That Americans have to pay to survive in any capacity- food, healthcare, shelter... it's the sign of a sick society. My daughter asked me why we have to pay a bill to get water in and sewage out of our house instead of just have that be a government thing. She's only 13 and even she realizes capitalism is fucked up.
That's not empirically true. I pay for water as a flat rate in Quebec as part of my municipal taxes, as do all of my neighbors, and I don't see people engaging in flagrant water wastage. Lawns routinely go yellow during the hottest parts of the summer, I rarely see people washing their cars, and low flush toilets are getting increasingly common.
I'll grant you that Montreal does seem to have slightly higher usage per capita. But I'm not sure the extra pain in the ass of managing water meter infrastructure would be meaningful to reduce water usage to be in line with metered locations, when we're talking about a difference of 17L a day.
There's a little bit of nuance here, "for profit" isn't the same as "for greed". Organizations of any kind - corps, non-profits, governments - have to remain essentially "solvent" or "profitable" to even operate - they can't function just perpetually burning through resources. A medical org, even one that's a "corporation", can run a profit but not be governed by greed (though obviously that's not the case everywhere right now).
Every day when I get off work and I go to a local gas station, I see them throw away a bunch of prepared food that passed shelf life. This is a chain, so hundreds of locations do this every day. Tons of food per year, tossed in the trash because it sat in the heat box too long.
Imagine how many people could eat that food. It makes me upset.
I worked at a Dunkin for a summer and they had us throwing away two large trash bags full of food every night. It had to be 50lbs of food.
I started giving donuts to teenagers and an elderly Asian man that was always ecstatic to get a big bag of donuts and bagels. I didn't have a car to transport it to a shelter, and this was in a rich area. It was disgusting
I once tried to buy a rye loaf from a local grocery store and the cashier couldn't ring it up because it was one day expired. I said it looked fine to me, but she said the system won't even let her.
So I said okay, don't ring it up, just give it to me.
Another guy jumped in and took it, said no, it had to be thrown away.
They were literally not allowed to give me trash I was willing to pay for.
This has been long debunked. Laws have passed that protect owners from this.
I used to work in a sandwich shop that made it's own bread fresh daily. At the end of every day the owner started donating the leftover bread and explained how it's an urban myth.
There are serious ethical problems with a capitalist system, especially when it comes to the necessities of life, but there's also ample evidence that other economic systems in practice have been just as bad of not worse regarding food security, eg follow the history of the USSR from the Holodomor in the 1930s to empty grocery shelves and bread lines in the 1980s
I view the problem as us treating a tool as a system of government. Capitalism is an incredibly powerful tool for increasing efficiency (real capitalism as in a healthy free market, not monopoly bullshit). But we should be using that tool to our benefit, not having that tool use us. We can use it as a tool without it being our basis of society. Also, capitalism is not self regulating. That's a bullshit myth created by elite monopolists. Unchecked capitalism leads to monopolies and monopolies are the antithesis of capitalism. We used to know that. We used to bust monopolies. We need to learn when and when not to use capitalism. Certain things need to be monopolies. Like transportation and the power grid. Since healthy competition cannot prosper we cannot make them capitalistic. We already need to recognize that capitalism is a tool for us to use. It's ok to break capitalism in special circumstances for the greater good, because the good of the people is more important than perpetuating capitalism. I think abolishing it leads to apathy and inefficiency, but worshipping it leads to inhumanity, and we're not even worshipping it properly because again, monopolies are not capitalism. Like all things in life it's about balance.
No system be it either communism or capitalism can be applied 100%
If we compare today's capitalism it's only fair that we compare it to real world application of communism.
As a Pole that was raised in a country freshly out of this system I can only tell you that you would have to be mentally insane to ever consider communism and expect it to work even half as well is it should on paper.
But that's not a "real world application of communism" in fact in reality the USSR never even claimed to actually be a communist society, they were just ruled by the communist party.
Communism has a specific definition, primarily its a post scarcity society, with no centralised government or monetary system. So any system that doesn't meet that basic definition can't be called communism.
Much like we don't use places like the Democratic people's Republic of Korea as an example of ehy democracy is bad, because its not actually a democracy, it doesn't meet the basic definition of democracy.
You can argue its an example of socialism, but it would be more accurate to describe it as authoritarianism because without democracy a state owned system can't really be called socialism.
Venezuelan here, how has been your experience on lemmy so far while discussing your real life experience of what leftists advocate for? Mine has been less than stellar
Yes, as with all things it must be balanced. Also, I wish we could recognize that monopolies are not capitalism, it's just cronyism and there's no place for that. It's the antithesis of capitalism and it plagues communism too. It's just pure corruption.
i thought monopoly is just the natural development in a competition, which (the competition) is pretty relevant in any market economy. I mean, an alt history line could have every monopoly in the market being prevented by gov regulation. But that would require gov that's not payed in any way by the 1%, who benefit from inexistent competition, to serve its own interest. That's really far from today's reality, in most countries i guess.
It is a natural development which is why we have anti trust laws. We recognized over 100 years ago that monopolies are bad and that they need to be broken up to keep capitalism healthy, but decades of corporate lobbying and propaganda made that practice stop happening. You're right that we need to clean up corruption in the government to make that happen again.
Okay but like, at least understand why the shelves were empy. Behind the Bastards had a great podcast on the matter. Bad science is bad science, no matter how you trade.
