because it is not profitable. For example, our water companies in the UK is incentivised to not have huge reserves because they cost more to maintain, which means that during a bad drought, people do run out of water. This has already happened, and this is only one example.
This happens with all sorts of industries that provide essential services - they will fail when put under stress, because to account for that stress is unprofitable. At worst, it leads to people suffering, at best, it needs constant regulation and enforcement by the government to stop them running in an unsafe manner. Companies will literally use child labour if you let them - I don't know why you insist on defending them.
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One example alone I can think of of how privatisation is bad is that redundancy is ignored because it is not profitable.
At worst, it leads to people suffering, at best, it needs constant regulation and enforcement by the government to stop them running in an unsafe manner.There you go. The classical myth of "natural monopolies" and the intervention of the government, such as licenses, protectionism, "public utilities", subsidies, etc. are the mere cause of this problem.
"The fact that the government must give permission for the use of its streets has been cited to justify stringent government regulations of 'public utilities,' many of which (like water or electric companies) must make use of the streets. The regulations are then treated as a voluntary quid pro quo. But to do so overlooks the fact that governmental ownership of the streets is itself a permanent act of intenention. Regulation of public utilities or of any other industry discourages investment in these industries, thereby depriving consumers of the best satisfaction of their wants. For it distorts the resource allocations of the free market."
Companies will literally use child labour if you let them
"[...] the only reason our children don't have to do this type of labor is that we are wealthier, not because of our child-labor laws nor because we are somehow culturally or racially superior."
Any ban on child labor is utterly counterproductive and potentially life-threatening to the very people the government is "trying to protect". Only economic development can improve the lives of these children, and nothing short of unrestricted free trade will do.
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ITT: Conflation of free market economics and capitalism.
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Was there a watchmen parody in king of the hill that I missed? Or did someone just make this?
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Don't question Space Bobby
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It's just this one edit, it's been around for like a decade though
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Thats my purse!
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Dangit bobbuh
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Farming shouldn't be profitable. It should be considered a service.
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Yeah, just send some food to a place that doesn't have enough. Simple enough.
Except doing that puts the local agriculture out of business. No one buys food when someone's giving it away, right? I suppose you can just continue sending food to that country that's now completely dependent on your country. Good plan. That is if your plan is to establish a colonial empire with client states completely dependent on yours.
How about a socialist revolution? Nobody has ever died in a famine in a socialist country! Oh... wait.
Nah the best strat involves subsidizing the local agriculture industry, expanding it while temporarily providing just enough food to top up to area with the needed calories to prevent people from starving. Once the local agriculture industry has expanded, you've succeeded in the whole "teach a man how to fish rather than giving a man a fish" thing.
So you have to send tractors, develop irrigation, maybe send some GMO seeds that have higher crop yields if you're more concerned about people starving than first world moral objections.
But yeah, let's just feed people.
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You lack imagination and swallow the pill handed to you. Maybe the economic theory is just bullshit thought to you by the people who benefit most from said theory.
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Give credit where it's due.
Great imagination certainly was required to speculate the "plan is to establish a colonial empire".
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If current systems of imperial hegemony were dismantled, then all regions would become more resilient, through greater food independence, and food producers could become more prosperous.
It is confounding how, through reading the post, you became determined to object over someone's "plan is to establish a colonial empire with client states completely dependent on yours".
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Aren't you forgetting the whole supply and demand thing...
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No. That's why the caption says "... capitalism must manufacture [scarcity] in order to justify its existence"
If there are enough resources for everyone, then it is difficult to make a profit. So capitalism creates artificial barriers and waste to artificially create scarcity and demand in order to maximise profits. Its most obvious with products that are deliberately designed to wear-out, or break, or degrade over time.
Making long-lasting durable, repairable, and upgradable products is not beyond us - but is harder to make a profit that way. So instead we get stuff that degrades over time.
With food it is more subtle, but what is crystal clear is maximizing profits is the top priority for the invisible hand of capitalism. Keeping everyone well fed may be a desirable side effort, but is not what capitalism is trying to achieve. And that's why we end up throwing away huge amount of vegetables that aren't quite the right shape for supermarkets, but at the same time as having people starving.
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Yes, and when the cost of a product becomes too high for it's true value, alternatives are created, which is why you're probably on lemmy right now. Right now, made to break profits are marketed to be cheaper, and while they are not, people believe it which is why they are still in high demand. There is an abundance of supply with many options, this is very different from low supply.
Capitalism is not inherently the problem. It's the corruption of governments that allow artificial scarcity to exist.
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Right, that's why diamonds are so expensive! No, wait, that shit is actually worthless and only exploded in value because a few rich fuckers CREATED the PERCEPTION of scarcity.
