In our civilized societies we are rich. Why then are the many poor? Why this painful drudgery for the masses? Why, even to the best-paid workman, this uncertainty for the morrow, in the midst of all the wealth inherited from the past, and in spite of the powerful means of production, which could ensure comfort to all, in return for a few hours daily toil? - Peter Kropotkin (1892)
I never said we should stop working. Read the title.
We have the machines to produce enough food, water, clothing, housing, etc. for everyone. And yet we live under an economic system in which millions around the globe do not have access to these goods. People are incentivized to throw food away or keep houses empty when the alternative is unprofitable. But we no longer need to organize society such that that the products of our labor is based around price and profit.
WE DON’T have the machines! John Deere and Case and AGCO and Claas have the machines. What open source non-profit modern machines are there out there you’re talking about? Because I’d love to buy one.
Also, no one is incentivized to throw food away, people are lazy AF and rich westerners somehow don’t seem to mind waste. Don’t attribute to malevolence what incompetence will explain.
I used to live in a place that was at the bottom of the UNDP development scale. When I would go “out” to eat basic rice and sauce, I would usually have 2-6 kids, like actual children, standing next to me waiting to eat the scraps. And they would fight over a few handfulls of rice because they were starving and that was the system of alms-giving. And while I feel guilt now for every bite of food I waste, and I try not to, I’m not about to expend 200 times the energy to DHL cooked rice to West Africa. You have to balance resource use at a local level with the resources needed to move food other places. Even shipping all that soy that China didn’t buy from the US to anywhere in need incurs huge costs, plus significant CO2 emissions.
You are literally describing capitalism, and why it’s fucking us all over. You are agreeing with the original quote.
The people who build those machines have zero ownership or control of them. Yeah, no shit that’s the problem.
How does one expect to build a tractor without materials? Like a mine to get iron ore from the ground, foundries to smelt it, machine shops to craft parts, rubber or oil processing to make tires, etc.? Supply chains under a command economy have been much worse slavery just as much as you would say they are when people are paid for their labor.
Let’s look at examples. Albania’s socialism was incredibly closed off, and the Hoxha regime a full on analogue surveillance state because they didn’t trust their neighbors because they weren’t socialist enough. They bought tractors from other socialist countries for decades (socialists doing capitalism with the government, so it doesn’t count), until in 1978 they finally just made a factory to copy the Chinese tractors they were buying because of their paranoia about other socialist countries trying to infiltrate them.
Of course I’m describing capitalism, because I’m telling you that you genuinely can’t expect some noble socialist utopia to actually get you tractors without conscripting people who don’t want to build tractors into receiving rations - or money, take your pick - to work in a factory.
So supply chain economics don’t work without capitalism? Is that the claim?
Recall how much food was thrown away during COVID. Or how the crops were left to rot in the fields during the Dust Bowl (1930s). It costs money to harvest and distribute food so the incentive is to dump it and try again hoping for a better market in the future.
Who said anything about buying their machines? There is another option.
I don’t know which specific country you lived in, and yet I would bet my life savings that the poverty of this country is a result of the (past) colonialism and (present-day) exploitative agreements from Europe/U.S. This colonialism made the ruling class wealthier while extracting value from the land, labor, and resources of developing nations.
The Sahel states are exploring solutions that seem to show progress.
While every country in Africa has varied levels of impact from colonialism, there are places where the local economy is relatively untouched when you push down to the local level.
I lived on the border between 1 country that was poor with nearly no resources to be extracted, and 8km from another country with resources where the poverty deepened as you left the coastal area. And while in the 80’s mining money paid for a few roads, that’s about as far as it got. The village used the currency of the other country because they would walk 10km to the market there once a week because the markets where they lived didn’t have anything much worth buying because it was all the same stuff they grew at home. One guy spoke about 6 words of English, no one spoke French, which is supposed to be the colonial language. So the local economy for most villages really were a perfect example of a post-apocalyptic world where the apocalypse was living in a place that barely supports humans anyway. Short of radios, batteries, lanterns, one bicycle, and canned tomato paste, life went on exactly like it did 100 years ago or 500 years ago, long before any Europeans every actually breezed through the area, which is a history I’m deeply familiar with.
To further explain the isolation, everyone grows seeds from the previous year, so there’s no nefarious Monsanto to blame. It’s the same millet and sorghum varieties they’ve grown since as far back as anyone can remember. There is no export, no international trade of their crops. During harvest season people who try and get some diversity in their diet and buy things like cooking oil sell some of their harvest at the worst time of the year, when everyone else is also trying to get cash. The grain they produce doesn’t go farther than 15km from the field where it’s grown, maybe 25km into a nearby town if someone comes out to buy it. Which is the modern version of caravans from the oasis towns of the Sahara coming down to buy it 150+ years ago. Cars using roads that follow caravan paths are one of those new developments, which actually reduce labor and resource needs to get food to people.
Your life savings will help educate young women in this country, so feel free to send that over when you get a chance. When you educate a woman, you educate a community.
Also, yes, please tell me what this “other option” is regarding mechanized farming. Man, if you tell me it’s animal traction, I swear…