What Lysenko did and the magnitude of it was enabled by and is inextricable from the Soviet systems of government and economy:
Lysenko's success at encouraging farmers to return to working their lands impressed Stalin, who also approved of Lysenko's peasant background, as Stalin claimed to stand with the proletariat. By the late 1920s, the USSR's leaders had given their support to Lysenko. This support was a consequence, in part, of policies put in place by the Communist Party to rapidly promote members of the proletariat into leadership positions in agriculture, science and industry. Party officials were looking for promising candidates with backgrounds similar to Lysenko's: born of a peasant family, without formal academic training or affiliations to the academic community. Due to close partnership between Stalin and Lysenko, Lysenko acquired an influence over genetics in the Soviet Union during the early and mid twentieth century. Lysenko eventually became the director of Genetics for the Academy of Sciences in 1940, which gave him even more control over genetics. He remained in the position for more than two decades, throughout the reigns of Stalin and Nikita Khruschchev, until he was relieved of his duties in 1965.
Yeah, the problems are just different. A mixed form would be ideal, where basic needs would be handled socially and the rest may compete in a capitalist way. The difficulty is where to draw the line exactly.
Are you the least bit aware of what caused the egg shortage? There was a super virulent strain of avian influenza (bird flu) that has the potential to infect wild birds and to jump to mammals. You know, like people. The same thing triggered the pandemic in 1918 that killed anywhere from 1% - 5% of the world population.
So to avoid that happening again, they had to destroy (slaughter) millions and millions of egg laying hens, which yes, caused a shortage of eggs relative to normal.
There are real issues that need to be addressed with capitalism and workers rights. This isn't one of them and you hurt the real arguments by not educating yourself.
Between 2021 and 2022, the food and beverage industry recorded more than $155 billion in profits, according to Forbes. Nestlé, the world's largest food company, increased its gross profits last year by almost 3 percent to $46 billion.
logistics are certainly part of it, but not the crux. we produce way more food in the US than we consume, then we have laws against giving it away. https://time.com/4463449/food-waste-laws/
It's a complex problem, but profit is not the issue. Plenty of parties are making WILD profits.
That's just the point though. Food is only made profitable by pricing it high enough that half the world can't afford it (by which I mean the global south)
Don't forget farm subsidies, illegal labor in awful conditions, terrible animal treatment, externalizing climate damage from carbon burned during processing and transport, health damage from added sugars and hyper processed nut and seed oils, and I'm sure many other things I'm forgetting.
@sigfried complained it's not profitable. that's a lie.
your secondary concerns aren't addressed by my response because it wasn't the premise I was disagreeing with, it's the lie that food production isn't profitable. it is.
Food production is one of the very few things the US government has been handling well. We give out tens of billions in subsidies to farmers every year to artificially inflate the food supply and have a nationwide SNAP program to help low income families afford food. As a result, we produce far more food than we actually need and far more than we would in a free market, allowing the US to be a major exporter of food globally and ensuring we have enough redundancy built into our food supply that the US will be the last country to starve in a famine
A little further implies a minor inconvenience as if it's not a real problem. No, food production shouldn't be tied to number of grocery stores. Not sure how you think they're implying that. It is a logistical problem that could be solved if people weren't more worried about profit than human needs and suffering. Zoning laws probably also play a role.
Because the USA is huge and has areas that are more remote? Providing abundance to areas by certain priorities such as population still allows food deserts to exist.
I mean I guess I could be wrong but are we really going to talk about the food distribution system like we know about it?
Remember that time they had too much milk and were like "Lets make cheese!" And then they had too much cheese so they put it in a cave and slowly gave it away for decades.
It actually has. The U.S. produces enough food to feed the entire world three times over. It's a matter of distribution and no one is going to invest in that because it's not profitable.
.
I generally agree, but the industrial corn grown in the us actually isnt really all that edible. Like yes, you can eat it, but it tastes like sawdust. It was grown specifically to be processed.
This is essentially the "anything finite is scarce" argument. Since there isn't an actually unlimited amount of food available it's still scarce even if there's more of it than humans can use.
I really don't get why we don't have "meal bars" or "human food" yet. Something that covers all basic calorie and nutritional requirements, can be mass produced, and easily stored at room temperature. Like "dog food" but for humans.
The real choice should be a normal meal or a "meal bar", not a normal meal or starving.
Automation can conquer scarcity and reduce the amount of labor needed. People starve because we don't take steps to ensure our man-made economy doesnt suffer even a single dollar loss.
It's capitalism vs government programs that can feed the starving, not capitalism vs anything else. That was an era before the modern state. We're talking about with today's systems, not with systems that are no longer relevant.
Also, self sustaining communities shared food with their own at numerous points in history. People were giving food to eachother for the common good long before Karl Marx.
True, but I was trying to highlight relying on capitalism to feed people, vs using government programs at all. I didn't mean to imply that they are mutually exclusive.
Except that's not really true. Western nations donate millions of tons of wheat and other food to poor nations and those hit by drought and other natural disasters.
At least in my country (Europe), farmers receive very little money but food is getting more expensive. Is the great chains of supermarkets that profits in that difference, so it's definitely a capitalism problem.
Even the CEO of the biggest supermarket here recognized that they had rise the prices to make more profit even when they didn't need to do it.
Anything is done to make profit. Otherwise people wouldn't have desired a salary increase. Not selling food is not profitable, so food producers don't want people to starve, they want food to be sold. People can starve if they have no money, which should be solved by the government, or they can starve because there is no enough food in the country or region, which should be solved by the government too.
