Friday, April 14, 2017

And Yet People Are Still Starving In Many Areas Of The World

This has always been one of Capitalism's biggest contradictions: That it would rather let surplus production sit useless than get it to those who are in desperate need of whatever might be involved. The cost of getting it to those in desperate need, of course, as well as the write off of original production costs, always makes for an argument that keeps things all bound up until the commodity in question either goes to rot, or becomes useless in some other fashion.

It's unfortunate that there's never been a mechanism that allows producers to clear surpluses from the distribution system, get the supply back in balance with self supportive prices, and yet still make use of the items; especially when it is food.

It seems to me that, if we owned everything, there might be a way to channel the costs, and get the product used, that wouldn't pile unserviceable debt on the producers. It would simply have the government buy the product at cost, using that purchase price as a further employee buyout debt servicing, and then charging the government expenditure on the Foreign Policy budget. If we also then had a world public transportation utility, supported by the UN as a whole, the product could be delivered, en mass, to wherever it was needed, with the world sharing that cost.

A lot of "ifs" to be sure. A lot of good things start with "ifs" though. If you are really of a mind to make things better. We just have to forge a common way of looking at the problem, and then negotiate our way to making the solution happen.

Grains piled on runways, parking lots, fields amid global glut






No comments:

Post a Comment