Supply and demand is a fucking fairy tale told by rightwing scum to manipulate public discourse. It requires a world of absolute and perfect knowledge to function, which, unsurprisingly, doesn't apply.
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The people who want to end the social safety net call themselves capitalists though.
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There are some very serious problems with various economics systems around the world. None of theses systems is actually capitalism and all of them feed people.
"Capitalism" is a theoretical extreme form of a market economy which nobody practices. In particular, all the larger economies are heavily regulated and have a lot of social programs.
Food scarcity has been so thoroughly beaten that in "Capitalist" countries the problem is reversed. Poor people can easily get all the calories they want. In many developed countries, poverty tracks with obesity.
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Capitalism is not theoretical or hypothetical.
It is a system of social organization and production that emerged in a particular historic period following from particular historic antecedents.
Capitalism requires and produces stratification, marginalization, and deprivation on a massive scale.
In the US, over one in ten are experiencing food insecurity. In marginalized countries, rates are even higher.
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The fundamental definition of capitalism is that all means of production are privately owned.
The reason I say that it's theoretical and hypothetical is that you won't find any real economies where that's the case. Just like we don't find any instances of the platonic ideal of Communism the way Marx described it.
What we have instead is a set of systems with varying degrees of public vs private ownership and various implementations of what should and shouldn't be considered a public vs private resource.
I'm not sure why you would site "product stratification" as a requirement of capitalism. That literally just means that you sort products into different categories. It has nothing to do with any particular economic system.
Most modern economic theory does involve marginalization, but probably not the way you think. The requirement is just that either consumers have different preference curves or producers have different production abilities. That's it and there's nothing particularly sinister about it. Communism makes the same assumptions since those differences are a requirement for, "From each according to their ability, to each according to their need," to make sense.
Deprivation isn't a requirement of capitalism either. It's a basic assumption of economics. The idea is that we have unbounded capacity to consume but bounded capacity to produce. If that isn't the case you don't need an economy, everyone just gets everything they want. The difference between Communism and Capitalism is in how they prioritize using limited resources.
You can cite a single statistic on food scarcity but the data is very clear that we're living in an era of unprecedented food excess. If you look at data sets that cover more than a few decades you'll see strong trends of decreased malnutrition, both within the US and around the world.
One of the chief problems with getting these facts wrong is that they lead us to making bad decisions. Food donations are a prime example. The US subsidizes food production. That's generally a good thing since it improves food security. However that screws food prices. The US deals with this by having the government buy up excess food at guaranteed minimum prices. It then has a bunch of food that nobody wants so, in an effort to kill to birds with one stone, it ships a lot of that food to poor countries at below market prices. That feeds some people but it also massively undercuts the local agriculture industry. There's no way a near-subsistence farmer can come close to competing on price against a modern mechanized farm. That's theoretically OK if we came up with some alternative economic activity but we don't.
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Stakeholder of a variety of agriculture and food manufacturing corporations here.
How 'bout nah? I'd rather make a profit and let the government also buy food from me to feed the needy if the government wants to do that this election cycle.
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crazy idea, let's just have world peace and end all crime. Wait, why isn't everyone doing what I specifically requested?
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Unlike world peace and ending crime, we have enough resources to feed everyone in the world right now. We wouldn't even necessarily need to end capitalism to do it.
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What does any of this have to do with Bobby Hill being on Mars in Watchmen?
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Go to the wikipedia entry for famine.. Count how many were caused by Communism.. I couldnt find one caused by free market Capitalism.
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You couldn't find any caused by capitalism? Or is the "free market" doing all the heavy lifting in your sentence?
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Communism and capitalism are terms that describe structures of power in relation to the processes of production and distribution within society.
Neither causes famine.
The Soviet Union and China experienced severe hardships in the aftermaths of their civil wars, the scrambles for power, and the transformations past feudalism. The famines cannot be completely separated from the massive concentration of power within such societies, but neither can they be attributed to actual indifference or malevolence.
No one wanted the famines to occur.
In comparison, famines such as the Irish Potato Famine and the various famines under the British Raj in India are direct consequences of greed and cruelty.
They were not prevented only because of desire not to prevent them.
The concentration of power under Party rule is an appropriate target for criticism, but also is the similar, arguably even more serious, consolidation of power by contemporary corporate agribusiness.
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Farming is barely profitable in most of the United States and the level of farming you are thinking about is very expensive.
Having cheap/affordable food is very good for everyone.
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Nice word salad.
Do you have any thoughts about why food insecurity continues alongside edible food being discarded, or should we keep pretending this is the best of all possible worlds?
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Food production IS the best it has ever been, and farming is exceptionally productive.
