There’s no shortage of food, no shortage of wealth to solve social crises. The problem is a system that enriches a few and starves the many. We hear day in day out about the massive poverty and hunger that exists in the world. NGO’s and various non-profits have been around for decades appealing for assistance in feeding the world’s poor. Some experts think it is simply an overpopulation problem and it is the poor that are to blame; if only they’d have fewer children, they advise. It is not too many people that are the problem. It is not the lack of medical knowledge or technical expertise that leads to staggering infant and adult death rates in some parts of the world. It is the lack of social infrastructure and the political will needed to provide it.
The world produces enough food to feed everyone according to Hunger Notes —17% more calories today than it did 30 years ago. But food is a commodity and its production does not take place if the end product cannot be bought and the value added during the production process realized. The capitalist class would call this lack of demand. But in the world of the market, if you can’t pay you can’t play. No money for food, then you starve.
Unicef estimates that between 2000 and 2010 92 million children died form hunger and diseases, “…many of the illnesses and conditions that children suffer are easily preventable, technically.” says Global Issues, in other words, they are really what we might refer to as “man made” deaths. They are in actuality, market induced deaths.
Almost 2 million children a year die form diarrhea due to lack of safe drinking water, another market induced crisis with which even the UN seems to agree:
“We reject this [Malthusian perspective that global water problems are a problem of scarcity and population growth]. The availability of water is a concern for some countries. But the scarcity at the heart of the global water crisis is rooted in power, poverty and inequality, not in physical availability.” (UN Human Development Report)
This situation is not something that cannot change. It is not an insoluble dilemma. It is not the fault of the victims, of “human greed” in the abstract or of “natural disasters” or the by-product of supernatural squabbling between a benign god and his disgruntled fallen angel. It is a very simple. We solve the problem by transferring collective wealth, and more importantly, the means by which it is created, the ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange, from private individuals to the collective. Through this process, we can emerge from the depths of depravity to the apex of civilization. True freedom.
Taken from here
Hat tip to JanetS
The world produces enough food to feed everyone according to Hunger Notes —17% more calories today than it did 30 years ago. But food is a commodity and its production does not take place if the end product cannot be bought and the value added during the production process realized. The capitalist class would call this lack of demand. But in the world of the market, if you can’t pay you can’t play. No money for food, then you starve.
Unicef estimates that between 2000 and 2010 92 million children died form hunger and diseases, “…many of the illnesses and conditions that children suffer are easily preventable, technically.” says Global Issues, in other words, they are really what we might refer to as “man made” deaths. They are in actuality, market induced deaths.
Almost 2 million children a year die form diarrhea due to lack of safe drinking water, another market induced crisis with which even the UN seems to agree:
“We reject this [Malthusian perspective that global water problems are a problem of scarcity and population growth]. The availability of water is a concern for some countries. But the scarcity at the heart of the global water crisis is rooted in power, poverty and inequality, not in physical availability.” (UN Human Development Report)
This situation is not something that cannot change. It is not an insoluble dilemma. It is not the fault of the victims, of “human greed” in the abstract or of “natural disasters” or the by-product of supernatural squabbling between a benign god and his disgruntled fallen angel. It is a very simple. We solve the problem by transferring collective wealth, and more importantly, the means by which it is created, the ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange, from private individuals to the collective. Through this process, we can emerge from the depths of depravity to the apex of civilization. True freedom.
Taken from here
Hat tip to JanetS
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