When its not profitable to feed people, we let them starve
As opposed to our hunter gatherer days, or subsistence agriculture days, where everyone just lounged around leisurely? Name one time in human history where life was not filled with hard work. You just said it yourself: our labor has conquered scarcity. Labor! I fucking hate this meme, jfc.
Humans have had to work to feed themselves under every -ism ever tried. It's wrong to sit here blaming capitalism. This meme is just plain old dumb. Happy to discuss further if you actually want a conversation on good faith.
I think communism is an economic system where resource distribution (including labor) is centrally controlled by the state. That's a lot like feudalism, except you don't call the supreme leader who became supreme by killing his rivals "king".
Ok well enlighten me then, because I was pretty certain communism is an economic system where resource distribution is centrally planned by the state. I wonder where I got that idea, tell me, what is communism?
No, Communism is a political ideology that focuses on giving the means of production to the people doing the labor.
What you just said is the right-wing capitalist propaganda definition of communism.
In the context of this conversation it is about removing the Capitalist from business. Making it so everyone earns their fair share of the profits instead of one person at the top (like a King/feudalism) gets all the profits, while also making all the decisions. Instead the laborors gets a stake in the business - giving more incentive to help the business do well while giving the worker more power and take home money.
England has explicitly had a non-autocratic king since 1215, the idea that the King of England "owned everything" is ahistorical.
Do some research on the British East India Company before you're so sure about how things worked in India. It was the first multinational, and it ran India as a profit center.
One thing I find interesting about your comments is that you're using a very Marxist framework to talk about pre-capitalist modes of organization (which is reductionist and partly why he is not taken seriously as a sociologist in most settings).
The literal first country on that list is DRC lol do you know the history of DRC?
Literally every other place on the list is in the midst of a civil war except Haiti and Afghanistan. Every single one of them by the way is not currently in a state of famine.
"Famine is severe and prolonged hunger in a substantial proportion of the population of a region or country, resulting in widespread and acute malnutrition and death by starvation and disease."
It seems like they are in a state of famine by the official definition.
What does a civil war have to do with it being Capitalist or not?
Just find a big list of countries that are currently experiencing famine and look for the ones that aren't at war, if that's a problem for you.
I doubt their Capitalist status will be different.
In the page you linked, it says that some states are "bordering on a state of famine", which would imply that they are not currently in a state of famine. Did you read what you linked?
The Irish potato famine, the bengal famines, both under the rule of the UK, easily one of the most heavily capitalist countries at the time.
As well as Bangladesh, Biafra famine, Burma rice crisis, 1950 Canadian famine, Darfur famine, 1904 Spanish famine, 1878 Alaskan Famine, 1867 Swedish famine, 1816 European famine, 1811 Spanish famine, or the dozens of other massive famines in India that killed millions, or the dozen or so Austrian Galicia famines, or the dozen famines in pre communist China or the famines in pre communist Russia.
Anyone that actually believes famine is a problems that is unique to "communism" or doesn't exist in capitalism are either ignorant or just a troll.
So, I just randomly selected one of your examples that you vomited to see what it was, the 1878 Alaskan famine because wow, that's a US state right, that's definitely capitalist no doubt about it, a famine in Alaska? I've never heard of that, this guy must have a point...
It's an oral tradition of the yupik people, a hunting tribe who lost ~1000 people due to "bad hunting conditions." Capitalism? Why is it you guys always have to make arguments in bad faith? I personally think it's because youre all full of shit, but maybe you have a different reason?
Famine isn't a problem unique to communism, I never said it was, way to move the goalposts BTW, I only claimed that you won't find a famine anywhere in the world due to capitalism. Famine is a problem almost always caused by governments interfering in the natural distribution of resources. So for example, pre communist China under an emperor. Famine is a problem solved by free markets and present wherever resource distribution is centrally controlled, for example in feudalism, inside colonies under imperialism, communism etc.
Yeah, I'd say famine in for example Vietnam during the civil war would've been due to the war. Cambodia under pol pot, no, holodomor no, north Korea is in a technical state of war but is not currently engaged in any fighting so no, can't blame that ongoing famine on war when there hasn't been fighting in 60 years. Yes, I'm consistent.
Okay, it's pretty obvious you're just a troll with too much time on his hands now that school is out for the summer (I suggest spending your time outside instead, maybe try making some friends).
But before I disengage, for the sake of anyone else reading this (because it's clear you won't take on board anything anyone else says) that.
A market economy is not unique to capitalism, socialism relies on a market economy and can even be the mythical """free""" market capitalist like to rant about. As well as feudalism and basically any other economic system really.
A free market does not solve famine. Put 2 seconds of thought into it and you'll see that. For example say after a bad harvest there is just enough food to feed everyone on rations, but the local rich guy doesn't want to eat a ration amount, so he uses his boat loads of cash to buy shitload of food and has a luxurious feast for himself. The free market is perfectly happy with this, even though it now means some people are not going to starve to death as the rich man bought their share of the food.
This scales up to events like the great Irish famine, where food grown in Ireland was sold off to Britian despite people in Ireland literally starving to death, because the British had the money to pay for it and the Irish didn't.
Or the same with the bengal famine. Where Britain was able to procure Australian grain due to go to India because they wanted it for the Greeks, so they used the free market, paid more for it than the Indians were going to and now it belongs to the UK instead of starving bengalis.
In times of famine, central distribution of food is by far the better option (assuming those in power actually want to help)
The number 2 point doesn't hold water though, bad harvests happen but people are free to put their land to use remedying that, and incentivized with no administrative overhead.