Do you have any thoughts about why food insecurity continues alongside edible food being discarded
I do know it's not because farmers are some rich powerful group that wants to throw their product away, like OP seems to be suggesting in this Meme. I also know that having farmers just give their product away for free is not a good solution.
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I agree with both of you. The USA should stop support in total and let the nations of the world do for themselves. We have carried that burden way too long, as the rest of the world turns it's back, or complains about what we do.
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There is a difference between capitalism and globalization. You can still have radical capitalism, with near sight/profit orientated exploitation of your local system.
Did I misunderstand something in your statement or did you just don't understand what current practiced radical capitalism means?
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I have a complete understanding, but I don't think what I said supports radical capitalism in any way. I want US dollars spent domestically. Period. Minimal global support, just like every other major nation of the world. The United States should no longer do anything more than the 2nd place country.
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345 comments
There have been some pretty extensive studies that indicate that when you give poor people money, they become less poor. When you give poor people enough money to live on, they stop being poor. It’s a radical concept, but it’s also the truth.
I read a study arguing that each time someone utters the letters U, B, and I, currency devalues itself by one thousand fold, chunks of the sky rain down on metropolitan centers, and everyone instantly becomes fat, lazy, and uninterested in any activities except playing video games.
Yup I died because you said it, so thanks for that.
To be clear, I have no issue with most people working while others do not and live off the system. I think most people will still want to do that something.
UBI isn't going to do that.
You can point to a handful of small scale studies that show more money works, and yes, on a small scale that is exactly what you'd expect to happen.
This does not work when everyone has that same income. It's not a matter of 99% of people making smart choices, because I concede that the vast majority of people with sudden access to additional income would spend it wisely.
The issues are twofold.
A) when the people who've made it their career to suck every penny out of every possible person know that there are suddenly more pennies to be had, they're going to raise prices. It's frankly foolish and shortsighted to expect prices to remain the same or only raise a little. This issue is not raised with small scale experiments. So regardless of their obvious success, they're not telling the whole story.
2). UBI does absolutely nothing to address the problems it's actually trying to solve. All it does is print a check every month as a bandaid for some serious problems that will certainly persist. You can't fix housing without building housing. Individual healthcare will still be tied to your job. College education will be prohibitively expensive and require staffing a lifetime of debt, and we'll still throw away an obscene amount of food, and people will still go hungry. The only thing that will probably get better is more children will have a secure diet.
And none of that assumes prices would inflate the way they absolutely will. Because even if UBI happened, the people who want all the money the working class has aren't suddenly going to think it's ok to leave dollars unspoken for.
The cost of college will steadily increase by about the amount kids are expected to have been able to save by the time they get there. Rent prices will go up to accommodate the new found freedom of spending. And that's the stuff you have a choice on. You think Comcast will see people with so many extra dollars a month and think "well our customers don't have another option but we'll let them keep all that money?"
UBI is just a ticket to absolute dependency on a government check for 99% of Americans, and less financial freedom.
Address the actual problems, don't just slap a half baked bandaid on it
There are real risks of a badly-designed UBI, and it unfortunately locks us more into capitalism instead of less, but innovators giving up on innovation is not one of them.
Yeah UBI would solve this. This might be a criticism of contemporary capitalism, but it isn't a critique of capitalism more broadly because in principle, capitalism can have a UBI.
More fruitful anti-capitalist critiques emphasize workplace authoritarianism, the employer's appropriation of the whole product of a firm, monopoly power associated with private ownership especially of land and natural resources, and inability to effectively allocate resources towards public goods
A strike can last much longer if workers are not worried about their bread and roof.
Even without organization, a secure worker can bargain harder for higher wages and better conditions.
Even a UBI specifically for food- food stamps for all- would make a massive change and improve millions of lives.
In principle, and even in it's intended general practical application, I agree with you.
But in America, I can see both parties getting on board with a UBI, only because they'll use it to gut all other social welfare programs.
UBI can't pay for both at once? Tough shit. We abolished EBT and Medicare to pay for UBI.
South American experiments with printing money make the studies hard to believe. You can't simply give people money without causing a devaluation in said money. You have to take it away from the market somehow (so, tax the shit out of the rich)
The government surely can.
The government has the power to levy taxes.
The government has comprehensive powers for regulating the value of currency, through control over the money supply.
At any rate, the government printing money for workers cannot possibility be worse for workers than the government printing money for businesses, as it is doing now.
I suppose, though, you might take comfort in how inflation now is being so effectively prevented, instead of causing needless human suffering.
Have you considered the actual reasons, to such a degree that you could share with us how you understand as meaningful the comparison with UBI?
Alternatively, are you simply deflecting thoughtlessly with a false analogy?