Speaking of the USA and it’s food consumption, we waste an incredible amount of food. We grow food based on it’s profitability not it’s effectiveness at feeding people or delivering nutrition. Varieties are prioritized by their ability to stay “fresh” longer (or engineered) so that we can literally outsource farming to nations we can exploit on the cheap without the food spoiling on its way back here, by boat because that’s cheapest.
There have been attempts at things like centralized planning that were remarkably resilient to disruption in South America. If I recall, they managed to build a network, like decades ago, that allowed organizations within an industry to share information about production and stock, which allowed them to accommodate natural disruptions. I don’t know for sure if that covered food specifically, if I’m being honest. Either way, we’ll never know how long it could have lasted because we intervened and “convinced” the locals to adopt capitalism.
I don’t think there is a rule that “planning” or cooperation in production leads to things like starvation. Of course, anything can be planned poorly and if everything relies on a single bad plan there is the possibility that everything could go terribly wrong. Or things can just go wrong without any planning or cooperation, or because its not important to the owners of the means of production that people are fed - many people are malnourished and starving as we speak… Unfortunately, humanity has had very little opportunity to try centralized or cooperative planning because it threatens capitalism and established powers. I think if we did it carefully and learned from our mistakes centralized or cooperative planning could absolutely work. I have very mixed feelings and limited knowledge about China, and I am hesitant to believe anything due to propaganda war waged by both the CCP and capitalists worldwide. However, it seems clear that they have been prioritizing food security for a while. How are their rates of starvation and malnutrition?
To be perfectly frank, my biggest concern about real socialism is that it is hard to make sustainable. This is not because of inherent flaws but because capitalist powers and oligarchs will sabotage it at every opportunity. It’s been happening throughout history and humans have only gotten better (and even more subtle, if necessary) at sabotaging things. Look into how difficult it has been to allow the government to help people with programs or improve agencies that exist for that purpose… especially since Reagan. Now observe how quickly the current US federal government is being dismantled because those agencies we’ve somehow managed to create get in the way of profit.
Hell, our current world economy is incredibly intertwined. Our current trade war with China makes it clear that even if a country mastered food distribution, anything imported could just be cut off or maliciously priced to sabotage that achievement. Unfortunately, even if we tried to be food secure without growing food elsewhere the US can’t grow everything, and definitely not in the proportions we would need. Some of it, like coffee and tropical fruit, has to be excluded from the economy or imported… which leaves us vulnerable to manipulation.
Speaking of the USA and it’s food consumption, we waste an incredible amount of food. We grow food based on it’s profitability not it’s effectiveness at feeding people or delivering nutrition. Varieties are prioritized by their ability to stay “fresh” longer (or engineered) so that we can literally outsource farming to nations we can exploit on the cheap without the food spoiling on its way back here, by boat because that’s cheapest.
There have been attempts at things like centralized planning that were remarkably resilient to disruption in South America. If I recall, they managed to build a network, like decades ago, that allowed organizations within an industry to share information about production and stock, which allowed them to accommodate natural disruptions. I don’t know for sure if that covered food specifically, if I’m being honest. Either way, we’ll never know how long it could have lasted because we intervened and “convinced” the locals to adopt capitalism.
I don’t think there is a rule that “planning” or cooperation in production leads to things like starvation. Of course, anything can be planned poorly and if everything relies on a single bad plan there is the possibility that everything could go terribly wrong. Or things can just go wrong without any planning or cooperation, or because its not important to the owners of the means of production that people are fed - many people are malnourished and starving as we speak… Unfortunately, humanity has had very little opportunity to try centralized or cooperative planning because it threatens capitalism and established powers. I think if we did it carefully and learned from our mistakes centralized or cooperative planning could absolutely work. I have very mixed feelings and limited knowledge about China, and I am hesitant to believe anything due to propaganda war waged by both the CCP and capitalists worldwide. However, it seems clear that they have been prioritizing food security for a while. How are their rates of starvation and malnutrition?
To be perfectly frank, my biggest concern about real socialism is that it is hard to make sustainable. This is not because of inherent flaws but because capitalist powers and oligarchs will sabotage it at every opportunity. It’s been happening throughout history and humans have only gotten better (and even more subtle, if necessary) at sabotaging things. Look into how difficult it has been to allow the government to help people with programs or improve agencies that exist for that purpose… especially since Reagan. Now observe how quickly the current US federal government is being dismantled because those agencies we’ve somehow managed to create get in the way of profit.
Hell, our current world economy is incredibly intertwined. Our current trade war with China makes it clear that even if a country mastered food distribution, anything imported could just be cut off or maliciously priced to sabotage that achievement. Unfortunately, even if we tried to be food secure without growing food elsewhere the US can’t grow everything, and definitely not in the proportions we would need. Some of it, like coffee and tropical fruit, has to be excluded from the economy or imported… which leaves us vulnerable to manipulation.