The Irish potato famine was not the result of purchases, it was the result of planned food production not panning out, same in Bengal, I happen to have experience there, it's (dare I say) the most fertile ground on earth, if they were reliant on food import it can only be due to mismanagement of land which again, doesnt occur without central planning.
Point 1, find me a communist country ever that had anything resembling a free market, or even a foundational communist writing that discusses them with anything but disdain.
I don't know, dude. My mom baked rubarb pies all the time and my grandma made a mean chicken and dumplings. Pretty sure people make good food regardless of the economic system they live under.
You're probably talking about junk food, I'm guessing?
It’s not an argument. It’s what happens. When people don’t purchase all of the food that places are selling, it ends up in dumpsters rather than going to hungry people. Go to any chain restaurant place that sells baked goods and check their dumpster at night.
Well that's an argument I haven't read before. Yeah, we let people suffer and die because they cannot buy food, but our system has no alternatives because.. we have spices. Sorry, you have to die poor, my food neeeds spices.
What are you talking about? Vietnamese food is delicious. So is Cuban food. There's a reason why there's a ton of Vietnamese Pho and Cuban food restaurants in the U.S.
I used to live in the San Fernando Valley in L.A. and there was a Cuban bakery in Burbank, which was probably the most popular bakery in the Valley. Huge lines. My wife once waited two hours to get me a tres leches cake for my birthday.
So clearly the alternative is to let the rich drive species into extinction to eat something rare, while the poor don't even get flavorless gruel without justifying their existence.
That Americans have to pay to survive in any capacity- food, healthcare, shelter... it's the sign of a sick society. My daughter asked me why we have to pay a bill to get water in and sewage out of our house instead of just have that be a government thing. She's only 13 and even she realizes capitalism is fucked up.
And if you start shitting in a bucket and pouring it outside they will arrest you.
That's not empirically true. I pay for water as a flat rate in Quebec as part of my municipal taxes, as do all of my neighbors, and I don't see people engaging in flagrant water wastage. Lawns routinely go yellow during the hottest parts of the summer, I rarely see people washing their cars, and low flush toilets are getting increasingly common.
Ok. The EPA estimates that the average American uses 82 gallons a day as of 2015, which comes out to 310L.
EPA link
By contrast, McGill University cites that the average Canadian uses around 329L a day.
McGill water usage page
Montreal, specifically as an unmetered water city, estimates 327L a day.
City of Montreal annual water usage report
I'll grant you that Montreal does seem to have slightly higher usage per capita. But I'm not sure the extra pain in the ass of managing water meter infrastructure would be meaningful to reduce water usage to be in line with metered locations, when we're talking about a difference of 17L a day.
A private company handles our water and sewage.
A public utility handles mine and yet it still costs money. Odd.
Maybe this 13 year-old isn't the oracle I initially suspected
I'll take things that never happen pls
Lots of 13 year olds are dumb, doubly so if their parents are dumb, and think "capitalism is when things cost money"
You're right. It is dumb to not understand the difference between privatized services and government services...
For profit healthcare would be the same as a for profit fire department. Absolutely insane.
I live in the SW USA, and until very recently, we had to pay the fire dept a monthly fee to be able to call them to come to our house in case of fire.
Absolutely. Binding any basic need to profits is atrocious if you think about it.
There's a little bit of nuance here, "for profit" isn't the same as "for greed". Organizations of any kind - corps, non-profits, governments - have to remain essentially "solvent" or "profitable" to even operate - they can't function just perpetually burning through resources. A medical org, even one that's a "corporation", can run a profit but not be governed by greed (though obviously that's not the case everywhere right now).
How do the robots own the means of production?
This is just capitalism with slave labor you don't have to feel bad about.
slavery is (by definition) an ownership of a person. Robots are not people nor beings with intelligence.
This addresses 0% of my point
Every day when I get off work and I go to a local gas station, I see them throw away a bunch of prepared food that passed shelf life. This is a chain, so hundreds of locations do this every day. Tons of food per year, tossed in the trash because it sat in the heat box too long.
Imagine how many people could eat that food. It makes me upset.
I worked at a Dunkin for a summer and they had us throwing away two large trash bags full of food every night. It had to be 50lbs of food.
I started giving donuts to teenagers and an elderly Asian man that was always ecstatic to get a big bag of donuts and bagels. I didn't have a car to transport it to a shelter, and this was in a rich area. It was disgusting
I once tried to buy a rye loaf from a local grocery store and the cashier couldn't ring it up because it was one day expired. I said it looked fine to me, but she said the system won't even let her.
So I said okay, don't ring it up, just give it to me.
Another guy jumped in and took it, said no, it had to be thrown away.
They were literally not allowed to give me trash I was willing to pay for.
Capitalism is so efficient though! /s
May be they are avoiding getting sued. If someone gets sick. Especially junk food, which is unhealthy to begin with
Italy made it illegal for supermarkets to throw away food and forces them to donate it. It's not perfect, but it's better than wasting truckloads of food every day because they didn't sell it in time.
This has been long debunked. Laws have passed that protect owners from this.
I used to work in a sandwich shop that made it's own bread fresh daily. At the end of every day the owner started donating the leftover bread and explained how it's an urban myth.
People just don't like to share.
I'm sad to say that you're so correct, I wish I could give you three upvotes...
