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| 5/17 |
| 2008/4/14-19 [Recreation/Food] UID:49751 Activity:moderate |
4/14 How Hunger Could Topple Regimes - Yahoo! News:
http://www.csua.org/u/la3
\_ growing corn and wheat for alternative fuels is cause
\_ "Government intervention on behalf of the poor - so out of fashion
during globalization's roaring '90s and the current decade -
may be about to make a comeback."
Uh oh, does this mean SOCIALISM is back again? Hooray for
Billary and the Democraps? -dim wit #1 fan
\_ I read this article and all I could think about was how the
author doesn't understand how there could be so much food
available and yet no one can afford it. Never a second thought
to how the two might be related and that if prices were lower
there wouldn't be any food to buy. A warehouse of food doesn't
feed an entire country for very long.
\_ I don't think you read the article right. The author never says
that. He says that if sockpiles of food exists for people who
can afford it, those who can't are going to revolt. That's
petty much a given. Starving people leads to anarchy and
brutal military dictatorships.
\_ (That's especially true when the source of their hunger is
not the absence of food supplies but their inability to
afford to buy the available food supplies. [...] As Josette
Sheeran of the U.N. World Food Program put it last month, "We
are seeing food on the shelves but people being unable to
afford it.")
The above reflects a misunderstanding of basic economics.
There is inflation likely because there is a shortage.
\_ The difference is it isn't a catastrophic famine caused
by non market forces. For instance there isn't a war
going on that has destroyed all the crop land (or manpower)
nor is there weather that is killing the crops. The land
is fertile. The work force is there, but food is still
too damn expensive for people to eat. That is
significantly differenct than the last generation's food
problems.
\_ If the food is too expensive then there's obviously
a shortage. If there was a glut it would be a lot
cheaper. Do you also not understand economics?
\_ I do. I'm saying the reasons for food security
failure are very different this time around.
\_ So what if they are?
\_ Because in recent times famine has been
a side effect of a nation's fall to chaos.
What we are seeing is nations with the
infrastructure, with a reasonable workforce,
with no major food blights or
weather catastrophes with a stable government
that can't afford to feed their populations.
Stable countries may very well slide into total
chaos purely because the food is just too
expensive. That's a pretty scary scenario,
even if your freshman economics can explain
WHY the food is expensive.
\_ If they cant get basic econ. right then
I can't really trust anything else they
wrote.
\_ Once again, you are reading something
that isn't there. The food exists. It
is possible to make food. The land
is fertile. The roads work. Until
now famines didn't happen because of
food just cost too damn much to make.
But that's ok, you took some undergrad
classes in the free market and know
exactly what's the problem.
\_ What is your point? You don't understand
economics. It's not food costing too
much to make. It's demand for food.
What do YOU think the problem is?
The article also says there have been
crop failures recently.
\_ Maybe if you'd taken some of those
classes instead of sociology you'd
better understand.
\_ Let them eat cake. The food is being diverted for
other uses, like transportation. People are starving
so that others can driver Hummers. You can see how
so that others can drive Hummers. You can see how
the people starving might object to this.
\_ Once again, if they are unable to support
themselves, it is their fault. Why should I
care about other people? -dim wit #1 fan
\_ More like: so that others can eat better. How
should it be rationed?
\_ My only point is that the author of the article
and Ms. Sheeran both indicate that food is
plentiful, but expensive. This demonstrates a
lack of knowledge of basic economics. If they
had said "There is no food because fuel producers
are buying all of it up" that would be
something else entirely, but that's not
alluded to. They paint a picture of adequate
supply, but evil market forces maliciously
driving up prices.
\_ One of the reasons I think the 'Chicken Little'
attitude towards global warming is bad is stuff
like this. People decided to get fuel from
corn "because it's not oil," without thinking
about the consequences. The consequences, of
course is that corn now tracks oil price.
And consequently other commodity crops trend
up. And why shouldn't they? So now we have
an expensive, self-perpetuating (due to
lobbying) mistake. Is having a 'bridging
technology' worth more people starving? Of
course I bet people will try other expensive
interventions without understanding what they
will actually do, and the circus of human
misery will continue. -- ilyas
\_ uh, the people who decided to get fuel from
corn are for the most part global warming
deniers with a political base in the
corn belt. -tom
\_ How do they correlate with the
PEAK OIL nut jobs?
