• Allero@lemmy.today
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    30 minutes ago

    This is such a clickbait, and it backfired.

    The actual point conveyed in the article is that world hunger is beneficial for the rich as it allows to operate sweatshops and employ people under tyrannical conditions over low pay, which is not far from modern slavery. Which is super bad for everyone else, hence world hunger must be stopped and rich should get the taste of their own medicine.

    But people did react to the headline, and possibly rightfully so.

  • whyNotSquirrel@sh.itjust.works
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    3 hours ago

    So he’s not defending/promoting “world Hunger”, just arguing that it’s not a bug but a feature developed to have cheap labor, and that the people in power don’t want to end it

    • ShareMySims@sh.itjust.works
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      2 hours ago

      Sounds good at a glance, but when you look at the way he reaches that conclusion (that the threat of hunger is the only reason people are willing to work), and his solution (for a class of “intellectuals” like him to take charge) however, are just neoliberal swill…

      • Dasnap@lemmy.world
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        1 hour ago

        Maybe they should build a city in the ocean where these intellectuals have full control. Maybe experiment with some cool drugs.

        • ShareMySims@sh.itjust.works
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          1 hour ago

          Lmfao, I’d pay to watch them descend in to chaos as they insist on ranking each other by importance or whatever arbitrary measure of superiority they choose, because they simply can’t function otherwise, until they all end up dead from refusing to “lower” themselves to cooperate with “inferiors”.

  • Alsephina
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    3 hours ago

    Well, he’s not wrong about hunger being an intended part of capitalism so workers are coerced into working for even less pay.

    Calling it a “benefit” is very clickbaity though.

  • Generous1146@beehaw.org
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    3 hours ago

    Read that fee article as well and it seems like the author just stated, that certain institutions benefit from world hunger.

    In the interview, Kent explains he was not advocating global hunger but was intending to be “provocative” by saying certain individuals and institutions benefit from global hunger.

    “No, it is not satire,” Kent told Marc Morano, founder and editor of Climate Depot. “I don’t see anything funny about it. It is not about advocacy of hunger.”

    It doesn’t look like he’s advocating for global hunger, but criticizing those who do benefit from it

  • Visstix@lemmy.world
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    2 hours ago

    He calls it “not satire” but “provocative”. So he doesn’t mean it, but says it to provoke a reaction… Like satire.

    • mister_flibble@lemm.ee
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      5 minutes ago

      This just feels like either

      A. He doesn’t fully get what satire is and assumes it has to be lighthearted or

      B. He’s using “provocative” to basically mean “clickbait, but I’m too pretentious to call it that”

      • Mossy Feathers (They/Them)@pawb.social
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        3 hours ago

        Y’all should actually read the article because it seems like it’s saying something completely different from what OP is trying to make it sound like. Basically, if I understood correctly, Kent was being critical of the idea that market-led solutions (i.e. capitalism fixes hunger) are better than community-driven solutions. He was also saying that hunger is part of capitalism, and you’ll never get rid of hunger while capitalism exists, because capitalism needs to withhold resources to force people to work.

        This paragraph seems to sum up the article pretty well:

        In Kent’s view, one gathers, global hunger is not a complex problem that is being addressed by free market capitalism; it’s a moral one that requires empowering intellectuals like Kent to solve it.