There are serious ethical problems with a capitalist system, especially when it comes to the necessities of life, but there's also ample evidence that other economic systems in practice have been just as bad of not worse regarding food security, eg follow the history of the USSR from the Holodomor in the 1930s to empty grocery shelves and bread lines in the 1980s
I view the problem as us treating a tool as a system of government. Capitalism is an incredibly powerful tool for increasing efficiency (real capitalism as in a healthy free market, not monopoly bullshit). But we should be using that tool to our benefit, not having that tool use us. We can use it as a tool without it being our basis of society. Also, capitalism is not self regulating. That's a bullshit myth created by elite monopolists. Unchecked capitalism leads to monopolies and monopolies are the antithesis of capitalism. We used to know that. We used to bust monopolies. We need to learn when and when not to use capitalism. Certain things need to be monopolies. Like transportation and the power grid. Since healthy competition cannot prosper we cannot make them capitalistic. We already need to recognize that capitalism is a tool for us to use. It's ok to break capitalism in special circumstances for the greater good, because the good of the people is more important than perpetuating capitalism. I think abolishing it leads to apathy and inefficiency, but worshipping it leads to inhumanity, and we're not even worshipping it properly because again, monopolies are not capitalism. Like all things in life it's about balance.
I cannot comment on communism as there has not been a true communism in the world yet, but dictatorships sure have been bad.
No system be it either communism or capitalism can be applied 100%
If we compare today's capitalism it's only fair that we compare it to real world application of communism.
As a Pole that was raised in a country freshly out of this system I can only tell you that you would have to be mentally insane to ever consider communism and expect it to work even half as well is it should on paper.
But that's not a "real world application of communism" in fact in reality the USSR never even claimed to actually be a communist society, they were just ruled by the communist party.
Communism has a specific definition, primarily its a post scarcity society, with no centralised government or monetary system. So any system that doesn't meet that basic definition can't be called communism.
Much like we don't use places like the Democratic people's Republic of Korea as an example of ehy democracy is bad, because its not actually a democracy, it doesn't meet the basic definition of democracy.
You can argue its an example of socialism, but it would be more accurate to describe it as authoritarianism because without democracy a state owned system can't really be called socialism.
Venezuelan here, how has been your experience on lemmy so far while discussing your real life experience of what leftists advocate for? Mine has been less than stellar
Yes, as with all things it must be balanced. Also, I wish we could recognize that monopolies are not capitalism, it's just cronyism and there's no place for that. It's the antithesis of capitalism and it plagues communism too. It's just pure corruption.
i thought monopoly is just the natural development in a competition, which (the competition) is pretty relevant in any market economy. I mean, an alt history line could have every monopoly in the market being prevented by gov regulation. But that would require gov that's not payed in any way by the 1%, who benefit from inexistent competition, to serve its own interest. That's really far from today's reality, in most countries i guess.
It is a natural development which is why we have anti trust laws. We recognized over 100 years ago that monopolies are bad and that they need to be broken up to keep capitalism healthy, but decades of corporate lobbying and propaganda made that practice stop happening. You're right that we need to clean up corruption in the government to make that happen again.
You know you guys are a meme out here in the real world, right?
Said the crypto bro from monero.town
Lol burn
Meme doesn't make it false
Well it wasn't so much a problem to Russians because their centralized economic system allowed them to simply starve away those they didn't like
Okay but like, at least understand why the shelves were empy. Behind the Bastards had a great podcast on the matter. Bad science is bad science, no matter how you trade.
What Lysenko did and the magnitude of it was enabled by and is inextricable from the Soviet systems of government and economy:
Yeah, the problems are just different. A mixed form would be ideal, where basic needs would be handled socially and the rest may compete in a capitalist way. The difficulty is where to draw the line exactly.
Food.
Shelter.
Education.
Healthcare.
I miss anything?
Crown corporations/co-ops/worker owned companies for essential needs, capitalism for all non essentials.
Tada!
"There's an egg shortage!"
> High egg prices send profits at largest US producer soaring more than 700%
Ew an amp link
Are you the least bit aware of what caused the egg shortage? There was a super virulent strain of avian influenza (bird flu) that has the potential to infect wild birds and to jump to mammals. You know, like people. The same thing triggered the pandemic in 1918 that killed anywhere from 1% - 5% of the world population.
So to avoid that happening again, they had to destroy (slaughter) millions and millions of egg laying hens, which yes, caused a shortage of eggs relative to normal.
https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/chart-gallery/gallery/chart-detail/?chartId=105576
There are real issues that need to be addressed with capitalism and workers rights. This isn't one of them and you hurt the real arguments by not educating yourself.
I think the "send profits soaring...700 percent" was the point there.
Do you think it's free to replace millions of hens?
If they've paid to replace them, that's a cost, not a profit.
I'm not sure what point you're trying to make, but you're wrong.
Profit is logged against prior expenditure, so that would be the cost of acquiring and feeding the hens they had to destroy.
The cost to replace those hens will be offset against the sale of eggs produced by the new hens. That will be how next year's profit is calculated.
It's already non profitable to feed people, that's why it's said that hunger is a problem of logistics and not problem of production capacity.
what a goofy thing to lie about. every restaurant and grocer in the world is just losing profits daily?
lol......Nope.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/01/business/food-prices-profits.html
https://time.com/6269366/food-company-profits-make-groceries-expensive/
https://www.vox.com/money/23641875/food-grocery-inflation-prices-billionaires
Between 2021 and 2022, the food and beverage industry recorded more than $155 billion in profits, according to Forbes. Nestlé, the world's largest food company, increased its gross profits last year by almost 3 percent to $46 billion.
https://civileats.com/2023/05/22/food-prices-are-still-high-what-role-do-corporate-profits-play/
logistics are certainly part of it, but not the crux. we produce way more food in the US than we consume, then we have laws against giving it away. https://time.com/4463449/food-waste-laws/
It's a complex problem, but profit is not the issue. Plenty of parties are making WILD profits.
