For starters, if there's enough food to support a population, they'll increase until there isn't enough food. Even if we had enough food to feed everyone now, there's no particular reason to think that would be the case for very long. We thought the ocean was an endless and bountiful source of food, so we fished it out.
Secondly, we can produce a massive quantity of food in part because we have so much space to do it in- space that used to be wild. If you've got no problem genociding squirrels to make sure all the humans have food, I'm not sure why you'd expect everyone else to take issue with fellow humans starving, especially if they're of a different ethnicity. Aren't you just advocating the system we've got now, but with a larger base of bourgeois fatcats?
Yes, population growth is a problem, but it's one we're capable of reversing. The problem of providing for as many people as there may be in the future is secondary to providing for as many people as there definitely are today, unless you're also of the mindset that encouraging wrongful death is justifiable in the interests of population control. In this case we might as well drop this and have a discussion about eugenics.
Third, there's a massive difference between pointing out that things are wasted, and actually finding a way to fix the problem. Everyone hates traffic lights, at least a little. It's hideously inefficient to have to slow down and stop, then wait a while, then start up again every so often when you're trying to drive. If you got back all the time traffic lights wasted, roads would gain an impressive amount of efficiency. Trouble is, how exactly does one do that? It's not as simple as saying "there's a light making me stop, so make it not stop me," just like it's not as simple as saying "this food is wasted, so let's move it to where it's not wasted." It could be done better, of course, but there's always going to be an element of waste.
I am at least taking the first step in identifying the obstacles which we must first overcome in order to ever have any hope of solving the problem.
Funny thing about stoplights. I read an article a while back about at least one small city somewhere in europe which experimented with removing all traffic lights and signs, and actually experienced a decrease in accidents. This is very deeply connected to a common anarchist argument -- that every situation is unique and people are best equipped to deal with them responsibly when left to approach it as such. The existence of traffic controls create a mental dependency that actually removes a driver from being actively engaged in observing and communicating with the traffic around them. All they're paying attention to is the lights and the signs, resigning themselves to the straight & narrow of absolutes that we're expected to live by. No reason to pay attention to anything around us when we're being told exactly what to do.
Fourth, food is mostly produced on large-scale farms and other sophisticated, centralized production centers. Running such a place, let alone running it at peak efficiency, requires a centralized command of some sort, which you've spent much of the thread declaring innately violent and slavery-inducing. Similar issues exist for transporting and distributing it.
This is where I would have conceded 20 years ago, but not with mass communications as they are today. Organization doesn't require coercive authority. The only centralization required is the availability of information and collections of input from those with a stake in the operation, which can be carried out on just about any scale today.
Fifth, you've been using the example of food based on some statistics you read, then trying to apply it to everything "related to your well-being." Some of the things directly related to someone's well-being are extremely difficult to make- there's just never going to be as many of them as there are people who want them, at least in the near future. Organ transplants come to mind, but the kind of surgeon necessary for one is a good example also.
This is true, and I totally understand that trade will always exist for things which are unique or rare. The list of things which can be considered of genuine importance to a person which we do not have the capability to make abundant is constantly dwindling, though.
Sixth, you're trying to superimpose a new system on the old one, on the assumption that the new system would change some things but not others. Capitalism is well-known as a motivator, if nothing else, and much of the brutal oppression you speak of is used to achieve the numbers you're speaking of. As an example, under-minimum wage migrant workers are often used to pick fruit efficiently, so you'd have to either turn everyone into a migrant worker, or lose some food production.[/spoiler]
Need is the motivator, and this is what capitalism is good at generating... need where there should be none. We certainly don't need impoverished migrant workers. It seems like very little work that's actually worth a damn to anyone pays enough to reasonably support a family. I'm doing work that's completely finance-based and completely worthless as I see it. My first job was scanning & stacking packages for shipping. I worked much harder than I do now and made less than half what I do, but I loved it. I was healthy, felt alive, and had some sense of worth in what I did. Now I feel like I'm in a coma 8-10 hours a day for nothing. It seems like all the work that's out there either pays shit, is insanely high competition, or is completely worthless crap like insurance, banking, telemarketing, brokerage, bloated beaurocracy etc. If everyone like me could afford to go and pick fruit with the migrants, we could all have more while doing less work.
Of course this isn't going to happen as long as we operate the way we do. Technology gets better and allows us to produce more efficiently, requiring less labor. Instead of this amounting to greater abundance and less work for everyone, it amounts to the wealthy elite going "Wow! I can hire less people and get more out of them! Less sharing! More for me!" And so we're forced to struggle harder than ever before to find worthless shit to waste our time on.
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Topic: Socialism & Communism (Read 34743 times)