Efficient distribution of labour my ass
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Easy there OP, do you think food is some kind of "human right" or something? Before you know it, people will be saying housing is too.
In 2021, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution that everyone has a right to food and the UN should work to eliminate world hunger. It passed 186 for and 2 against. The two countries that disagreed were the United States and Isreal.
This fact makes me viscerally angry
Yet not angry enough.
what are you trying to say?
...That there are people who make the decisions to let millions starve, yet we as a society happily throw people in jail or the chair for much less. If some wild gunman were shooting up the neighborhood, the way to stop them is simple. But if some wild suit lets millions starve artificially, "grr I'm so angwy!"
Not to defend them, but that only makes them less hypocritical than others. Talk (and UN resolutions) are cheap, and most countries don't guarantee food or shelter in practice. Finland is the only one that comes to mind as actually achieving this.
Edit: perhaps the downvoters would like to prove me wrong by providing their own examples?
Cuba pretty much manages to eliminate hunger and homelessness, as did the USSR and the entire soviet block
I'm sorry if you truly believe that.
I'm sorry you haven't read a single article with reliable numbers and statistics, and rely on bullshit anti-communist propaganda.
Want some sources on that? Go read "Human rights in the soviet union" by Albert Szymanski, it's an extremely well-sourced book with hundreds of references. Please tell me how many homeless people there were in a country that outlawed unemployment and where housing costed to the average family 3-5% of the monthly income. Please tell me how there could be hungry people in the USSR when the agricultural output of contemporary Russia still hasn't reached the levels of Soviet Russia, and food prices were maintained basically constant since 1940 to 1980.
Hmm, that's weird, why would you specifically pick 1940 as your starting date? I wonder if anything incredibly bad happened in the 30s?
And at what cost? 30 years after the regime was changed, these countries are still significantly behind those who were capitalist in pretty much every single aspect.
You are correct that homelessness way tackled but hunger not at all. Take a look at Romania during Soviet era...
So whilst one problem was solved, many, many new arose. We didn't have oranges (and other foreign goods) , considering our wages, everything was super expensive and personal growth was pretty much impossible - unless you became a member of the communist party, of course.
How is that the fault of communism? The fact that half of Eastern-European countries have barely grown since the 90s is precisely the fault of capitalism at failing to raise the living standards and economies of those countries at rates similar to what communism achieved, except possibly in Poland and Czech Republic which have received capital investment in industry (ofc not high tech because that would compete against Germany) and grow at the expense of other countries through unequal exchange by relying on the import of cheap agricultural produce and raw materials.
I don't know much of Romania, but how can you blame communism for the fail of the last 30 years of capitalism?
Well, these countries are still behind precisely because of communism. When communism fell, they were significantly behind. Now we are still behind countries like germany, france, england but at least we are getting closer to them.
Funnily enough, if you compare prices of goods relative to the wages, we are in a significantly better situation now than we were during previous regime…
There is a very logical progression of basic human needs. Without oxygen, a human will die in less than an hour. We need clean breathable air. Without water, a human a will die in less than a month. We need clean drinkable water. Without food a human will die in less than a year. Shelter is trickier because people can die of exposure and hypothermia in a matter of hours, but may be able to survive without it.
Minor correction: You're technically right, but you will die in less than a week without water and less than a month without food.
There is an issue with that approach.
When they say free speech is a right, life is a right, freedom of conscience is a right and so on, they mean that others can't take away from you what's already yours. Our world, eh, is still that bad that this requires clarification and most people disagree with some or all of these.
I'd say in the situation where there are no white spots on the map, and growing food requires land and other such resources, and those have already been shared, - yes, these are rights. But a different kind by different logic.
A bit like the first part is reactive, while the second part is active. I'm bad with words.
The reasons behind it are quite simple: 1. Food spoils very quickly, so mostly if you don't consume it locally you need to quickly export which is quite expensive. Very often it's simply cheaper to utilize it for example as fertilizer. 2. Storing food is costly. 3. The best option would be not to produce an excess of food but 1) demand is hard to predict 2) crops output is hard to predict 3) for legal reasons like contractual obligations it's better to produce more than less. 4. Current markets are hardly free: see https://www.history.com/news/government-cheese-dairy-farmers-reagan
It was rather radicalizing finding out that the world makes three times as many calories per person than is necessary to feed every person on this planet, but because we're idiots living in a class society in the year 12024 HE, luxury restaurants regularly dump slightly subprime ingredients in the trash while thousands starve.
