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I think the problem of food waste is a structural one and that it has to do with how capitalism operates as a mode of production.

I think the problem of food waste is a structural one and that it has to do with how capitalism operates as a mode of production. A lot of people like to think that capitalism is the most rational mode of production and a lot of the criticism of that viewpoint tend to base itself on moral grounds as a mode of production that is unethical, as the "era where money is king" or on some sort of "paradise lost" like we lost touch with "nature" or something. I don't agree with that and my problem with capitalism is that, although it is a system that is able to produce a massive amount of goods, it totally fails to adequately distribute them for the greater good. It leaves that to market forces and the problem with market forces is that you only know you have produced too much shit after you have already produced it. The consequence is quite a lot of instability and a massive source of waste. I guess if Karl Marx was alive today, the first sentence of Capital would be : "The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails, presents itself as “an immense accumulation of WASTE"

lucian1900 6y ago
That is precisely the position we communists have today: production for profit mediated by markets is highly irrational and wasteful, even if you were to ignore the inevitable exploitation of the workers. Planned economies can instead more efficiently allocate resources, even when done within a capitalist economy and for profit. The book “People’s Republic of Walmart” goes into a lot of detail on this topic. A democratically planned economy with society’s overall welfare as a goal could be even more efficient.
- mantas 6y ago
  Planned economies are so bad, people living in them couldn't afford anything go to waste. See: USSR.
  - lucian1900 6y ago
    And yet the USSR went from a semi-feudal war torn country to industrialised power that first reached space, all within a handful of five year plans. Even capitalist economies have benefited from significant central planning, most notably South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore. Today we also see it within the likes of Walmart and Amazon, unlike Sears’ internal markets. Even when profit is your motive planning beats markets.
    - mantas 6y ago
      That first reached space, yet citizen quality of life was pretty miserable. It was still semi-feudal warmongering regime that managed to get to space by diverting all resources to military and honor projects. Fun fact. Pretty much every other family in USSR either has community garden or a land lot (if living in countryside). People had to grow their own food because central supply in shops was so bad. Well educated engineers were spending their weekends growing potatoes and pigs to feed their families. Of course they got to space so that was cool :)
      - lucian1900 6y ago
        Quality of life was pretty good throughout Eastern Europe, actually https://mobile.twitter.com/isgoodrum/status/1136693839526223872 https://mobile.twitter.com/isgoodrum/status/1136693839526223...
- choeger 6y ago
  Except that planned economies invariably fail to deliver the needed goods and services. There is a reason why overproduction is the foundation of capitalism's success. I even recall a paper that demonstrates that the market problem (balancing supply and demand perfectly) is NP-complete.
  - jeffbee 6y ago
    Balancing supply perfectly is certainly not worth doing, but how can you look at the world and say that at least some level of central planning isn’t demonstrably superior to pure free market? The free market very often fails to deliver goods and services, for example electricity in Texas this winter. The point of central planning is to step in and prevent foreseeable market failures, where rational market participants will optimize the wrong thing (price, in the case of Texas electricity, where they should have optimized availability).
    - leetcrew 6y ago
      how many energy providers does your average texan have to choose from?