That's just the point though. Food is only made profitable by pricing it high enough that half the world can't afford it (by which I mean the global south)
Don't forget farm subsidies, illegal labor in awful conditions, terrible animal treatment, externalizing climate damage from carbon burned during processing and transport, health damage from added sugars and hyper processed nut and seed oils, and I'm sure many other things I'm forgetting.
@sigfried complained it's not profitable. that's a lie.
your secondary concerns aren't addressed by my response because it wasn't the premise I was disagreeing with, it's the lie that food production isn't profitable. it is.
IT SHOULDN'T NEED TO BE.
These are separate arguments.
put a bit more effort into not lying and I'll leave it be.
Food production is one of the very few things the US government has been handling well. We give out tens of billions in subsidies to farmers every year to artificially inflate the food supply and have a nationwide SNAP program to help low income families afford food. As a result, we produce far more food than we actually need and far more than we would in a free market, allowing the US to be a major exporter of food globally and ensuring we have enough redundancy built into our food supply that the US will be the last country to starve in a famine
Then why are there food deserts in the US?
Ultimately more of a city design and distribution issue rather than production. Notjustifying just contextualizing.
I don't think a food desert means what you think it means...
Are you trying to say that we should rate food production of the US based on how many grocery stores we have in residential areas?
In the end a food desert really just means you have to drive a little farther to get to the store.
A little further implies a minor inconvenience as if it's not a real problem. No, food production shouldn't be tied to number of grocery stores. Not sure how you think they're implying that. It is a logistical problem that could be solved if people weren't more worried about profit than human needs and suffering. Zoning laws probably also play a role.
Because the USA is huge and has areas that are more remote? Providing abundance to areas by certain priorities such as population still allows food deserts to exist.
I mean I guess I could be wrong but are we really going to talk about the food distribution system like we know about it?
Remember that time they had too much milk and were like "Lets make cheese!" And then they had too much cheese so they put it in a cave and slowly gave it away for decades.
Thought we just dumped it all down the drain..
Cheese is a good way to stockpile milk. Milk spoils, cheese does too but much more slowly.
Labor has not conquered scarcity. Dear lord.
It actually has. The U.S. produces enough food to feed the entire world three times over. It's a matter of distribution and no one is going to invest in that because it's not profitable. .
We grow enough corn to feed the whole world and then some, but we use it to feed cows and chicken in inhumane enviroments for "better food".
Not a vegetarian or anything, just pointing out the awful nature of the meat industry
I generally agree, but the industrial corn grown in the us actually isnt really all that edible. Like yes, you can eat it, but it tastes like sawdust. It was grown specifically to be processed.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/sweet-corn-vs-field-corn_n_596f6718e4b0a03aba868f75
Just because there's a lot of it doesn't mean it isn't scarce
Please expand
This is essentially the "anything finite is scarce" argument. Since there isn't an actually unlimited amount of food available it's still scarce even if there's more of it than humans can use.
But that doesn't make sense in this context.
That's exactly what that means, "more than enough" is the opposite of scarce.
Say, why don't you take your hair-splitting somewhere else? Preferably a place that allows you to comfortly fuck yourself as well?
Okay, but why this image?
Bobby's been thinking the deep thoughts ever since Hank stranded him on Mars for disrespecting propane.
Because Bobby Hill is a based commie. Why did you think Hank was always yelling?
His narrow urethra?
But why is Bobby blue
Who is Bobby? That's Dr Arlen, the most powerful being in the universe.
That boy aint right
I'll tell you hwat
feeding people can be profitable though because then they can work (labor) to make more food
It might be profitable for society, but not for an individual capitalist.
I really don't get why we don't have "meal bars" or "human food" yet. Something that covers all basic calorie and nutritional requirements, can be mass produced, and easily stored at room temperature. Like "dog food" but for humans.
The real choice should be a normal meal or a "meal bar", not a normal meal or starving.
Automation can conquer scarcity and reduce the amount of labor needed. People starve because we don't take steps to ensure our man-made economy doesnt suffer even a single dollar loss.
Thats just "under the concept of having any amount of people not be farmers"
People were paying for food long before capitalism existed.
It's capitalism vs government programs that can feed the starving, not capitalism vs anything else. That was an era before the modern state. We're talking about with today's systems, not with systems that are no longer relevant.
Also, self sustaining communities shared food with their own at numerous points in history. People were giving food to eachother for the common good long before Karl Marx.
Capitalism n government programs coexist. They are not opposites
True, but I was trying to highlight relying on capitalism to feed people, vs using government programs at all. I didn't mean to imply that they are mutually exclusive.
Good King of the hill memes are like food in Soviet Russia: not everybody gets it
Under "-isms": "-isms" must manufacture "it" to justify their existence.
'There is a man, a certain man And for the poor, you may be sure That he'll do all he can Who is this one, who's favourite son
Just by his action has the traction Magnets on the run Who likes to smoke, enjoys a joke And wouldn't get a bit upset if he were really broke
With wealth and fame He's still the same I'll bet you five you're not alive If you don't know his name'
Except that's not really true. Western nations donate millions of tons of wheat and other food to poor nations and those hit by drought and other natural disasters.
https://www.wfpusa.org/articles/1-millionth-ton-american-wheat-relief-yemen/
In order to do that, they first have to buy the food from the corporations that are producing the food.
