If only there were a few individuals with ridiculous amounts of wealth that we could turn to (whether they want to or not)
How do you imagine that should work? Let’s take Elon as an example. He owns companies that got successful, hence the wealth. It is not cash under his mattress or in the back account, that would be simple to take.
Well surely cutting the corporate income tax rate is the best first step, no?
Oh, wait, that didn’t help it just made millionaires into billionaires? Who could have imagined!?!?
Obviously one can tax the companies and they can collect money from revenues or collect money by selling shares to investors.
He said they only need $20 billion to feed everyone … well fuck that daddy bezos want to go to space!
20 billion dollar per year? To feed everyone (who is that?) for a year? Wound that be sustainable or would populations explode?
40 billion each year to end global hunger by 2030. Everyone is everyone in the whole world. These figures are from the Un food programme’s. Population would not explode, because malthusian economics are for eco fascists. Rich people that have no food insecurity have Less kids, not more. See all of Europe and the US and many other countries as examples. Human population is not the graph about wolves and deer you saw in 10th grade biology.
https://www.wfpusa.org/articles/how-much-would-it-cost-to-end-world-hunger/
We literally tried this in the 90s, when we had tons of money and were in a good mood.
Warlords sprung up, pirated the shipments and controlled them for power throughout Africa, including somalia/Mogadishu.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t do it anyway, but it’s not as easy as it sounds.
Mostly, Saudi Arabia would do everything it could to disrupt this because they don’t want poor people getting any food if it doesn’t include indoctrination in their wahhabist Islam schools because as holders of mecca and Medina they believe they can use militant Islam to expand their influence throughout both the middle east and Africa (though isis backfired and made them think twice for a few years, they’re back at it now).
Oh yeah, I almost forgot about the ‘religious fundamentalist’ angle. How many poor people are lured in by promises of food security?
All the organized religions insist on inequality, it’s the only way to keep a pool of vulnerable followers.
Depends on how you define the word religion.
Buddhism is legally a religion for example, but has little in common with major middle eastern/western religions.
So I did qualify as organized, but there are also tales where Buddhism becomes authoritarian and onerous, often small villages ruled by an elder monk and a few others.
I don’t consider those examples representative, more as proof that religion is an easy thing to corrupt for power. Otherwise I’d agree Buddhism seems more resilient to this than most, which makes sense, in a way it began a protest against the corruption and brutality in Hinduism.
Is it just because of a funding crisis, or is it also because of rising prices partly due to sheer profiteering?
It’s all connected. Countries want to donate less. Supply is smaller, not in small part thanks to Russia’s slaughter of Ukraine. The energy crisis that prompted costs rising, again, Russia. Greedy corporations increasing their slices of the pie at record rates at our time of need. Crops increasingly being lost due to the effects of the climate crisis.
Not an exhaustive list, just what comes to mind at this moment.
These problems are still workable but not with the current greed and zero-sum mindsets we get from our own population (e.g. the right in many countries letting out their fascism).
While we argue and fight, millions starve. It’s not just a possible outcome, it’s already happening. People who refuse to acknowledge the climate crisis, people who support Russia, greedy corporations, etc. Their hands probably haven’t been as bloody since the colonial times.
Not going to research this but I reckon that we done fucked ourselves with capitalism.
Market failures are only for the people to absorb. The profits though…