Does this statistic include calories fed to livestock or not?
https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/global-food?tab=chart&facet=none&country=OWID_WRL~OWID_SAM~OWID_NAM~OWID_EUR~OWID_AFR~OWID_ASI~OWID_OCE&hideControls=true&Food=Total&Metric=Food+available+for+consumption&Per+Capita=false&Unit=Kilocalories+per+day
This specifically talks about food.
According to health.com, the average person needs between 1600 to 3000 kilocalories a day depending on sex and age.
According to Our World In Data, even Africa, the continent with the least food reserves, has enough to give everyone roughly 2500 kcal, which ought to be more or less enough given how people with higher and lower caloric needs balance out. Seeing as how developed countries have more than enough, if a portion of that went to Africa and Asia, everyone could eat.
Calories are a rough measure, and according to Bahadur et al. we are overproducing grains but underproducing fruits, but the wretched of the Earth and the prisoners of starvation are not even getting that grain.
Edit: I have been informed that "calories" in nutrition are in fact "large-C calories", A.K.A. kilocalories. On the other hand, the OWiD numbers, which document the number of kcal available per day, still suggest that we have enough to feed everyone. I have altered the comment accordingly.
Small nitpick: When we talk about calories in food we actually mean kcal
That's not small! That is something that can falsify my comment. I must run the maths again.
When I was into gym and building muscle mass this confused the hell out of me at first.
This is a beef and corn problem fueled by subsidies.
Even if all crops went directly to the stores, the problem would remain. Food is sold to make a profit, not fulfill human needs. It is unprofitable to provide food for all who need it. It is far more profitable to provide luxurious feasts for the wealthy.
I seriously encourage everyone to read this book, even if you read it back in school and found it boring. It's incredibly topical to this day.
I also just read *In Dubious Battle* for the first time and recommend it. A great illustration on why it's so hard to get together and organize when it seems like it should be easy.
I haven't. But I may at some point.
My English teacher would look at me with that demonizing look because I knew how economics work and wanted some explanation of various leftist views with logic in it, not that emotion of hate and envy and indignation and "you stupid capitalism bad meat good stick bad strawberry good mushroom strange", it got especially absurd when I got accused of not watching TV as if that made me dumber. Without such explanations being given, I naturally felt closer towards anarcho-capitalism, because I love freedom and the logic of economics and morals known to me supported it. And they also very clearly didn't love freedom (it takes away the feeling of authority of a certain kind of cowardly people), so I would be kinda hated.
Bad memories, in short.
I wrote a long clumsy text, tldr - one should be very careful with regulations, since in some sense they are what led us here. Strong anti-monopoly regulations - yes, splitting big companies and even franchises - yes, corporate death penalty - yes, reforming (or abolishing) patent and trademark and IP laws - yes, labor regulations - yes, some quality control (not selling "dairy products" completely from palm oil or something) - yes. But any regulatory apparatus is a target for bribes and regulations working in the opposite direction.
you mean you knew that it is a system of myth making by the preistly class, with no predictive power?
oh. you're just a religious fanatic.
Basic laws of supply and demand and subjective equivalence and so on work and have predictive power.
Where I live socialists are like US Republicans in, well, US. You may disagree or agree or play some emotion like you just did, thinking that makes for an argument, this doesn't change the fact that you will go fuck yourself.
You present yourself as above emotional displays, then tell a stranger to go fuck themselves over some mildly worded casual internet debate, presumptivly displaying your anger at the inconsequential judgement of your words.
Moreover, you reference "basic laws of supply and demand", as if reciting words without adding any substance to your argument proves your point and displays your intellect/knowledge. Well, it certainly does one of those things. Probably not in the way you think it does.
The point I'm making is; you are clearly lacking in self-awareness, which is understandable given that you seem to be fresh out of high school (you reference English class, which is something typically only done by kids/young adults). You may want to work on your critical thinking skills and your ability to formulate logically structured arguments if you want to engage in good faith debate while presenting yourself as some sort of expert. Just a suggestion. Take it or leave it.
