Food
It is widely believed that food comes from supermarkets. Just yesterday I was feeling a little hungry, so i went down to twenty four hours to restock my cupboard. Particularly enlightened people have suggested that food actually comes from farms and factories, which seems plausible enough to most people who take the time to listen.
Both ideas seem wrong. They are however a very telling remark about the state of our world and the way in which most people have been lead to view it. Both the factory and the farm are what is known as workplaces. Some people go there for the best part of the day, do some work, get paid for having had their time thieved, and then go home and cook dinner with some food they bought from the supermarket. Most of the rest of people do the same thing, but instead of farms and factories, it is shops, offices, and etc. Food then becomes a a commodity, something that you have to earn by the good honest toil of your labour.
Instead, it might be thought that food should not be a privilege, or something that must be earned, but one of those basic human rights that should be secured for everyone insofar as it can be secured for anyone. That it should not be sold, or bought, it should be free. What a wonderful world we might have then.
5 comments:
Ok, allow me, for the sake of discussion, to run with this idea for a while and see what happens. Some of my ideas will be bloody ridiculous but that's half the fun.
Let's try and imagine a world - or for starters, a contemporary capitalist New Zealand - in which this transition is actually made.
If food is no longer to be a salable commodity, there seem to be two options: either it becomes common national property and is dolled out in equal portions by the government (i.e. something like communism) or it actually becomes a free-for-all - you get what you can grow or find. I'm assuming, from previous discussions with you, that you're talking about the latter. Correct me if I'm wrong.
Presumably, in that case, there would be a risk that sneaky people would take more than they need and then sell it to those that couldn't find any (i.e. people in cities). Could this be legislated against? Could it become actually *illegal* to deny food to a hungry person if you have more than you need in your own stores? I shall ponder some more about whether any alternative measures than legislation could be taken that would actually work.
In any case, let's suppose that the government is trying to phase in this new system. People who currently work in food industries are obviously going to get the shaft, having to give away their goods at no charge, people just wandering in and taking stuff out of the fields and all, so there would have to be some kind of compensation so they could still afford houses and clothing and things.
Perhaps food related industries could be de-commercialised in stages - start with a few the first year (say, fruit and vegetable growers and wholesalers) and give them some kind of pension that's enough to dissuade them from moving out of the industry. Those that enjoy the work or believe in the concept might wish to continue on these terms. The plan would be that over the next few years, the selling of manufactured foods, meat and the rest would be phased out in the same way, and supermarkets etc. would be closed down.
To start with the fruit and vegetable growers: there would, presumably, be a huge dropout from the industry, and these products would become scarce. Retailers and chefs and those who buy from wholesalers would make a mint initially, and be able to massively drop their prices, because they would not be paying for these ingredients. The cost of living would decrease slightly. Minimum wage might go down, and wages generally, and the dole. There would quite probably be an increase in home gardening to fill the gaps.
What about the spare land? Dairy farmers etc wouldn't be interested in it because they would all know that their industry would be next on the list. Land would be being sold up all over the place; there would be no point, from a capitalist perspective, in keeping large amounts of land for farming anymore - unless one were of an altruistic bent and prepared to keep shipping out food around the country for people to come and take. Maybe vacated land could be bought by the government and given to anyone interested in working it. Maybe subdivided into mini farms for households or co-operative communities. (Hehe, maybe permaculture land.)
So what's going to be going on in the average urbanite's mind at this point? It seems clear that food is going to be harder to come by in the cities, and no one there knows how to produce it. Fancy manufactured goods are likely to disappear altogether. The householder who is trying to plan for the future is preparing to have to have to re-educate himself in the lost arts of gardening and preparing food from scratch. This may mean needing to reduce working hours within families to make time for these activities. Which would be ok if living expenses were reduced (though not if wage rates had also decreased - but such things reach their natural level in capitalist societies, do they not?) With some foresight on the government's part, these skills will have been added to the school curriculum so kids will grow up familiar with the work and able to help out.
Or perhaps there's some way the efficiency of the current system could continue (i.e. mass production) despite the lack of capitalist incentive...
Hm, I'm running out of steam, and anyway that's enough waffling for one comment I think. If someone else could pick up the ball from here (either to expand upon or to critique my thoughts) 'twould be well.
Nice thoughts kat (I'll respond to them soon). I thought I would mention something while I remembered. When food is made readily available to everyone in the nation, the birthrate drops, or so I read. The two examples are Cuba and China, both communist nations when this "experiment" was done. And I know what you're thinking about china, but their birthrate was lower before they made a law about it.
Thus if we want to stop filling up the planet so quickly, this free food thing might help a bit. Just a thought.
(Hi Reuben, Hope you don't mind me butting in with a few thoughts...)
I'm not convinced that a right to food implies that "it should not be sold, or bought, it should be free". According to Pogge's institutional conception of rights: "By postulating a human right to X, one is asserting that any society or other social system, insofar as this is reasonably possible, ought to be so (re)organized that all its members have secure access to X..."
But then that's perfectly consistent with a market-based system. We simply need to ensure that everyone has sufficient economic security (as would be guaranteed by an unconditional basic income), and it would follow that they are also secure in being able to procure food as needed.
(Like Katherine, I'm worried that the "free food" idea is simplistically utopian, and would have disastrous unintended consequences for the economy. But perhaps your next comment will address such concerns.)
P.S. what's the causal mechanism that's supposed to link free food to lower birthrates? It doesn't sound particularly plausible. But perhaps there are other aspects of communist systems that would deter people from wanting to bring a child into such a world.
WOW YOU ARE THE FIRST PERSON IN THE WORLD TO COME UP WITH SUCH A NOBLE IDEA YOU SHOULD BE PM GOD BLESS YOU
responses in reverse order.
Rebel: THAT IS NICE, BUT I NEVER SAID I WAS THE FIRST TO HAVE THIS IDEA. YOU MIGHT LIKE TO CHECK OUT FOOD NOT BOMBS.
Ali: Your discussion about liberation leads me onto another idea that I've been considering recently. If political freedom is understood as being the freedom to choose how to live, then it seems that, insofar as our economic system binds us into playing along by placing food under lock and key, we do not truly have meaningful political freedom. Our freedom amounts to something like "you are free to choose which form of wage slavery you want."
Rik: I rather like the understanding of rights Pogge's suggests, it seems plausible enough. The socialistish idea about the government insuring everyone has enough food to be getting on with, via the UBI in your example, seems like a possible first step towards making an improvement. Regarding consequences for the economy, I suspect that the implications of such a fundamental change to the way our lives are organised would be fairly significant. Of course I personally think human flourishing is far more important than a healthy economy, so as long as people are better off, I'm not too concerned that the economy is fairly likely to take a hit.
Regarding the p.s., it seems that the casual explanation is quite the opposite. As the standard of living improves and economic security is provided (free healthcare, food rations, free education, etc) the birthrate drops because the opposite of each of those things seem to be a cause of high birthrates. I guess in particular, if having more children doesn't increase your chance not to be hungry, then you have one less reason to have them.
Kat: If I might pick on one aspect of your story about a possible course of change. You paint it as being very much from the top down. At each point it seems as if it will succeed or fail depending on the foresight and wisdom of our government. If a change like this were to ever take place, I think it is far more likely to emerge out of grass roots movements. At best the role of the governments will be to allow it to happen (something I can foresee not happening because of the vested interests of both itself and its sponsors). Oh well... When everyone wants free food, they'll have it.
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