The article is actually decently well written good-faith satire meant to address how poverty and hunger are inherent to capitalism as a system. The title was just too bold lol
So he’s not defending/promoting “world Hunger”, just arguing that it’s not a bug but a feature developed to have cheap labor, and that the people in power don’t want to end it
Sounds good at a glance, but when you look at the way he reaches that conclusion (that the threat of hunger is the only reason people are willing to work), and his solution (for a class of “intellectuals” like him to take charge) however, are just neoliberal swill…
Maybe they should build a city in the ocean where these intellectuals have full control. Maybe experiment with some cool drugs.
Would you kindly come join us?
Sounds positively Rapturous
Lmfao, I’d pay to watch them descend in to chaos as they insist on ranking each other by importance or whatever arbitrary measure of superiority they choose, because they simply can’t function otherwise, until they all end up dead from refusing to “lower” themselves to cooperate with “inferiors”.
There’s an event coming up in November you’re really going to enjoy.
If only… But I suspect whatever happens in November, it isn’t going to be pleasing at all (to me as an anarchist, anyway), especially because it isn’t themselves they consume, like the hypothetical “intellectuals” on the desert island would, but the rest of us, and those most vulnerable first.
I imagine the UN wouldn’t let an author publish something that calls for revolution though lol
Sure, but they shouldn’t be publishing this garbage either.
That would be the first time the UN actually did anything.
Usually most sane people go “Hunger is used to extract labour from people so rich people can make money, so we should change this state of affairs” not “this is good and how we should continue, in an evil usually the preserve of 19th century British Imperial officials.”
How does the saying go? When your only tool is a hammer, every problem is a nail?
The only tool he has is what capitalism gave him - the idea that people will only work if threatened with starvation, homelessness, or other punishment.
The idea that the benefit of a community and society at large, and by direct extension - our own, could motivate people, or to be more precise, the idea that society would benefit everyone not just a “select” few, doesn’t even come in to consideration.
his solution (for a class of “intellectuals” like him to take charge) however, are just neoliberal swill
This is such a common pitfall that even self-described communists fall into it as well. When you hear people talk about a “dictatorship of the proletariat,” what they’re describing tends to devolve into “a class of intellectuals needs to guide the working class to the correct decisions” when questioned about what a “dictatorship of the proletariat” actually entails. Often they’ll try to justify it by saying it’s only temporary, but we all know how that pans out (see the USSR). This is why I consider myself an anarchist rather than a communist and regularly critique marxism-leninism.
If i recall correctly, this is basically the entire premise to Animal Farm. Great book.
Isn’t this what Anarchists and other Anti-capitalists have been saying for well over 100 years? That despite having the ability for abundance, we use scarcity to extract labour from people to make rich fuckers money?
Lenin made the clearest case for it in Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism. Financial and Industrial Capital is exported directly to the sources of raw materials and lower cost of living, which is then hyper-exploited for super-profits domestically.
Even within Capitalist countries, starvation is kept dangerous because Capitalism requires a “reserve army of labor,” as Marx put it. It’s the idea of “if you weren’t doing this job, someone would kill for it” that suppresses wages.
This is such a clickbait, and it backfired.
The actual point conveyed in the article is that world hunger is beneficial for the rich as it allows to operate sweatshops and employ people under tyrannical conditions over low pay, which is not far from modern slavery. Which is super bad for everyone else, hence world hunger must be stopped and rich should get the taste of their own medicine.
But people did react to the headline, and possibly rightfully so.
Well i didnt read the article but it depends on the framing. Is he defending the capitalist status quo? If yes then he can go die of hunger imo. If the article points out that rich people benefit from hunger and that this is in fact bad, then thats cool.
He does directly state the latter.
Here’s an archived version of the article, courtesy to [email protected]:
What a self own with the title then. Should have changed it to “The beneficiaries of world hunger”
That’d be a banger title actually. Nice job! The concept of “benefitting from world hunger” is still bizarre enough for a doubletake, but doesn’t instantly piss off 99% of potential readers by headline alone lol.
Decided not to stir it, probably
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Yeah I’m pretty sure the title was a bit of a tragic, click-baity, foot-gun. Lol
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On duty
I’m not reading any argument against it.
(Because you aren’t hungry enough to debate it)
hunger is “fundamental to the working of the world’s economy”
I mean, he’s probably right, but that means we should work to change the system, not throw more orphans into the crushing machine
But the machine needs those orphans to keep going! Why would we want to deprive the system of what it needs? Won’t anybody think of the shareholders!?!
Which is actually said in the original article
there’s no “but” – this is exactly the point the author is making.
Won’t anybody think of the employees in the orphan crushing industry?
Before you have an opinion on it, just read the article, it’s just one page. https://www2.hawaii.edu/~kent/BenefitsofWorldHunger.pdf
The UN really shot themselves in the foot by deleting it, because the title only looks bad if you don’t actually read the rest of the text, which they now made more difficult.
they probably would’ve just added [SATIRE] to the title
A modest proposal for the global south
I edited my post 👍
No, the text is pretty fucked, too
FEE is an American Libertarian think tank.
Let that help you figure out what’s actually happening here.
