Price gouging using a humanitarian issue as cover. Nice.
this post was submitted on 31 Mar 2022
34 points (94.7% liked)
World News
32297 readers
1030 users here now
News from around the world!
Rules:
-
Please only post links to actual news sources, no tabloid sites, etc
-
No NSFW content
-
No hate speech, bigotry, propaganda, etc
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
classic capitalism
Alternative take: classic capitalism, farmers planted in anticipation of an increased price and that will mean demand gets met.
I didn't understand this twitter thread because I was reading it half asleep, but it looks like the point she is making is that the shortfall of grain is much lower than what the media was misleading the people to believe. Farmers growing more in response to higher price due to lower supply is irrelevant to that.
Not sure where the alternative part in this take is. Farmers planted in anticipation of increased price and will gouge higher price from the customers.
...and everyone will get fed, but the producers will reap the rewards of war profiteering.
Everyone who can afford it will get fed.
That was true before there was Russ aggression against Ukraine.
If you want to fix the world, fix the world. Don't blame all the world's problems on a single unjust action against a backdrop of a sea of such actions.
Around half the food produced under capitalism is thrown out, meanwhile 9 million people die from hunger every year.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/jan/10/half-world-food-waste
http://horizons-newspaper.com/index.php/2020/02/27/tallying-capitalisms-death-toll/
I guess you don't have matching statistics for other economies, you know, to maybe add some perspective to your asswertions. But no, I guess not, as your goal is to demean and divide, not present a proper picture of any one state of affairs.
why would you assume that bud https://lemmy.ml/post/203064
Also, we can look at another alternative economy for comparison. Quality of life in China continues to steadily improve and the government is actively working on doing things like eliminating poverty, creating public infrastructure, providing healthcare, housing, food, and education for all citizens.
Chinese government practically eliminated poverty, and in fact China is the only place in a world where any meaningful poverty reduction is happening. If we take China out of the equation poverty actually increased in real terms:
China does massive investments in infrastructure. They used more concrete in 3 years than US in all of 20th century and built 27,000km of high speed rail in a decade. 90% of families in the country own their home giving China one of the highest home ownership rates in the world. What’s more is that 80% of these homes are owned outright, without mortgages or any other leans. Real wage (i.e. the wage adjusted for the prices you pay) has gone up 4x in the past 25 years, more than any other country. This is staggering considering it's the most populous country on the planet. Finally, Chinese system results in high social mobility unlike western capitalist alternatives.
When I was a child, a lot of things now made primarily in China and Taiwan were made in the United States or Japan. Things of particularly good quality and of advanced technology came from the US; cheap trinkets came from Japan, and China was literally starving. When we wouldn't finish our meals as children, our mothers would literally tell us 'there is a starving child somewhere in China right now who would love to have (insert child-hated food here).
China does so well because in the 70s and 80s the large corporations shipped manufacturing jobs and technologies to Japan and China. China literally does so well because Americans who needed things made got too greedy. Since then much of the skilled working class in America has disappeared, because if there are not jobs for you then what good is training and education? Until Americans stop subsidizing Asia without consumer-driven outsourced manufacturing, China will continue to do well. After that? Chinese policy will really matter to the Chinese, who still have not developed the means to feed their vast populations.
Large corporations shipped manufacturing to plenty of countries, yet they clearly haven't developed the same way China has. For a direct comparison, just look at China and India. Both started roughly in the same place in the 50s. Clearly, the system does matter quite a bit.
I think it's a more fundamental economic behavior. Humans are pretty good at teasing out the truth about shortages, anecdotal/gossip communication exchange ferrets it out. Then people do what people do during a shortage... they hoard. It'd be dumb not to hoard. But collectively, that means the shortage is exacerbated not reduced.
The correct solution isn't "abolish capitalism", it's "abolish shortages". Capitalism is pretty good at doing the latter, given a chance. The tricky part is when the product is food, as economies can't really wait on the sort of turnaround time it requires.
The problem can't be solved under capitalism precisely because it leaves it up to private industry to do the right thing, and that obviously never happens. There is a conflict of interest between making profits and providing necessities. People who are in most dire need are often the ones who can least afford what they need. It blows my mind that people have hard time understanding this.
It doesn't leave it up the capitalists to "do the right thing". My god, we'd be extinct as a species were that the case.
It leaves it up to them to be greedy. Which I'm sure you'll agree is something they're at least passingly competent at. Why is greed important here? Because if there is a shortage, greedy people can earn obscene profits providing the goods in shortage. The more goods they have, the more than obscenely earn. If they don't have enough, they are compelled to get more... as efficiently as possible.
This mechanism isn't without its bizarre failure modes. Take fishing, for instance. As some fish or another becomes rarer, its scarcity causes prices to rise... so instead of doing the right thing and letting populations recover, the temptation becomes ever more irresistible. Don't let capitalism get anywhere near wildlife preservation, or if you do, study the implications (and perverse incentives) carefully first.
There is a conflict of interest between making profits and providing necessities.
