Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.3 4.3bsd-beta 6/6/85; site ucbvax.ARPA Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!ucbvax!mcgeer From: mcgeer@ucbvax.ARPA (Rick McGeer) Newsgroups: net.politics.theory Subject: Re: Re: (micromotives & macrobehavior) Message-ID: <10444@ucbvax.ARPA> Date: Sat, 21-Sep-85 20:24:59 EDT Article-I.D.: ucbvax.10444 Posted: Sat Sep 21 20:24:59 1985 Date-Received: Sun, 22-Sep-85 23:57:04 EDT References: <3476@topaz.UUCP> <28200078@inmet.UUCP> <755@cybvax0.UUCP> <10414@ucbvax.ARPA> <765@cybvax0.UUCP> Reply-To: mcgeer@ucbvax.UUCP (Rick McGeer) Organization: University of California at Berkeley Lines: 41 In article <765@cybvax0.UUCP> mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz) writes: >In article <10414@ucbvax.ARPA> mcgeer@ucbvax.UUCP (Rick McGeer) writes: >> So I'll ask again: do you have any evidence of the poor >> being outbid by the rich for food, so that the rich can feed it to the hogs? >> The *only* case of starvation in the face of food surplus that I know of was >> the starvation of the Kulaks by Stalin in the 30's. In fact, the only cases >> of famine in this century have been in Marxist or Socialist nations, as far as >> I know. Do you know of any cases of famine in capitalist nations? > >The US has been feeding corn to cattle and hogs for centuries now. Why is it >then that there has been hunger in America in the face of that surplus? > >If the market had no friction or hysteresis (ie. no costs of making a sale, >perfect information about availibility, no transportation costs, all units >of commodities and labor infinitely divisible, no capital costs, etc.) then >perhaps nobody would be hungry or starving. Not even libertarianism could >give all that. These factors all allow the rich to outbid the poor for >foodstuffs, even in America. Information cost is part of the cost of the good. > >For example, try to buy and eat a pound of feed corn. It is extremely cheap >by the bushel, if you buy in large quantities, but if you try to buy even >in a food cooperative, you'll be paying several times as much. Then you have >to be able to cook it, a capital cost. If I want to feed that same grain to >hogs, and buy tons at a time, I can afford to bid more than the food coop >because I will have smaller transportation and distribution costs per pound. >The only limit to what I can bid is based on how profitable pork is. Ever eaten cattle corn? You really don't want too... Mike, if there is widespread hunger in America, I'll concede your case and give you better evidence: my cats eat well, and my parent's dogs (in Canada) are bloated....but I don't think that there is. Meese two years ago called the hunger problem "largely anecdotal", and there was an outcry, and a study -- but I haven't seen numbers. What percentage of Americans go hungry, and of those, how many go hungry because of lack of resources and how many because they simply on't eat well, even though they have the means to do so? Rick.