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As someone who has experienced hunger and malnutrition, it is entirely a product of capitalism and not a specific detail in the food production chain. Our econ

As someone who has experienced hunger and malnutrition, it is entirely a product of capitalism and not a specific detail in the food production chain. Our economic system is highly inefficient, and waste is a necessary part of maintaining profitable prices. This includes starvation, homelessness, and unemployment. Scarcity must be maintained. Malnutrition, or simply hunger in more plain terms, is prevalent across every type of community in the US and the world. The ghettos of cities, trailer parks and economically depressed rural areas, dilapidated suburbs, and the often overlooked Native land reservations. Just to get an idea of the inordinate balance of resources, consider that there are 552,830 homeless people in the US as of 2018 and 17,019,726 vacant homes. Billionaires hoard absolutely massive amounts of value generated by workers and do nothing with it or just let it sit in their portfolios. This mode of production is obscenely inefficient and long due for an overhaul.

samatman 7y ago
> As someone who has experienced hunger and malnutrition, it is entirely a product of capitalism and not a specific detail in the food production chain. This would be relatively simple to demonstrate: simply show that capitalist societies all experience significant hunger and malnutrition, and that non-capitalist societies do not. You may find the latter somewhat challenging.
- TOGoS 7y ago
  Capitalism currently dominates the entire planet (yes, the United States exerts its power everywhere, even to places that don't welcome it [1]). Of course it's going to be challenging to make such a comparison. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/11/19/bolivia-is-falling-into-grips-brutal-right-wing-regime/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/11/19/bolivia-i...
- LB232323 7y ago
  As TOGoS mentioned, capitalism currently dominates the world. Although it seems like his comment has been hidden, even though he is telling the truth. I expected my own comment to be voted down as it criticizes capitalism. The majority of human history takes place in the mode of production of the hunter-gatherer society. This is before the agricultural revolution and the advent of agricultural civilization. Economists describe this as early communism. The definition of this model is based in large part on the study of the Iroquois Confederacy. This, along with evolutionary models of food sharing, highlight a meat sharing system that is enforced communally. There is personal property, but private ownership of land and essential resources is nonexistent. The community owns the means of production as well as essential resources, and they dictate their distribution by need and not by profit. In modern society, this would manifest as collective ownership of the means of production by the working class. The means of production are capital that is used to produce goods. Land, water, corporations, factories, etc. As workers exist worldwide, collective ownership would take the form of a global socialist state owned by the workers. This is the purpose of the world revolution. As communities become organized around sustainability using vast amounts of capital created by workers under capitalism, the global state becomes redundant. At this stage, the economic structure returns to its original state, which is communism. It's not a ideological debate, calling someone Marxist is as redundant as calling a physicist a Newtonian or a mathematician a Pythagorean. Capitalism itself as we know it was defined by that era of economic science. Of course we should remain skeptical and critical, as many ideas from that era turned out to be wrong. What's difficult is constantly working against decades of Cold War era propaganda and disinformation. The primary American defense against the words socialism or communism is the idea that society is somehow built around personal character flaws and not laws of economic and political science. The capitalist is not inherently greedy, he simply follows the forces of economics. Communism is not some "ideal society" that works on paper but is undermined by human greed. It describes the majority of human history, and it requires a world revolution to exist again. Any nation that describes itself as "socialist" yet participates in the global economy is simply capitalist and masquerading as something else.
  - selimthegrim 7y ago
    Bruh, you could have just said "withering away of the state"
  - throwaway17_17 7y ago
    With respect to the ‘early communism’, there is a very large caveat. These ‘communal’ groups where ethnically, racially, and culturally homogeneous ‘small’ (by modern standard) people groups who where by in large extended families. There is no comparison possible between that type of grouping and modern human society. Humans might be willing to miss a few good meals to ensure my kids or parents where provided for, but En masse won’t lift a finger for their neighbor neighbor, let alone someone in the city or state next door. Hence why leftist social policy at scale has always relied on strongman authoritarian leadership in actual practice. TL;DR Hairless monkeys are in-group favoring, mammalian magpie-like hoarders. Why would you expect something like ‘global good will’ to magically be embraced by the multitudes.
dws1999 7y ago
Sure, but before we overhaul the system in the United States (3% of population malnourishment), let's overhaul the system in countries where the population malnourishment is above 15% and bring them down to less than 5%. (http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SN.ITK.DEFC.ZS?most_recent_value_desc=true&view=map&year=2017 http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SN.ITK.DEFC.ZS?most_rece...) The mode of production in the US might seem highly inefficient if you have not lived in a different country for a prolonged period. But I can assure you, it is incredibly efficient. Source: I lived in Venezuela for 25 years