There is very little conflict there. You make x profits if you sell y goods. If you sell 100y goods, you make 100x profits. And so on. Sometimes it's not even linear, so the larger you scale the more you profit per unit.
This is why even the poor in such countries are often obese. Capitalism could be said to over-provide more often than it under-provides.
Why is greed important here? Because if there is a shortage, greedy people can earn obscene profits providing the goods in shortage. The more goods they have, the more than obscenely earn. If they don’t have enough, they are compelled to get more… as efficiently as possible.
This mode of production results in incredible waste with huge quantities of goods being destroyed to keep up the prices, planned obsolescence, modes of failure you describe, as well as many other kinds of idiocy.
However, even more importantly, this doesn't actually help with solving the problem of delivering goods to people who actually need them because those are who can least afford them.
There is very little conflict there. You make x profits if you sell y goods. If you sell 100y goods, you make 100x profits. And so on. Sometimes it’s not even linear, so the larger you scale the more you profit per unit.
Around half the food produced under capitalism is thrown away while people are literally starving on the streets. Thanks to the wonder of capitalism roughly 3.5 million people die from lack of clean water, 1.5 million people die from vaccinable diseases, and 9 million people die from hunger each and every year. That's over a 140 million deaths every decade.
http://horizons-newspaper.com/index.php/2020/02/27/tallying-capitalisms-death-toll/
Not to mention the millions of people who die from pollution. EDIT: By this I meant air particulate pollution. If you are looking at pollution in general, this is caused by all life forms. The comments below were referring to the claim above as it was originally stated.
Thankfully, the Soviet Union was a pollution-less utopia, eh?
I never said that. All I said was that under capitalism, millions of people die from pollution, which is true.
EDIT: Here is my source: https://doi.pangea.de/10.1038/s41467-021-26348-y
EDIT 2: This statement as written is not true, and the source does not mention anything about pollution in general. However, if I instead said that "millions of people die from air particulate pollution," then I believe that statement would be true.
Then you don't have a point at all. All human cultures and ideologies are, at their fundamental core, polluters. Capitalism holds no special place on that spectrum. Millions dies from pollution everywhere.
There were two economic systems in countries that industrialized: soviet-type socialism (where the means of production are controlled by a state) and capitalism (where the means of production are controlled by corporations). Of the countries with soviet-type socialism, none of them are democratic. This effectively means that none of the countries that industrialized had a means of production controlled by the community. While all human cultures and ideologies could very well have pollution at their core, we do not know this is true. I think the problem is that the rich can deal with pollution and the poor cannot. Since the poor outnumber the rich, with the poor actually in control, maybe pollution can be solved. This might not be the case, but we will not know unless we try.
While all human cultures and ideologies could very well have pollution at their core
Go look up the word "midden" and get back to me.
Yes, if you are looking at all forms of pollution, you are indeed correct, as all life forms have to excrete waste. An extreme example of this is cyanobacteria likely causing a mass extinction.
However, I was referring to air particulate pollution, as shown by my source. I apologize for not being clearer. I have updated the original comment, but yes, you are indeed correct that all human cultures and ideologies have pollution at their core if you are looking at pollution in general.
I'm not sure the distinction is worth mentioning. If you want to limit to air pollution, that only absolves those cultures which haven't reached an industrial age. Any that has, pollutes the air.
Maybe it's time to switch back to your No-True-Communism fallacy or something.
Renewable energy has little to no pollution. EDIT: Excluding biofuel which is not a solution to pollution or climate change.
This mode of production results in incredible waste with huge quantities of goods being destroyed to keep up the prices,
Sure.
And the alternative you guys offer is huge levels of deprivation, underground/gray/black markets, and so on.
I know which I prefer.
However, even more importantly, this doesn’t actually help with solving the problem of delivering goods to people who actually need them because those are who can least afford them.
It does. The goods that people tend to need are commodities that are cheap enough that they're given away.
No one but anorexics starve in my country.
away while people are literally starving on the streets.
Please find some documentation that supports the extraordinary hypothesis that people are starving on the streets. Of all the problems that we have, that's just not one of them. No one starves, few go hungry and never unless their personalities compel them to avoid welfare.
Find another criticism. There are real ones, real ones that are pretty extreme even by my standards, ones compatible with your ideology. This one's just fiction.
And the alternative you guys offer is huge levels of deprivation, underground/gray/black markets, and so on.
Having actually grown up in USSR, I can tell you that the levels of deprivation I've seen living in the west are far greater.
It does. The goods that people tend to need are commodities that are cheap enough that they’re given away.
Except that they're not given away. Poverty and need are rampant under capitalism.
Please find some documentation that supports the extraordinary hypothesis that people are starving on the streets.
Literally linked you a source. Here's what things in US look like https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/31/us/food-insecurity-30-million-census-survey/index.html
This one’s just fiction.
Ironic that you're telling somebody who has actual lived experience under both systems. You're a victim of propaganda, and it's very sad to see how close minded you are.
Just another reason to bend us over at the cash register for a loaf of bread and a box of pasta.
Very interesting article!