No, I present myself as above using them instead of arguments, which is not the same. One more such cheat move and I block you to avoid more emotional displays from my own side.
I may want to say that you are the one not arguing in good faith, first of all because you've cheated again. Fool blocked.
no, they don't. those are tautologies.
Hard to take seriously somebody nicknamed "commie" on this.
You win Lemmy today. Yesterday? I need to read this book.
Existence is pain.
Schopenhauer was right even before the internet came :-)
During the Great Depression the federal government literally paid farmers to *not* harvest crops because allowing that much food to be produced would dilute the market and bring down crop prices.
During the Great Depression.
A time when people were starving and there were virtually no forms of welfare.
When millions were thrust into poverty for reasons entirely out of their control.
The federal government paid farmers to create less food to protect profit margins.
Nowadays they largely pay for the food and give it to to people. We got gallons of eggs at one point from that.
"During the Great Depression" could have been Hoover or Roosevelt.
It was FDR
Farmers have bills to pay, too. If the price of growing food doesn't cover the cost to make it they'll go out of business. Then there will be one less farm to grow food. If there's no farms and we're totally reliant on imports, that's a strategic weakness.
It's the same reason we prop up carmakers when they go out of business: Manufacturing capacity is a strategic asset just like farmland.
Then subsidize the farmers by the amount you were paying them to not harvest the food ? They don’t make any money when they aren’t selling it at all either, without this intervention…
Which leads to even cheaper food prices and even more subsidies, and then you have a planned economy.
Oh wait.
Are you sure you aren't thinking of crop rotation? Have 4 fields, have one fallow every 4 years to recharge the soil. Keep farming without doing so causes the topsoil to blow and that caused the great dustbowl which preceded the great depression.
My grandpa was offered to be paid to let the harvested corn just rot, so it was after harvest.
It boggles my mind how little people are aware of this kind of practice. The Who even wrote a "joke" song about it in the 70s:
https://youtu.be/_VkVn0A7E6o
Well, I farmed for a year and grew a crop of corn
That stretched as far as the eye can see
That's a whole lot of cornflakes
Near enough to feed New York till 1973
Cultivation is my station and the nation
Buys my corn from me immediately
And holding sixty thousand bucks, I watch as dumper trucks
Tip New York's corn flakes in the sea
\~~
Well, my pick and spade are rusty
Because I'm paid on trust
To leave my square of cornfield bare
Probably to keep from ripping up the top soil during the harvest. Kind of counterintuitive to use less farmland and to produce less when the price is high, but same thing works with oil fields - you get more the slower you pump.
How would letting harvested corn rot in piles use less farmland? Definitely keeps prices high though.
Oh, I thought you were talking about not harvesting the corn once it was ready.
If it was already harvested and then left to rot, that was market manipulation of some sort. Maybe Grangers and breaking the rail monopolies? Though I think they did the whole "left harvested food to rot" bit in the late 1800s, not early 1900s
In today's world every person who starves, who does without, who suffers unnecessarily..
Does so only because someone wants it so . Not because there is not enough
Damn it,
BobbyCapitalism.It, unfortunately, is an efficient distribution of labor, at least relative to other systems. Not because wasting food for profit isn't fucking heinous, but because the mobility of investor capital and responsiveness of market prices is less inefficient than reciprocal economies or central planning.
However, we are at a point in human society where raw efficiency is no longer the bottleneck for our quality of life. Capitalism was an ugly solution to a real problem, but we can probably bid it farewell at this point, if only we can dislodge the elites who benefit from perpetuating it.
All we need is something that could realistically replace it, and a complete rewriting of all of our laws to allow for it to happen.
Easy enough.
Market socialism, ez. Shame about the whole "entrenched powers that be" bit.
Seems like you could get most of the way there by just keeping the current system but adding a social dividend which would form a basic income for everyone. If the dividend is pegged to economic growth then it should also be fairly resistant to inflation.
This Swedish Market Socialism plan was somewhat similar to that, unfortunately it got scrapped at the last minute for being too radical.
And that loops back around to the "powers at be" problem.
We don't even need to go that far (although it would be nice). We could just make it illegal for stores to throw out perfectly good food and instead force them to donate it to food banks. They can even get a charity write-off as a treat.
