@SarahTaber_bww: More wheat stats. My personal favorite Misleading Wheat Stat is "Ukraine/Russia grow 25% of world wheat exports." Why's it misleading? It's technically true, but doesn't mean what people think! Miss...…
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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
Sure.
And the alternative you guys offer is huge levels of deprivation, underground/gray/black markets, and so on.
I know which I prefer.
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.
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.
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.
Except that they’re not given away. Poverty and need are rampant under capitalism.
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
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.