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That's how the world works. (mander.xyz)

submitted 4 days ago by fossilesque@mander.xyz to c/science_memes@mander.xyz

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[-] dandelion@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 4 days ago

I think this somewhat ignores the way markets kill people during times of famine - see the Late Victorian Holocausts or the Great Famine, in both of which there was plenty of food available, but the problem was the introduction of markets and artificial austerity measures that failed to distribute food to people dying of famine

so, food production might be a solved issue (I think that's a bit more debatable given soil degradation and the threats to supply chains necessary for the industrial inputs needed to keep those food production systems going in their current, post-Green-Revolution format), but the distribution issue has not been solved and will likely result in many of us dying due to lack of economic power to afford food that will simply expire and rot in storage and then be destroyed and disposed of in a way that denies us access to the waste

[-] azertyfun@sh.itjust.works 5 points 4 days ago

Both your examples are pre Haber-Bosch. Not that it entirely invalidates your point, but daily calorie consumption for a Westerner is orders of magnitude cheaper than it was for a Victorian coal miner. In fact what we generally struggle with nowadays in rich countries is an overabundance of (poor quality) food.

It's not out of the question for poor people to lack calories in rich countries, but that's a monumental policy failure. And critically it happens to socioeconomic classes that have neither the time nor the land area to dedicate to things like doomsday prepping (i.e. poor and marginalized communities in urban areas). The only solution to food insecurity is social programs, not doomsday prepping or grain hoarding.

[-] dandelion@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

I guess my point was more that in both cases of the Great Famine and the Late Victorian Holocausts, there was sufficient food in storage to feed the people dying of starvation - it was the introduction of markets and the resulting false austerity that prevented the otherwise typical food distribution systems during times of famine from happening, and then lots of deaths occurring. In a sense markets are a policy choice to let the poor die. If you can't afford food, you do not deserve to live. That is the logic of capitalism.

So my point is that even if we see food production as "solved", we shouldn't forget the problems of food distribution - and sure, they're related, to your point over-production (through the development of fertilizer and other industrial methods of food production) under capitalism we can reduce prices and make distribution more accessible, ... but when production occasionally fails, it is the economic system that starves people first (not necessarily the lack of food, which can also happen as in the cases of many other famines).

In pre-capitalist societies when food production failed, stocks of food were usually released and distribution was ensured in ways that marketized & capitalist societies have not done (where for example in Syria around the time of the Arab Spring, we saw grocers dying from starvation because they couldn't make enough money selling food to afford to buy food for themselves).

And yes, starvation when food is abundant is a monumental policy failure - this is something we should be driving home more to people, that the US chooses to have starving and homeless people as a policy choice.

Completely agreed that social solutions are the only way to solve food insecurity, individual action like doomsday prepping is a distraction that primes us to victim-blame people who die for not "preparing" adequately.