Can Capitalism Solve World Hunger?

We're often told just how productive a capitalist economy is. We produce far more than we need...so why are there still so many hungry and malnourished people? In this episode we'll investigate the real cause of world hunger, and assess whether capitalism has the tools to solve this massive problem.

Can Capitalism Solve World Hunger? – Second Thought

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Citations and Further Reading:

The Elon Musk world hunger tweet saga

829 million people/~10% of people

3.1 million children die of malnutrition every year

World hunger is on the rise

Famines

Food insecurity affects 38 million Americans

Food insecurity affects 8% of American children

We produce enough to feed 10 billion people

Our Changing Climate’s food waste video

⅓ of the food produced, 1.3 billion tons, gets wasted each year

Food waste along the supply chain

34% of the food grown gets wasted at the farm

Farmers respond to price fluctuations

Farm waste during the pandemic

“Ugly produce” companies aren’t helping

Best before dates aren’t regulated/standardized

40 million Americans live in food deserts

Supermarkets stock 10x larger food products and plates have increased 36% in size

Refrigerators have gotten 30% bigger and cost half as much

The commodification of food

Structural adjustment programs

Gambian fish story

Food for beginners

World hunger book (outdated statistics, but the analysis is still relevant)

Twelve myths about world hunger

Food justice is class war

Unequal exchange

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[jeffreymitchell]

Anyone who has ever worked at a buffet can tell you about food waste. I've literally dumped full pans of edible food into the trash, simply because the buffet does not want liability if the food were donated and someone were to get sick and try and sue the buffet. Got to love America and Capitalism.

[PegasusBrill]

It really is amazing how so many problems that aren't getting fixed all boil down to "There's no profit in it"

[tsumetai]

I worked as a delivery driver for a bread company for almost a year. I quit that job when my boss changed his stance suddenly on me donating my staled out bread to a local food bank. We had a lot of bread that was past the sell by date but still had weeks of life left in it. At the end of my work day I would just stop in to a food bank and give them all of that bread that was destined for a dumpster. The company suddenly changed its stance and told me staled out bread had to be thrown away. Only a week after this decision I was seeing the people in my community literally digging through our dumpsters to get the bread we were throwing into them. My boss gave me a callus response when I brought up this fact and I resigned on the spot. This system is collectively ripping the heart out of society and we're supposed to just sit here and pretend it's normal. Shit sucks.

[frigginjerk]

When you see something in society that is immoral or illogical and you wonder why it's like that, the first possible explanation that should come to mind is always "Because someone who has a lot of money wants it that way, so that he can get even more money."

[rockfire]

In the literally sense, capitalism won’t solve world hunger simply because it won’t turn a profit.

[TheMrJTRyder]

In 2010 (I think), I wrote an article about the high cost of being poor. One of the sections centered on the food desert I lived in. There was one large chain grocery store and I noticed that the prices there were higher than the same supermarket in wealthier neighborhoods. I interviewed the chain's operations manager and at first he said it was due to the store being in a high crime area and their insurance being higher. I had already looked into this prior to the interview and knew this was BS because they had a blanket policy covering theft in transit, by staff and from shoplifting baked into the policy. After a few more questions, I was astounded when he told the truth. He said it was because there were no competitor's stores in the area, so there was no incentive to have lower prices.

[JamesTDG]

It's funny how much capitalism encourages the notion "if I can't profit from it, you can't get it."

[TheSpazzDragon]

I was literally just last night having an argument with my Roommate about food and budgeting because it gotten ridiculously expensive recently. This video just helped me win that argument. Also now he is gonna watch more of these videos. So that is good.

[repugnant__]

I work at Trader Joe's, we donate all of our food spoils to homeless shelters and local farmers here in Nebraska, as a manager I have myself driven too the locations where we donate, (including South Dakota to the Sioux/Lakota people and rural Iowa) to make sure it gets eaten and more often than not it does. All produce/meat/dairy goes into some kind of food to feed children, dogs, blind men and women etc. I wouldn't feel good about working here if that wasn't in place however I know it's such a huge issue that we can't fix everything but I feel like we at least make a small difference.

[ampersand]

Affordable housing, food, and health care should all be human rights.