samatman 7y ago

> As someone who has experienced hunger and malnutrition, it is entirely a product of capitalism and not a specific detail in the food production chain. This would be relatively simple to demonstrate: simply show that capitalist societies all experience significant hunger and malnutrition, and that non-capitalist societies do not. You may find the latter somewhat challenging.

TOGoS 7y ago
Capitalism currently dominates the entire planet (yes, the United States exerts its power everywhere, even to places that don't welcome it [1]). Of course it's going to be challenging to make such a comparison. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/11/19/bolivia-is-falling-into-grips-brutal-right-wing-regime/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/11/19/bolivia-i...
LB232323 7y ago
As TOGoS mentioned, capitalism currently dominates the world. Although it seems like his comment has been hidden, even though he is telling the truth. I expected my own comment to be voted down as it criticizes capitalism. The majority of human history takes place in the mode of production of the hunter-gatherer society. This is before the agricultural revolution and the advent of agricultural civilization. Economists describe this as early communism. The definition of this model is based in large part on the study of the Iroquois Confederacy. This, along with evolutionary models of food sharing, highlight a meat sharing system that is enforced communally. There is personal property, but private ownership of land and essential resources is nonexistent. The community owns the means of production as well as essential resources, and they dictate their distribution by need and not by profit. In modern society, this would manifest as collective ownership of the means of production by the working class. The means of production are capital that is used to produce goods. Land, water, corporations, factories, etc. As workers exist worldwide, collective ownership would take the form of a global socialist state owned by the workers. This is the purpose of the world revolution. As communities become organized around sustainability using vast amounts of capital created by workers under capitalism, the global state becomes redundant. At this stage, the economic structure returns to its original state, which is communism. It's not a ideological debate, calling someone Marxist is as redundant as calling a physicist a Newtonian or a mathematician a Pythagorean. Capitalism itself as we know it was defined by that era of economic science. Of course we should remain skeptical and critical, as many ideas from that era turned out to be wrong. What's difficult is constantly working against decades of Cold War era propaganda and disinformation. The primary American defense against the words socialism or communism is the idea that society is somehow built around personal character flaws and not laws of economic and political science. The capitalist is not inherently greedy, he simply follows the forces of economics. Communism is not some "ideal society" that works on paper but is undermined by human greed. It describes the majority of human history, and it requires a world revolution to exist again. Any nation that describes itself as "socialist" yet participates in the global economy is simply capitalist and masquerading as something else.
- selimthegrim 7y ago
  Bruh, you could have just said "withering away of the state"
- throwaway17_17 7y ago
  With respect to the ‘early communism’, there is a very large caveat. These ‘communal’ groups where ethnically, racially, and culturally homogeneous ‘small’ (by modern standard) people groups who where by in large extended families. There is no comparison possible between that type of grouping and modern human society. Humans might be willing to miss a few good meals to ensure my kids or parents where provided for, but En masse won’t lift a finger for their neighbor neighbor, let alone someone in the city or state next door. Hence why leftist social policy at scale has always relied on strongman authoritarian leadership in actual practice. TL;DR Hairless monkeys are in-group favoring, mammalian magpie-like hoarders. Why would you expect something like ‘global good will’ to magically be embraced by the multitudes.

dws1999 7y ago

Sure, but before we overhaul the system in the United States (3% of population malnourishment), let's overhaul the system in countries where the population malnourishment is above 15% and bring them down to less than 5%. (http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SN.ITK.DEFC.ZS?most_recent_value_desc=true&view=map&year=2017 http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SN.ITK.DEFC.ZS?most_rece...) The mode of production in the US might seem highly inefficient if you have not lived in a different country for a prolonged period. But I can assure you, it is incredibly efficient. Source: I lived in Venezuela for 25 years