\_ I see, so the 25 years of Congress
activity promoting ethanol use is just
a Vast Global Warming Denier Conspiracy?
operating covertly? -- ilyas
-- ilyas
\_ What do you know, we do agree on things
every once in a while. -ausman
\_ If oil demand vs. supply is really getting
out of whack, then natural market forces
would lead to this anyway, no? The main
problem I've had with it so far is that
the science and math didn't add up, and
it was heavily subsidized. (ethanol that is)
\_ I am not sure why you are discussing
natural market forces when talking about
food and oil, two commodities whose
production and price is driven by a lot
of 'uneconomic' forces (national security
considerations, charity considerations,
cartelization, etc. etc.) My main point:
economy, like climate, is complex and
poorly understood. Clumsy, politically
motivated interventions will come out
well about as often as a broken clock
will tell correct time. -- ilyas |
| 5/17 |
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| www.csua.org/u/la3 -> news.yahoo.com/s/time/20080414/wl_time/howhungercouldtoppleregimes TIMEcom How Hunger Could Topple Regimes By TONY KARON Mon Apr 14, 10:00 AM ET The idea of the starving masses driven by their desperation to take to the streets and overthrow the ancien regime has seemed impossibly quaint since capitalism triumphed so decisively in the Cold War. Since then, the spectacle of hunger sparking revolutionary violence has been the stuff of Broadway musicals rather than the real world of politics. skyrocketing food prices are threatening the stability of a growing number of governments around the world. Ironically, it may be the very success of capitalism in transforming regions previously restrained by various forms of socialism that has helped create the new crisis. Egypt's authoritarian regime faces a mounting political threat over its inability to maintain a steady supply of heavily subsidized bread to its impoverished citizens; Cote D'Ivoire, Cameroon, Mozambique, Uzbekistan, Yemen and Indonesia are among the countries that have recently seen violent food riots or demonstrations. World Bank president Robert Zoellick noted last week that world food prices had risen 80% over the past three years, and warned that at least 33 countries face social unrest as a result. The sociology of the food riot is pretty straightforward: The usually impoverished majority of citizens may acquiesce to the rule of detested corrupt and repressive regimes when they are preoccupied with the daily struggle to feed their children and themselves, but when circumstances render it impossible to feed their hungry children, normally passive citizens can very quickly become militants with nothing to lose. That's especially true when the source of their hunger is not the absence of food supplies but their inability to afford to buy the available food supplies. And that's precisely what we're seeing in the current wave of global food-price inflation. As Josette Sheeran of the UN World Food Program put it last month, "We are seeing food on the shelves but people being unable to afford it." When all that stands between hungry people and a warehouse full of rice and beans is a couple of padlocks and a riot policeman (who may be the neighbor of those who're trying to get past him, and whose own family may be hungry too), the invisible barricade of private-property laws can be easily ignored. Doing whatever it takes to feed oneself and a hungry child, after all, is a primal human instinct. So, with prices of basic foods skyrocketing to the point that even the global aid agencies - whose function is to provide emergency food supplies to those in need - are unable, for financial reasons, to sustain their current commitments to the growing army of the hungry, brittle regimes around the world have plenty of reason for anxiety. The hunger has historically been an instigator of revolutions and civil wars, it is not a sufficient condition for such violence. For a mass outpouring of rage spurred by hunger to translate into a credible challenge to an established order requires an organized political leadership ready to harness that anger against the state. It may not be all that surprising, then, that Haiti has been one of the major flashpoints of the new wave of hunger-generated political crises; the outpouring of rage there has been channeled into preexisting furrows of political discontent. And that's why there may be greater reason for concern in Egypt, where the bread crisis comes on top of a mounting challenge to the regime's legitimacy by a range of opposition groups. The social theories of Karl Marx were long ago discarded as of little value, even to revolutionaries. But he did warn that capitalism had a tendency to generate its own crises. Indeed, the spread of capitalism, and its accelerated industrialization and wealth-creation, may have fomented the food-inflation crisis - by dramatically accelerating competition for scarce resources. The rapid industrialization of China and India over the past two decades - and the resultant growth of a new middle class fast approaching the size of America's - has driven demand for oil toward the limits of global supply capacity. substitution of biofuel crops for edible ones on scarce farmland. Moreover, those new middle class people are eating a lot better than their parents did - particularly more meat. Producing a single calorie of beef can, by some estimates, require eight or more calories of grain feed, and expanded meat consumption therefore has a multiplier effect on demand for grains. Throw in climate disasters such as the Australian drought and recent rice crop failures, and you have food inflation spiraling so fast that even the UN agency created to feed people in emergencies is warning that it lacks the funds to fulfill its mandate. The reason officials such as Zoellick are sounding the alarm may be that the food crisis, and its attendant political risks, are not likely to be resolved or contained by the laissez-faire operation of capitalism's market forces. Government intervention on behalf of the poor - so out of fashion during globalization's roaring '90s and the current decade - may be about to make a comeback. A Haitian sells water next to a destroyed street market in downtown Port-au-Prince April 12, 2008. A UN peacekeeper from Nigeria was shot to death in the Haitian capital on Saturday as tensions fueled by riots over food prices continued to simmer in the Caribbean country, a police officer and a Nigerian UN military officer said. Witnesses said the street market was destroyed by UN peacekeepers from Nigeria. |