What the UN didn't want you to see! (Sort of) plus much, much more.
On approximately 28/11/2022, the United Nations published an essay with an extraordinary thesis- world hunger has many benefits as well as costs. Now in the interests of intellectual honesty (but sadly against the spirit of narrative drama- sorry o muse), let me clarify early that the essay is written in the same spirit as A Modest Proposal For preventing the Children of Poor People From being a Burthen to Their Parents or Country, and For making them Beneficial to the Publick by Johnathan Swift- it is a parody intended to show the inhumanity of the system we live under by drawing out its logic.
The parody started to go viral on Twitter in the last few days and the UN (cowards!) deleted it. I used the Wayback machine to save it, and I am delighted to present it in full:
The Benefits of World Hunger by George Kent
We sometimes talk about hunger in the world as if it were a scourge that all of us want to see abolished, viewing it as comparable with the plague or aids. But that naïve view prevents us from coming to grips with what causes and sustains hunger. Hunger has great positive value to many people. Indeed, it is fundamental to the working of the world's economy. Hungry people are the most productive people, especially where there is a need for manual labour.
We in developed countries sometimes see poor people by the roadside holding up signs saying "Will Work for Food". Actually, most people work for food. It is mainly because people need food to survive that they work so hard either in producing food for themselves in subsistence-level production, or by selling their services to others in exchange for money. How many of us would sell our services if it were not for the threat of hunger?
More importantly, how many of us would sell our services so cheaply if it were not for the threat of hunger? When we sell our services cheaply, we enrich others, those who own the factories, the machines and the lands, and ultimately own the people who work for them. For those who depend on the availability of cheap labour, hunger is the foundation of their wealth.
The conventional thinking is that hunger is caused by low-paying jobs. For example, an article reports on "Brazil's ethanol slaves: 200,000 migrant sugar cutters who prop up renewable energy boom".1 While it is true that hunger is caused by low-paying jobs, we need to understand that hunger at the same time causes low-paying jobs to be created. Who would have established massive biofuel production operations in Brazil if they did not know there were thousands of hungry people desperate enough to take the awful jobs they would offer? Who would build any sort of factory if they did not know that many people would be available to take the jobs at low-pay rates?
Much of the hunger literature talks about how it is important to assure that people are well fed so that they can be more productive. That is nonsense. No one works harder than hungry people. Yes, people who are well nourished have greater capacity for productive physical activity, but well-nourished people are far less willing to do that work.
The non-governmental organization Free the Slaves defines slaves as people who are not allowed to walk away from their jobs. It estimates that there are about 27 million slaves in the world,2 including those who are literally locked into workrooms and held as bonded labourers in South Asia. However, they do not include people who might be described as slaves to hunger, that is, those who are free to walk away from their jobs but have nothing better to go to. Maybe most people who work are slaves to hunger?
For those of us at the high end of the social ladder, ending hunger globally would be a disaster. If there were no hunger in the world, who would plow the fields? Who would harvest our vegetables? Who would work in the rendering plants? Who would clean our toilets? We would have to produce our own food and clean our own toilets. No wonder people at the high end are not rushing to solve the hunger problem. For many of us, hunger is not a problem, but an asset.
George Kent
George Kent is a professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Hawaii. He works on human rights, international relations, peace, development and environmental issues, with a special focus on nutrition and children. He has written several books, the latest is Freedom from Want: The Human Right to Adequate Food.
An addenda to the above by Robert Lee Hale, courtesy of @BevansAdvocate
It may seem like hunger is just the natural state of things, but it’s worthwhile to think about it in the knowledge that property is a system of rights to have people who try to use your stuff violently attacked by the state.
Why the next ten years are a vortex of chaos, even by the standards of futurology
Looming factors that make the next decade essentially unknowable:
1. Global warming.
2. AI Progress
3. The independent state legislator theory and the possible end of presidential elections as that term is usually understood
4. The war in Ukraine- the first substantial (with mass casualties on both sides) conventional war involving a nuclear power in a very long time.
5. The coming ability to deepfake a photograph or video of anything reliably, accessible to more or less everyone, in 2-3 years. (This image is AI-generated)
6. Changing attitudes towards political violence
7. Escalating violence
8. Monkeypox
9. Coronavirus is still around, still killing, and still mutating fast
10.Surging inflation
11. The green shoots of unionism
12. The sharpest divide we’ve ever seen on age in politics
13. Insane housing prices
14. Mental illness, especially, but not only among the youth
Love each other and all humanity. Organize your workplaces, communities, and anything else you can. Be humble but tough. Be as gentle as you can be, but no gentler. Try to persuade others of what you believe. Talk to people, listen to people, and make connections. The world has been static seeming since the fall of the Soviet Union, that may be about to break. The world has gotten better in the past, it can get better again. Log off, go do these things in the real world- a better world won’t be won on the internet alone. Talk, listen, organize.
You will never feel totally hopeless while you’re still fighting. You will never feel fully alone while you are fighting with others.
People need to fight, because if we win it will be through fighting, and if we lose, that we at least fought back will be the only good thing left.