Climate Change, again...

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Originally Posted by Nessus

Money is a tool, a mean to achieve ends, not a goal in and of itself :bulb: Nutrition distribution around the world is not working as well as it ought to, if the desired end result is global nutrition sufficiency, which was obviously an implicit assumption in my original post!

It is an implicit assumption, furthermore it is an implicit assumption that I am saying is wrong. You have your assumptions wrong therefore are coming to the wrong conclusion.

Who is paying to ensure everyone has global nutrition sufficiency? Answer: Nobody.

There is no scientific or agricultural or transport lack of capability. There is a lack of willpower, money and political choice to ensure everyone gets fed. It is human behaviour, not human capabilities that are ensuring people go hungry.

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In fact, this is a response to your second, one-word question to me, this is why the free market cannot deal with the kind of natural disaster I was discussing with Chambalaya, namely that people "couldn't afford" to re-structure global commerce without stupid amounts of hardship. If money is the end-all, be-all, then in the above scenario developed northern nations would haemorrhage machinery and materiel vital to their internal infrastructure in a bid to import grain from the diminishing arable nations. From the money hurf burf perspective I guess that's well and good, but dear Cthulhu if you can't see how that would also be a massive problem I must repeat my request that you inform me what kind of happy pills you're taking :bulb:

Even without any hypothetical future problem,

You mock my "hurf burf" views but frankly I'm closer to your opinions than you realise. Are you seriously saying that the reason people are hungry is not because of what I said. Socio-economic/political reasons? That if people chose to ensure that everyone got fed and put the finance behind it, that they couldn't be?

You do realise that I do believe in some socialism? I believe in having a 'safety net'. That does not exist currently for those children and I think that is wrong. But it is human behaviour that is causing it not to exist, not a lack of ability to ensure there is food. And you think that I need pills for those opinions? I'd have thought you'd agree with that!? A rare occasion where we could agree!?

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Originally Posted by Illusions

I could easily rephrase this so that instead of placing the blame of the problem on the poor not being able to afford food, its placed on people with large amounts of disposable income not being empathetic towards their fellow starving man, and instead spending their vast wealth on multimillion dollar yachts, homes, or other extraneous or lavish items. Would this be a worthwhile argument? No, it would not be, it would just be a debate about perspective, and subjective opinions on the topic of money.

You easily could. I would say you're wrong though, because in nations like ours the poor are looked after rather than go hungry and the wealthy pay a ton of tax to ensure there is a safety net (and then some).

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In addition you've framed a problem where logically there is no total solution possible, without doing away with capitalism, as there will always be people, globally, who are at the lower end of the income spectrum. However it is not necessary for everyone to want keep their money, and not feed starving people with it, nor is a prerequisite for capitalism to stop existing before its possible.

No nation has 100% pure capitalism and nobody promotes that. But the nations with people starving in Africa etc are not modern, developed, capitalist democracies. The nations that are modern, developed, capitalist democracies have done away with that problem with spending on a welfare safety net rather than corrupt dictatorships. Therefore my solution is to do the same in those nations: Introduce democracy and capitalism, get people working and develop the nation - and yes, an element of socialist welfare.

Other people might have alternative solutions but either way the problem is socio-economic/political. The problem is that the goal currently is not an end to a lack of nutritional sufficiency. Its a worthy goal and a stated goal by some, but not one people actually have put enough backing behind to make happen. Not through a lack of capability but through a lack of human effort and backing. It's strange but what I'm saying is that normally said be people of the left, and I agree on this, but people who could normally say this themselves like Nessus are reactively opposing what I say just because of an instinctive dislike of what I believe.

If people put their mind to it then we could eliminate global hunger. The problem isn't a lack of arable land, its that people haven't made the necessary choices and sacrifices to ensure people are fed. We (as the human race as a whole) could eliminate global hunger if we wanted to.