      - jeffbee 6y ago
        Is there a number I could throw out that will prevent you from continuing with this predictable "no true Scotsman" argument?
    - choeger 6y ago
      It goes without saying that a pure free market is not something to strive for. But it has been proven time and time again that a free market delivers more supply than any centrally planned economy in existence. In fact, each centrally planned economy had historically suffered from undersupply and consequently open up to free markets at least partially. Just one example is Cuba. A highly educated and stable society failed to provide food (especially meat) and consequently had to open up that sector for entrepreneurs. As I initially said, there are clear downsides with that, especially overproduction, environmental concerns, and worker treatment. But ironically, the same problems appeared in centrally planned economies as well. Consequently, people will always choose free market economies over centrally plan ed ones because of the better supply situation. This then leads to a conflict between democracy and economy (see GDR).
seoaeu 6y ago
What alternative are you proposing? A planned economy that tries to grow exactly the right amount of food, and results in widespread famine if crop yields are lower than expected? Millions of people would die. "Wasting" some amount of food every year is a far preferable option.
- cassepipe 6y ago
  I don't believe in (centrally) planned economy as it it is impossible to get accurate feedback on the state of the whole production apparently, about which industry needs what especially (although new tech could help who knows? ). But you will have a hard time convincing me that throwing away half of the food (and so much other stuff) we produce while having people starving is the most rational solution. So,I don't have a solution but do you agree that there is a problem and are you interested in thinking about how to fix it? Maybe the solution is not a centrally planned economy but centrally gathered information available to all? Subscription based production? I don't know, just throwing ideas.
  - seoaeu 6y ago
    The human cost of having too little food is literally orders of magnitude worse than the cost of having too much. (Having too much necessarily implying having to waste/throw some of it away). To give a sense from past famines, take the fatality numbers from covid and add a zero or two. Add to this backdrop all the unpredictability that goes into producing food. Growing crops has months of lead time during which unpredictable events like droughts or floods or pests can obliterate a large fraction of your production. Even after harvesting, natural disasters or industrial accidents can destroy significant quantities of food (think of a grain elevator explosion). In short, growing surplus food is the only rational approach. Of course, what you do with the surplus once you have it is another question. There I agree with you that it is shameful we don't ensure more ends up in the hands of those going hungry.
FredPret 6y ago
In the most capitalist country on Earth, the problem is that even the poor people are getting too fat. In Zimbabwe, the only country I know of that has recently implemented Marxist ideas about farming, the problem is that people are starving. And Zimbabwe is ridiculously fertile by the way.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > In the most capitalist country on Earth, the problem is that even the poor people are getting too fat. Did Singapore recently have a wave of obesity that I hadn’t heard about? > In Zimbabwe, the only country I know of that has recently implemented Marxist ideas about farming If step one wasn’t “first, develop proletarian class consciousness in an mature capitalist society”, they probably implemented Leninist ideas, not Marxist ideas about anything. Marxism is, at its core and explicitly, path dependent.
  - FredPret 6y ago
    I think you just have known precisely what I meant
    - dragonwriter 6y ago
      If it was “ignore facts! Capitalism good! Marxism bad!”, then, yes, you are correct.