Communists are insufferable
"Do good things"
"We are!"
"Well fuck you anyway"
It feels like most posts talking about "capitalism" are just talking about society as a whole.
Farmers don't work for free.
Absolutely, and we subsidize them to help with that.
Exactly, they get their hard earned dollars from government subsidies like a real American
At least in my country (Europe), farmers receive very little money but food is getting more expensive. Is the great chains of supermarkets that profits in that difference, so it's definitely a capitalism problem.
Even the CEO of the biggest supermarket here recognized that they had rise the prices to make more profit even when they didn't need to do it.
Anything is done to make profit. Otherwise people wouldn't have desired a salary increase. Not selling food is not profitable, so food producers don't want people to starve, they want food to be sold. People can starve if they have no money, which should be solved by the government, or they can starve because there is no enough food in the country or region, which should be solved by the government too.
As opposed to our hunter gatherer days, or subsistence agriculture days, where everyone just lounged around leisurely? Name one time in human history where life was not filled with hard work. You just said it yourself: our labor has conquered scarcity. Labor! I fucking hate this meme, jfc.
Humans have had to work to feed themselves under every -ism ever tried. It's wrong to sit here blaming capitalism. This meme is just plain old dumb. Happy to discuss further if you actually want a conversation on good faith.
Fuck this stupid communist site. Ight imma head out.
Bye!
Under communism, food isn't produced.
Under capitalism, food is wasted, food that burned a lot of fossil fuels to produce. Capitalism is destroying the biosphere.
At least you understand that you'd starve
They're among the more than 1.2 million people who struggled to put food on the table at some point last year in the Washington, D.C. region. That's a third of the population living in and around the capital of one of the richest nations on Earth.Nationwide, more than 33 million people, including five million children, are food insecure, according to the USDA. No community is spared, with rural areas, families with children and communities of color disproportionately affected.
That would be for 2021. Not sure if stats would be out for 2022 yet.
Maybe the problem with people having no work or having low salary should be addressed?
Good, now find me an example of a famine in a capitalist system, because I can find you an example in every instance of every other system tried.
India under the Raj. Ireland under the UK.
Those were both feudalism, where the king owns all economic output and does wyat he wants with it, much like communism in practice.
Baby doll you just described capitalism.
Really? Capitalism is a system in which the king controls all economic resources and output?
Yeth
What do you think communism is? Cause it's not at all like feudalism - you're thinking of late stage capitalism that's like feudalism.
I think communism is an economic system where resource distribution (including labor) is centrally controlled by the state. That's a lot like feudalism, except you don't call the supreme leader who became supreme by killing his rivals "king".
What you think about communism is completely wrong.
Ok well enlighten me then, because I was pretty certain communism is an economic system where resource distribution is centrally planned by the state. I wonder where I got that idea, tell me, what is communism?
No, Communism is a political ideology that focuses on giving the means of production to the people doing the labor.
What you just said is the right-wing capitalist propaganda definition of communism.
In the context of this conversation it is about removing the Capitalist from business. Making it so everyone earns their fair share of the profits instead of one person at the top (like a King/feudalism) gets all the profits, while also making all the decisions. Instead the laborors gets a stake in the business - giving more incentive to help the business do well while giving the worker more power and take home money.
England has explicitly had a non-autocratic king since 1215, the idea that the King of England "owned everything" is ahistorical.
Do some research on the British East India Company before you're so sure about how things worked in India. It was the first multinational, and it ran India as a profit center.
One thing I find interesting about your comments is that you're using a very Marxist framework to talk about pre-capitalist modes of organization (which is reductionist and partly why he is not taken seriously as a sociologist in most settings).
https://www.wfpusa.org/articles/global-food-crisis-10-countries-suffering-the-most-from-hunger/
Seeing as how most countries are capitalist, googling "what countries are experiencing famine?" is a good start.
Not seeing any communists (or socialists) on there.
The literal first country on that list is DRC lol do you know the history of DRC?
Literally every other place on the list is in the midst of a civil war except Haiti and Afghanistan. Every single one of them by the way is not currently in a state of famine.
"Famine is severe and prolonged hunger in a substantial proportion of the population of a region or country, resulting in widespread and acute malnutrition and death by starvation and disease."
It seems like they are in a state of famine by the official definition.
What does a civil war have to do with it being Capitalist or not?
Just find a big list of countries that are currently experiencing famine and look for the ones that aren't at war, if that's a problem for you.
I doubt their Capitalist status will be different.
In the page you linked, it says that some states are "bordering on a state of famine", which would imply that they are not currently in a state of famine. Did you read what you linked?
You didn't even ask which ones are CURRENTLY facing famine.
You asked for example if famine in Capitalist nations.
He over delivered. Stop moving the goalposts.
If every example given of a (arguably) capitalist country in famine is not in famine, he most certainly didn't deliver.
I'm mean, come on man. You can't be serious? You realize you're in denial right? You have to realize it.
It's clearly right there. He clearly did what you asked. He clearly explained it to you.
You keep making excuses. Trying to find ways to wiggle out of being wrong. When it is so plain as day, literally spelled out for you.
Seek help man. Do some inward thinking. It's impossible to have a discussion when you just deny what is in front of you.