Banned
Of course. Hence "dislodge" rather than "ask nicely".
I dislike dividing people into owning and worker classes. If the workers save up their earnings to make their living in the old age, does it make then "owner class"? Should they stay penniless in your world vision? It's the utopian world you propose
Banned
It's not semantics as you try to portray. It's the real life case that simply negates your "solution" if any.
Banned
So it means you never lived in communist or socialist countries. I did
Postcapitalist systems can use market prices and, in principle, be Pareto optimal on non-institutionally described states of affair
@politicalmemes
As I said, we can probably bid capitalism farewell at this point.
Uh... No. I feel like half the fucking western world works on finance, which is quite literally just maximizing the revalorization of capital for the few at the top. Besides, how can be the only system in history to have millions of people unemployed, be efficient at distributing labor?
This is empirically false. You can't provide a scientific source for this because it's wrong. Central planning is the most efficient tool, that's why Amazon and Walmart (extremely centrally planned systems which have power to control their supply chains at will) systematically outcompete all other businesses. Amazon doesn't outcompete other stores being "a competitive market of warehouses", it's a digitalised, centrally-planned behemoth that can so much as smell when a customer is going to conceive making a purchase, and generate all the immediate responses in the supply chain from manufacturing to distribution to optimise the whole thing.
If you wanna talk about countries, please explain how the transition from planned economies to free markets plunged the entirety of Eastern Europe into a deep crisis that killed millions and ruined millions more of lives, to the point of many countries like Belarus, Russia or Ukraine not really having recovered from the impact in 30+ years. So much for the efficiency of capitalism, amirite? A centrally planned economy is what brought the USSR from being a poor, backwards-ass agrarian country in 1917, to defeating the Nazis and being the second power of the world by the 60s.
Read some theory, buddy. Marx in particular. I know he's probably a capitalist pig by your estimations, but it might do you some good.
Dude I'm a Marxist-Leninist. Saying that Amazon is a centrally planned behemoth of efficiency amounts to saying that the capitalist will sell us the very rope with which they'll hang them, you're misunderstanding my comments
Also, where does Marx talk about the efficiency of markets and inefficiency of central planning????
Yes, hence why I believe you've read very little Marx.
Jesus Christ. That's not what central planning means.
Holy shit. Thank you for demonstrating "hence why I believe you've read very little Marx."
The revolutionary nature of the capitalist mode of production and its importance in developing capital to the point where it is possible for the proletariat to seize power is fucking core to Marx's writing. This is not advanced stuff.
Fucking MLs, talking about historical dialectics and materialism and then demonstrating an utter lack of basic knowledge on the subject.
You not being able to understand central planning beyond USSR technology, doesn't mean it's not what central planning means. That IS central planning, it's just evil one, with the intent of maximizing profit and surplus value extraction, and in the most antidemocratic fashion possible. But the tools to modernize central planning of the economy, and to make it democratic and worker-based are pretty much already there for us to take. If you want to actually get educated in modern conceptions of socialist central planning, you could pick up a book like "People's Republic of Walmart" or listen to experts talk about it (you can listen to a "deprogram podcast" about central planning they made a while ago), because, believe it or not, modern computing has solved the "economic calculation program".
Uh... Where in the wall of text that you've sent me does Marx talk about the inefficiency of central planning? Because I've read through it twice just in case and it's absolutely not talking about that. It's a text about the evolution of feudalism into capitalism, about capitalism absorbing all other pre-capitalist systems, and eventually capitalism's contradictions making it collapse. Please enlighten me as to where in this text you've copied and pasted Marx talks about central planning and what arguments he uses against it.
"Central planning as an economic system is when a corporation vertically integrates, and the more it vertically integrates, the more centrally planned the economy is."
Lord.
Cool, so we're just ignoring where I said
This you?
Ask one of your more patient comrades to explain Marx to you, if they can; I don't have the patience to hold your hand through an explanation. We're done here.
Not really, though. I mean, if you want to stick to looking at the last 2000 years, we still have cities that were fed in a feudal rather than capitalist system. Not that those systems were better or more efficient mobilizing labor, but the problem you're referring to wasn't really there.
That's not to mention at least several examples in the anthropological and archaeological record of large scale societies that did not rely on what we define as capitalism to feed their people.
