Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site gargoyle.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ihnp4!gargoyle!carnes
From: carnes@gargoyle.UUCP (Richard Carnes)
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Let them eat the Gross National Product
Message-ID: <192@gargoyle.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 17-Sep-85 22:12:09 EDT
Article-I.D.: gargoyle.192
Posted: Tue Sep 17 22:12:09 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 19-Sep-85 05:31:35 EDT
References: <3476@topaz.UUCP> <28200078@inmet.UUCP> <1790@psuvax1.UUCP>
Reply-To: carnes@gargoyle.UUCP (Richard Carnes)
Organization: U. of Chicago, Computer Science Dept.
Lines: 73

[Jan Wasilewsky]

>>  In the USA, one can eat like a
>> king off a garbage dump. One hour's work at McDonald's could feed
>> a 3d world citizen for a week. 

True, so why are there many Americans who don't get enough to eat?
Because they're too proud to eat out of garbage cans, right?

>>  To prove his point, Mike would have to name a rich nation whose
>> poor are *poor*  not by THAT country's standards, but *by poor
>> country standards*. There's no such place. 

True, the poor of Chicago are much better off than the poor of
Calcutta.  Somehow this isn't much consolation to the poor in
Chicago. 

[JoSH]

>Distribution of nothing, no matter how even, feeds no one.

JoSH conveniently overlooks the case of China, where a billion or so
people manage to stay decently fed on nothing, and where people
formerly set their clocks by the famines.

[Piotr Berman]

>19th century gives the example of Potato famine in Ireland.  The
>peasants of western Ireland were poor by any standard, in spite
>of the relative wealth of Great Britain as a whole.

It's even worse than that.  Ireland itself was well stocked with food
throughout the years of the famine.  The basic reason the peasants
starved was that they lacked any income with which to buy food.  The
historian Cecil Woodham-Smith attributes the famine mainly to the
British government's blind and dogmatic adherence to what we would
today call libertarian ideas but which at that time were called
free-trade, laissez-faire, and Manchesterian ideas.  It will be
recalled that this was the time (late 1840's) when the Corn Laws were
repealed.  The result of this British blindness and callousness was
the most horrendous human catastrophe of the 19th century, in which
between one and two million Irish, out of about eight million, died
horribly by starvation or epidemic or both, and millions more
emigrated to America, an act of desperation for an Irish peasant.

One tends to assume that some great natural disaster must have caused
such a calamity.  In fact, all that happened was the failure of a
*single* crop, the potato, during several years, in Ireland, a
fertile land capable of growing many different crops.  

This is *typical* of famines.  Through the drought years of the
1970's, the Sahelian countries of Africa, with the possible exception
of Mauritania, produced enough food to feed their populations.  (See
R.W. Franke and B.H. Chasin, *The Political Economy of Ecological
Destruction:  Development in the West African Sahel*.)  Bangladesh,
rich in fertile soil, water, manpower, and natural gas, is a
potential breadbasket, yet hunger has been widespread in that
country, especially among peasants who grow rice for a living.  In
the Caribbean, much of the best land is used to grow coffee, bananas,
cocoa, and sugar cane for export, while many people are malnourished.
I have mentioned Venezuela, a "rich" 3rd world country where at least
half the population doesn't get enough to eat.  A large grain
"surplus" exists in India which must be guarded by soldiers.  And in
the world as a whole, enough food is produced right now to keep
everyone well fed, including pets and draft animals.  

This is an example of how a more equal distribution is a positive-sum
game.  The rich do not have to give up their lives or even their
health to give life to those who are starving (and in many cases they
could *improve* their health by doing so).  You can't eat the per
capita GNP, you can only eat that portion of it that gets on your
table.  

Richard Carnes