The Irish potato famine, the bengal famines, both under the rule of the UK, easily one of the most heavily capitalist countries at the time.
As well as Bangladesh, Biafra famine, Burma rice crisis, 1950 Canadian famine, Darfur famine, 1904 Spanish famine, 1878 Alaskan Famine, 1867 Swedish famine, 1816 European famine, 1811 Spanish famine, or the dozens of other massive famines in India that killed millions, or the dozen or so Austrian Galicia famines, or the dozen famines in pre communist China or the famines in pre communist Russia.
Anyone that actually believes famine is a problems that is unique to "communism" or doesn't exist in capitalism are either ignorant or just a troll.
So, I just randomly selected one of your examples that you vomited to see what it was, the 1878 Alaskan famine because wow, that's a US state right, that's definitely capitalist no doubt about it, a famine in Alaska? I've never heard of that, this guy must have a point...
It's an oral tradition of the yupik people, a hunting tribe who lost ~1000 people due to "bad hunting conditions." Capitalism? Why is it you guys always have to make arguments in bad faith? I personally think it's because youre all full of shit, but maybe you have a different reason?
Famine isn't a problem unique to communism, I never said it was, way to move the goalposts BTW, I only claimed that you won't find a famine anywhere in the world due to capitalism. Famine is a problem almost always caused by governments interfering in the natural distribution of resources. So for example, pre communist China under an emperor. Famine is a problem solved by free markets and present wherever resource distribution is centrally controlled, for example in feudalism, inside colonies under imperialism, communism etc.
And there go those goalposts again.
Would you give these same excuses for a communist nation?
Would you say famine wouldn't count because they were in a war?
Yeah, I'd say famine in for example Vietnam during the civil war would've been due to the war. Cambodia under pol pot, no, holodomor no, north Korea is in a technical state of war but is not currently engaged in any fighting so no, can't blame that ongoing famine on war when there hasn't been fighting in 60 years. Yes, I'm consistent.
Okay, it's pretty obvious you're just a troll with too much time on his hands now that school is out for the summer (I suggest spending your time outside instead, maybe try making some friends).
But before I disengage, for the sake of anyone else reading this (because it's clear you won't take on board anything anyone else says) that.
A market economy is not unique to capitalism, socialism relies on a market economy and can even be the mythical """free""" market capitalist like to rant about. As well as feudalism and basically any other economic system really.
A free market does not solve famine. Put 2 seconds of thought into it and you'll see that. For example say after a bad harvest there is just enough food to feed everyone on rations, but the local rich guy doesn't want to eat a ration amount, so he uses his boat loads of cash to buy shitload of food and has a luxurious feast for himself. The free market is perfectly happy with this, even though it now means some people are not going to starve to death as the rich man bought their share of the food.
This scales up to events like the great Irish famine, where food grown in Ireland was sold off to Britian despite people in Ireland literally starving to death, because the British had the money to pay for it and the Irish didn't.
Or the same with the bengal famine. Where Britain was able to procure Australian grain due to go to India because they wanted it for the Greeks, so they used the free market, paid more for it than the Indians were going to and now it belongs to the UK instead of starving bengalis.
In times of famine, central distribution of food is by far the better option (assuming those in power actually want to help)
The number 2 point doesn't hold water though, bad harvests happen but people are free to put their land to use remedying that, and incentivized with no administrative overhead.
The Irish potato famine was not the result of purchases, it was the result of planned food production not panning out, same in Bengal, I happen to have experience there, it's (dare I say) the most fertile ground on earth, if they were reliant on food import it can only be due to mismanagement of land which again, doesnt occur without central planning.
Point 1, find me a communist country ever that had anything resembling a free market, or even a foundational communist writing that discusses them with anything but disdain.
Does the term "dust bowl" mean anything to you, or?
Yep. Tell me about the dust bowl.
Tasty food exists. Checkmate, libs.
I don't know, dude. My mom baked rubarb pies all the time and my grandma made a mean chicken and dumplings. Pretty sure people make good food regardless of the economic system they live under.
You're probably talking about junk food, I'm guessing?
How dare people be compensated, they should be slaves
It’s not an argument. It’s what happens. When people don’t purchase all of the food that places are selling, it ends up in dumpsters rather than going to hungry people. Go to any chain restaurant place that sells baked goods and check their dumpster at night.
Nah, that was definitely the point of the meme.
"People go to elite private schools, therefore we shouldn't have public ones."
"People live in mansions, therefore we shouldn't have housing assistance."
"People get high paychecks, therefore we shouldn't have welfare."
The conservative mindset, ladies and gentlemen.
Bro eats mcdonalds 💀💀💀
Its always the guys with anime pfps
I'm fine with this. What say you?
Didn't expect That response now did ya?
"Communists do not have spices!"
Well that's an argument I haven't read before. Yeah, we let people suffer and die because they cannot buy food, but our system has no alternatives because.. we have spices. Sorry, you have to die poor, my food neeeds spices.
What are you talking about? Vietnamese food is delicious. So is Cuban food. There's a reason why there's a ton of Vietnamese Pho and Cuban food restaurants in the U.S.
I used to live in the San Fernando Valley in L.A. and there was a Cuban bakery in Burbank, which was probably the most popular bakery in the Valley. Huge lines. My wife once waited two hours to get me a tres leches cake for my birthday.
So, again, what are you talking about?
So clearly the alternative is to let the rich drive species into extinction to eat something rare, while the poor don't even get flavorless gruel without justifying their existence.