How is the capitalist system insufficient to combat global hunger?

[☭World Views]

In economic terms, how is the market system insufficient at combating world hunger?


I heard something about capitalists in charge of food production not producing enough for everyone to keep their prices high or something. Also that money is not needed, only demand and the production possibilities are. Can someone please elaborate and point me to writings dealing with this topic?

[Muzk]

It's easily explained - why would someone volunterarily give food to countries which have nothing to give back in return?

And then, if those countries DO have something, they are capitalist themselves, and the whole land/goods are owned by a few people, leaving the others to starve

So, capitalists won't do a thing if it doesn't serve their pocket, the whole system is built around this


Also that money is not needed, Money is always 'needed' in one way or another. What in Africa is 1$ might be 50$ in America. Hint: Rug weaving
http://www.irantravelingcenter.com/images/rug_weaving_iran.jpg

[cyu]

Excerpt from http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1862696

You might say there is a "hierarchy of value" (extrapolated from Maslow)...

There are some things everyone must have so they can survive: food, oxygen, warmth, etc. Basic stuff.

Once they've paid for their most basic stuff, then they spend their money on other stuff.

The more money they have, the more "esoteric" their later spending becomes.

Pearl divers in general are probably not your richest people in the world - so what do they do if they have a pearl? Or instead of asking that question, let's ask what would they do if you gave them a Picasso or Rembrandt? Pretty much the same thing they would do with the pearls - sell it to rich people who would actually use it, and then spend the money on more basic necessities, like running water and electricity.

So why aren't there more of these poor cliff divers producing food, building homes, laying pipes, or building power plants for themselves to use? Why do they instead dive for pearls? The answer is that in the economy in which they live, wealth has been concentrated. When wealth is concentrated, it becomes more profitable to serve the rich than it is to serve people of your own class - thus poverty continues on in the lower classes, and on, and on, and on.

[The Thinker]

In economic terms, how is the market system insufficient at combating world hunger?


I heard something about capitalists in charge of food production not producing enough for everyone to keep their prices high or something. Also that money is not needed, only demand and the production possibilities are. Can someone please elaborate and point me to writings dealing with this topic?


As pointed out in one of the previous posts, the recent monetary system we live in harbors the need for money. Keep in mind though that changing this system is next to impossible. The monetary system we still use today has been around longer than we can remember. There have been times though when people have actually tried to break free of this system by instigating an interest free currency within their society. Take for example pre dollar United States. The British empire charged interest on every bit of cash that was used to fund the development of the so called new world. After the colonists had developed their own currency ( The Greenback ) the British empire tried to install a central bank to control the currency flow within the new world. This very rightfully so was rejected by the colonists and is one of the reasons the war for independence followed.
Anyway after the Federal Bank had eventually been installed within the United States everything they had fought for ( true independence ) turned to dust.

As far as the notion on world hunger goes, it is imperative that you understand the monetary system and how it works within the rest of the world. There are aspects of basic human needs that we could most certainly have in abundance. However it will never be in the best interest of the monetary system to actually make them so.
Someone with some very interesting theories about this is Jaques Fresco. http://www.thevenusproject.com/

Perhaps you will find an answer to your question there.

[revolution inaction]

In economic terms, how is the market system insufficient at combating world hunger?

the market has no interest in combating hunger



I heard something about capitalists in charge of food production not producing enough for everyone to keep their prices high or something.

I think its fairly well known that more food than is needed is already produced but that many people cant afford to buy it and that during most famines food was exported from the country experiencing the famine.



Also that money is not needed, only demand and the production possibilities are. Can someone please elaborate and point me to writings dealing with this topic?

I think the conquest of bread (http://libcom.org/library/the-conquest-of-bread-peter-kropotkin) might have some thing on this but i havent read it all yet, its quite a basic part of communism to abolish money so there are some threads on here if you search too.