I think it's a pretty crazy oversimplification to say capitalism just popped up as a solution to a problem.
Feudal societies are notably horrendous at efficient resource distribution, and don't get me started on the weird fetishization of reciprocity economies.
There's a reason that capitalist economies exploded in growth once the main features of modern capitalism took root, and it sure as shit ain't because capitalists are just that eager to contribute to the national good.
And those societies, much like any pre-modern societies, did not feed their people particularly reliably. Notably, when the Roman Empire united the Mediterranean under a unified proto-capitalist market, famine conditions drastically reduced (though very much were not completely eliminated, mind you). Not because the Roman Empire was particularly concerned about the plight of the poor - it very much was not. But because market economies and capitalist (or proto-capitalist) investment behaviors can redirect excess resources from Region A, to Region B which lacks them, with astounding speed and responsiveness, and with minimal additional labor or material investment (at least compared to alternative methods).
The problem was inefficient methods of resource distribution. Capitalism was the solution. Modern technology, both material and organizational, allows us other choices now, but capitalism didn't spread because it was just the chic aesthetic of the time. Capitalism spread because it is significantly more efficient than feudal or guild/mercantilist economies.
David Graeber has written two ~700 page anthropology books that pretty much debunk this entire line of thinking, one of them a collaboration with archaeologist David Wengrow. That latter includes an almost immediate refutation of the utopian egalitarian hunter gatherer bands that so many pop scientists love to idealize, the same fetishization that you're talking about. They're pretty rigorous about it.
You should really check them out. 'Debt: the first 5000 years' and 'The Dawn of Everything', if you want I can pop the audiobooks on google drive and DM you the link.
I literally just came off listening to both of them in the span of 2 weeks, which is why I see such a generalized statement as "Capitalism was a solution to inefficient resource distribution" as a bit silly, because no one just thought, "oh you know what we need? Capitalism! It will be the solution!"
It has an insanely long history originating from pre-coinage, debt-based societies, some of which had huge populations. They definitely rail against the "agricultural revolution > cities" line of thinking, noting that archaeological evidence across the globe for agriculture shows the whole process took something around 3000 years, during which, again, there were mega-sites (essentially cities) that relied on a mix of agrarian and hunting and gathering.
The second book is, granted, more about hierarchical structures in ancient civilizations and Debt is more about social inequality when it comes to money, but I really really suggest you check em out. Lmk if you want that google drive link, I just gotta upload em
We may be miscommunicating a bit here, because I don't mean to imply that capitalism sprung into being wholly formed, or that it was something that was consciously pursued; rather, that capitalism, once the main features that we would recognize came into being, put down roots and spread because it was a more efficient solution to an extant problem, or, if 'solution' sounds too final, a more efficient alternate means to tribal/feudal/guild/mercantilist economies of addressing the problem of resource distribution inherent to complex societies.
Like how traditions of banking spread because they're more efficient than allowing money to be hoarded - not because the ruling class up and says "Banking, what a wonderful idea!", but because polities whose institutions tolerate, mesh with, or allow for the innovation, ceteris paribus, end up in a superior position over those which do not, because they are in possession of a solution (to hoarding, in the case of banking) of increased efficiency than non-banking solutions, making polities which have banking or banking-like institutions the norm over time.
That being said, I've put both of those books on my to-read list, because they sound excellent.
We might be, and I'm definitely not an expert or that immediately knowledgeable (hence, why I just listened to two long-ass books in two weeks), but even your banking example doesn't really satisfy me. I get what you're saying -- not that banking or capitalism were a spontaneous solution or decision or conscious at all, but moreso that they solved a certain problem many human societies had, and therefore it was further adopted, and further, and further, an almost natural propensity to spread. In some sense, there must be some underlying force that's pushing capitalism and banking along, because otherwise we wouldn't have their dominance, today.
But that is still the core idea the authors push back against in those two books. I'd probably argue that banking didn't spread because it solved the problem (hoarding money), but that it emerged out of early hierarchical societies whose states, themselves, hoarded primitive "money" (grain) and lent it out to farmers at interest, and that the underlying force we're looking for that caused it's eventual spread is the concept of debt or becoming whole, itself. But then I am also getting into the territory of banking as some natural sociological phenomenon that was destined to be furthered and furthered , which is, again, exactly what those two books seek to dispel, especially Debt.