[michaelsoltesz]

I am disappointed to hear the “ugly produce” companies are a sham.
I remember having that idea and was happy to see it implemented by someone. I guess i should have realized it was BS.

Anyway, another amazing video.

[commentor]

Never underestimate how low business people can go.

[BreakEm]

I think it's important to highlight a distinction between caloric and nutritional needs, so many people are going to distill "solving hunger" through just giving people more calories which is nice and all but it does nothing but make people developmentally stunted if all those calories are empty in needed macros/micros.

[filipwolffs]

"In theory, everyone wants to solve world hunger."

The current economical philosophy of most of the developed world is that profit is the highest priority, and that the best way to create profit is to cut costs. One of the greatest expenses of any company is the salaries and wages of the employees. To reduce these expenses many of the richest and most influential individuals and organizations in the world want to apply pressure on the working class so they'll accept jobs with terrible working conditions and for abysmal pay.

Of course, Second Thought already knows this, but it has to be repeated at every opportunity: not everyone wants to solve world hunger. The elite desire humanitarian crises because they believe it's beneficial for their bottom line if the majority of the population is desperate. Suffering has been made a cornerstone of the economical system. Empathy and altruism are being denounced as childish, fake, and delusional because these virtues would ruin their business models.

[adamrosendahl]

Everytime I'm reminded of this horrific truth it doesn't just make me sad but angry. What makes me sad is how helpless we are to do anything.

[UTArch]

How Krispy Kreme perfectly defines American corporate culture: For National Donut Day I went to get a "free" doughnut at Krispy Kreme. The line was very long and the drive through was backed up onto the freeway service road. For anyone who has been to a Krispy Kreme, you know that their production line is automated using a long mechanical conveyor belt system. I had never focused on what happens at the end of the conveyor belt, but I saw that those doughnuts not deemed Krispy Kreme “perfect” are allowed to pass to the end of the conveyor where they are unceremoniously dumped into a trash can! We are talking about fresh, warm Krispy Kreme doughnuts which just aren't cosmetically perfect. I was shocked, so I asked the person at the cash register what was done with these "rejects" - thinking that they were (or would be) donated to a homeless shelter or some other worthy charity. She said: "they get thrown away". Another employee (presumably a manager) quickly added that employees could have all they want from the trash. And from the volume of rejects I saw while I was in line, we are talking about a LOT of doughnuts going to waste. Apparently we are so rich as a society that we can afford to throw out, not just "edible" food but, freshly baked warm, delicious food. The idea of fresh, warm doughnuts going straight into the garbage REALLY bothers me. As a consumer, it occurred to me that it would make sense for Krispy Kreme to sell the “imperfect” doughnuts at a discount so that they would not just go to waste. But it may just be that the corporation does not want to “rob sales” of their cosmetically perfect full price doughnuts by selling an equivalent discounted product side-by-side.

[gavinmiller]

These videos always make me cry. We're doing it so wrong.

[jovicamateric]

Here in Serbia my neighbor works at a farm and tells me that there are two classifications for food: export food and waste food. The difference in the quality of the food is like night and day. The export food is destined for western Europe and the waste food is the average diet here.

[Asrahn]

The overconsumption VS commercials point really highlights how bizarre this system is. It's up to you, the individual, to resist the massive psyop that is commercials that you're constantly being barraged with, and if you fail to temper the impulse of just how much you acquire of what you've ceaselessly been told to buy, the very same people who benefits from your purchases will scold you for it.

Simultaneously, if you don't actually buy these things, or if just enough people reduce their consumption, the economy grinds to a halt, and you get told that you're a bad person for not buying these people's products so that the wheels of the economy can get greased as they should. At no point in this can you acquire a position of true agency, never mind "win", and at no point is the spotlight directed towards the people actually in charge of this planet-destroying hamster wheel either. Truly dystopian.

[NutellaCrepe]

Recently had a debate with a supporter of capitalism, and when I brought up the simple fact that the world has more than enough food and resources for everyone, he dismisses it as pointing out the obvious and that social darwinism is necessary. This is what we’re fighting against, people who wish to artificially perpetuate suffering of the poor so they can have more than most. In their words, they want to create losers just so they can be the winners in the system.