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.
108This 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.
67Economists 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.
18I did and I got a 14 day suspension from League of Legends.
11Dangit bobbuh
7What does any of this have to do with Bobby Hill being on Mars in Watchmen?
1If only everyone else have as much as The United States there would be no world hunger.
1Test
1Hunger is the one thing our social programs have done right. If you don't have the funds for food, you can get food stamps and there's plenty of food pantries to get food from. The only people starving the united states are those who are either selling their food stamps for drugs, live in bumfuck nowhere, or refuse to go to a food pantry.
-3There 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.
-3Turns out it’s always profitable to feed people I guess, given how the starvation rate is lower under capitalism than under any other economic system.
Also, we don’t let people starve. Like ever. If you doubt that, go out on the street and fly a sign that says “Food only please”. See how long it takes you to fill your stomach for free in this capitalist society.
-4Starvation basically just isn't a thing in the USA. Food insecurity, sure, but government food assistance and food banks make this not a thing.
Basically, no, this is bogus and just propaganda. Successful modern capitalist societies like the USA objectively do not let people starve. That doesn't mean all food is free. Nor should it be, because farmers aren't our slaves. It is already the case that the government will provide you a minimum amount of food if you need it. We literally already do this and everyone who would read this agrees it is a good thing. The evil extremist fucks who believe otherwise will never see this. This is virtue signalling empty propaganda and you can all do better than this.
-8Yeah, 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.
-15Under 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."
-27