I'd like to continue, but this would definitely work better as an in-person conversation where we could push back and forth against ideas, but I do have to work :/
Or it's because of nitrogen fertilizers and the scientific method vastly improving productivity.
One of the two.
Nitrogen fertilizers don't date to the early 17th century, when this trend of explosive economic growth becomes apparent in early capitalist states, unless you're counting four-field rotation farming, itself only adopted because of the market-driven demands of early capitalist societies.
I tend to draw a distinction between mercantilism and capitalism, and I think you're brushing over the economic rape of half the world for that explosion of *Colonial European* wealth, but it's certainly true that the line can get blurry when you're discussing the exact difference between a noble offering an early chemist patronage and a capitalist paying an employee to come up with ideas he can exploit while paying them a fraction of its value.
Couldve made the point just as well without the nekkid blue bobby
That goes beyond capitalism. People are just selfish. The hoarding of wealth was a thing way before capitalism. I think the left sort of shoots itself in the foot by obsessing over capitalism and ignoring the much deeper cause of a lot of societal ills. Being evil is part of human nature, just as much as being benevolent is.
Not really.
There have been extensive sociological studies over this. Condition in a capitalist society and the promotion of the “homo economicus” model continually reinforces “greediness” and leads to people in capitalist societies being far “greedier” on average.
It isn’t a natural thing, it is conditioned. Obviously everyone is greedy to an extent. But in anthropological examinations of different forms of societies, altruism scored far higher than greediness in non-capitalistic societies.
Kate Raworth, Oxford Economist, wrote an excellent chapter about this in her book called “doughnut economics”. The chapter is “Nurture Human Nature”.
The view that all humans are greedy and rational was promoted by Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill and is the precursing foundation of capitalism. But modern economics have rejected this view as it has been proven to be inaccurate, and increasingly rely on theoretical models built within behavioural economics.
Yeah I don't think talking about food production and distribution is a good method to promote socialism given how many people starved in socialist countries.
Seems to me this would be a subject socialists would want to avoid.
The post doesn't mention socialism at all.
Which countries?
Critical of capitalism ≠ Socialist
There’s a lot of nuance you’re missing out on in this simplistic statement.
I obviously oppose any authoritarian regime regardless of the economic system.
All hunger in the origins communist countries happened in preindustrial societies. Once agriculture was mechanised, hunger disappeared forever in USSR/China (countries that I assume you refer to). That's not the case in industrialized capitalist countries or their colonies. To quote Chomsky:
"in India the democratic capitalist “experiment” since 1947 has caused more deaths than in the entire history of the “colossal, wholly failed … experiment” of Communism everywhere since 1917: over 100 million deaths by 1979, tens of millions more since, in India alone"
Not quite true. Lysenkoism was a completely unforced error all on its own whose failures couldn't have been conquered by more tractors, but that was ultimately a failing of authoritarianism, not socialism. A mad king or fascist dictator whose advisors feared to tell him the truth, that his ideas were shit and didn't work, would have resulted in the same thing.
Failures of applying science aren't exempt in capitalism, we've literally had climate change denialism for what, 5 decades now?
And anyway, the peak of Lysenkoism (first time I hear about it btw) according to the article you sent, was on the 40s, which is after the last famine of the USSR, kinda proving my point that once the agriculture was mechanised, hunger disappeared in socialist countries.
Except from gulags where they were starving to death. I come from the " behind the iron curtain" countries. Gulags are not myths and the prisoners not punished with death pebalty should be fed with at least minimal provisions making them able to survive ( I am not against either death penalty or work in prisons )
Gulag repression and hunger took place during a very specific and limited period of time in the late 30s and early 40s. The Stalinist great terror was unjustified and horrific, and it served no purpose and was purely a consequence of paranoia. After WW2 and for the rest of the USSR, the reeducational ideal of gulags was restored, and conditions in gulag were better than in normal prisons, to the point gulag inmates earning a low but significant wage for their labour, and normal prison being used as punishment for gulag inmates who kept violating the rules.
Of all the meme images to use, Dr Manhattan would know that it isn't Capitalism manufacturing scarcity, Capitalism is just indifferent to scarcity.
What has the MTV done to you, boy?