lucian1900 6y ago

That is precisely the position we communists have today: production for profit mediated by markets is highly irrational and wasteful, even if you were to ignore the inevitable exploitation of the workers. Planned economies can instead more efficiently allocate resources, even when done within a capitalist economy and for profit. The book “People’s Republic of Walmart” goes into a lot of detail on this topic. A democratically planned economy with society’s overall welfare as a goal could be even more efficient.

mantas 6y ago
Planned economies are so bad, people living in them couldn't afford anything go to waste. See: USSR.
- lucian1900 6y ago
  And yet the USSR went from a semi-feudal war torn country to industrialised power that first reached space, all within a handful of five year plans. Even capitalist economies have benefited from significant central planning, most notably South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore. Today we also see it within the likes of Walmart and Amazon, unlike Sears’ internal markets. Even when profit is your motive planning beats markets.
  - mantas 6y ago
    That first reached space, yet citizen quality of life was pretty miserable. It was still semi-feudal warmongering regime that managed to get to space by diverting all resources to military and honor projects. Fun fact. Pretty much every other family in USSR either has community garden or a land lot (if living in countryside). People had to grow their own food because central supply in shops was so bad. Well educated engineers were spending their weekends growing potatoes and pigs to feed their families. Of course they got to space so that was cool :)
    - lucian1900 6y ago
      Quality of life was pretty good throughout Eastern Europe, actually https://mobile.twitter.com/isgoodrum/status/1136693839526223872 https://mobile.twitter.com/isgoodrum/status/1136693839526223...
choeger 6y ago
Except that planned economies invariably fail to deliver the needed goods and services. There is a reason why overproduction is the foundation of capitalism's success. I even recall a paper that demonstrates that the market problem (balancing supply and demand perfectly) is NP-complete.
- jeffbee 6y ago
  Balancing supply perfectly is certainly not worth doing, but how can you look at the world and say that at least some level of central planning isn’t demonstrably superior to pure free market? The free market very often fails to deliver goods and services, for example electricity in Texas this winter. The point of central planning is to step in and prevent foreseeable market failures, where rational market participants will optimize the wrong thing (price, in the case of Texas electricity, where they should have optimized availability).
  - leetcrew 6y ago
    how many energy providers does your average texan have to choose from?
    - jeffbee 6y ago
      Is there a number I could throw out that will prevent you from continuing with this predictable "no true Scotsman" argument?
  - choeger 6y ago
    It goes without saying that a pure free market is not something to strive for. But it has been proven time and time again that a free market delivers more supply than any centrally planned economy in existence. In fact, each centrally planned economy had historically suffered from undersupply and consequently open up to free markets at least partially. Just one example is Cuba. A highly educated and stable society failed to provide food (especially meat) and consequently had to open up that sector for entrepreneurs. As I initially said, there are clear downsides with that, especially overproduction, environmental concerns, and worker treatment. But ironically, the same problems appeared in centrally planned economies as well. Consequently, people will always choose free market economies over centrally plan ed ones because of the better supply situation. This then leads to a conflict between democracy and economy (see GDR).

seoaeu 6y ago

What alternative are you proposing? A planned economy that tries to grow exactly the right amount of food, and results in widespread famine if crop yields are lower than expected? Millions of people would die. "Wasting" some amount of food every year is a far preferable option.

cassepipe 6y ago
I don't believe in (centrally) planned economy as it it is impossible to get accurate feedback on the state of the whole production apparently, about which industry needs what especially (although new tech could help who knows? ). But you will have a hard time convincing me that throwing away half of the food (and so much other stuff) we produce while having people starving is the most rational solution. So,I don't have a solution but do you agree that there is a problem and are you interested in thinking about how to fix it? Maybe the solution is not a centrally planned economy but centrally gathered information available to all? Subscription based production? I don't know, just throwing ideas.
- seoaeu 6y ago
  The human cost of having too little food is literally orders of magnitude worse than the cost of having too much. (Having too much necessarily implying having to waste/throw some of it away). To give a sense from past famines, take the fatality numbers from covid and add a zero or two. Add to this backdrop all the unpredictability that goes into producing food. Growing crops has months of lead time during which unpredictable events like droughts or floods or pests can obliterate a large fraction of your production. Even after harvesting, natural disasters or industrial accidents can destroy significant quantities of food (think of a grain elevator explosion). In short, growing surplus food is the only rational approach. Of course, what you do with the surplus once you have it is another question. There I agree with you that it is shameful we don't ensure more ends up in the hands of those going hungry.

FredPret 6y ago

In the most capitalist country on Earth, the problem is that even the poor people are getting too fat. In Zimbabwe, the only country I know of that has recently implemented Marxist ideas about farming, the problem is that people are starving. And Zimbabwe is ridiculously fertile by the way.

dragonwriter 6y ago
> In the most capitalist country on Earth, the problem is that even the poor people are getting too fat. Did Singapore recently have a wave of obesity that I hadn’t heard about? > In Zimbabwe, the only country I know of that has recently implemented Marxist ideas about farming If step one wasn’t “first, develop proletarian class consciousness in an mature capitalist society”, they probably implemented Leninist ideas, not Marxist ideas about anything. Marxism is, at its core and explicitly, path dependent.
- FredPret 6y ago
  I think you just have known precisely what I meant
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    If it was “ignore facts! Capitalism good! Marxism bad!”, then, yes, you are correct.