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Well, he’s not wrong about hunger being an intended part of capitalism so workers are coerced into working for even less pay.
Calling it a “benefit” is very clickbaity though.
I mean some people are benefiting from it
The article is NOT satire – it’s provocative. The author argues that world hunger benefits the rich. Capiche?
I hope the UN restores the article.
Interview with author: https://fee.org/articles/un-deletes-article-titled-the-benefits-of-world-hunger-was-it-real-or-satire/
Yo I see this shit posted all the time. The article was written in 2008 for the UNs magazine and meant to be satire. It has since been removed by the UN for being ambiguous.
https://communist.red/the-benefits-of-world-hunger-un-blurs-the-line-between-satire-and-reality/
things that were obvious satire in 2008 are ambiguous now i love 2020s capitalism
There are absolutely politicians who would say this shit unironically
Yeah I posted this and went to bed without ever looking for the article. Made an edit that should federate soon enough acknowledging this
“No one works harder than hungry people”
While this is probably true, the problem is that their reward for this hard work in no way comes close to fixing their hunger problem.
Meanwhile the assholes in control of the economy and responsible for their hunger problem are taking all the rewards and hoarding it for no better reasons than to compare with other assholes.
To quote the article in question (highlight is my own):
“[H]ow 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.”
So is the title “the benefit of world hunger” more of a cynical title, then? Or is it actually making an argument in favor of world hunger for the benefit of our economy?
Both. It’s satire.
The “benefit” of world hunger is that it keeps people locked in their place and entrenches the status quo. This is actually true, and the author believes it, but he doesn’t like it.
Many people benefit from world hunger though, and every time you hear that poverty is a hard problem to solve you should ask yourself, how much of that is actual problems and how much is the status quo resisting change?
It’s an ironic title. Like saying “A benefit of loosing your legs is that you don’t need to buy shoes anymore. I mean I can’t get down the stairs to leave my apartment, but at least I never have to shop for shoes again!”.
The benefit is real, but it’s also clearly not in proportion to the drawbacks presented, so focusing on the benefit is a joke.
No one works harder than people whose lives are threatened [for example, by starvation] and they are working to not die.
The logical conclusion of this is that we should bring back slavery and extermination camps because that’s how you maximize the efficiency from of humans. /s (obviously)
Contending that it was what, assholes?
OP really should have just linked the article:
Y’all should actually read the article because it seems like it’s saying something completely different from what OP is trying to make it sound like. Basically, if I understood correctly, Kent was being critical of the idea that market-led solutions (i.e. capitalism fixes hunger) are better than community-driven solutions. He was also saying that hunger is part of capitalism, and you’ll never get rid of hunger while capitalism exists, because capitalism needs to withhold resources to force people to work.
This paragraph seems to sum up the article pretty well:
In Kent’s view, one gathers, global hunger is not a complex problem that is being addressed by free market capitalism; it’s a moral one that requires empowering intellectuals like Kent to solve it.
And to be clear you mean the original UN article, not the article from the libertarian think tank “Foundation for Economic Education” (“FEE”)
And the UN article link (archive) is in the comments
I couldn’t find the original UN article which is why I was referencing the FEE one. Also, while I quoted the bit about “empowered intellectuals” I assumed that was pro-capitalist cynicism towards education and community due to the heavily pro-capitalist slant in the rest of the FEE article. I kinda figured everyone else picked up on that too.
Thanks for the link! I’ll have to read the original in a bit.
the original UN article
Someone linked it bellow: https://archive.is/MObDZ
The FEE article is garbage, but the original is like a broken clock, it makes a couple of valid points, but it doesn’t strike me as being written by an anti capitalist, but by someone who wants to reform capitalism.
The article:
Thanks!
He calls it “not satire” but “provocative”. So he doesn’t mean it, but says it to provoke a reaction… Like satire.
It sounds like he just doesn’t find it funny, which is why he doesn’t want to call it satire.
It doesn’t have to be funny haha to be satire. Just like dramatic irony doesn’t have to be a knee slapper.
This just feels like either
A. He doesn’t fully get what satire is and assumes it has to be lighthearted or
B. He’s using “provocative” to basically mean “clickbait, but I’m too pretentious to call it that”
Yeh it’s pretty clearly not sincere in voice. Seems like by saying ‘not satire’ they’re trying to avoid people thinking they mean the content of what the article describes isn’t sincerely true, but given how it’s written, it’s hard to conclude the author cheering on from the sidelines. Te nonchalance and unaffected language when discussing a travesty seems pretty clearly to be a device used for effect which frankly is pretty close to what gets called satire.
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In a sense he is right, since more people without work means more people you can employ in a new business, it’s just that this makes the case that our economy is organized in a bad way rather than that poverty is good.
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@sharkfucker420 It’s a good thing “A Modest Proposal”[1] wasn’t titled “The Benefits of Cannibalism” because I guess people would have taken that at face value as well.
I need a physical copy of that
Even if this article was some sort of thought experiment, what the fuck value does it have? Even if the outcome was very much “I’m against this,” I’m not sure what the point is, unless it does a good job of explaining what kind of fucked up things this has lead to in society (like sweat shops and modern day slavery). Even then, this kind of nonsense serves wealthy scum.
Edit: the article is very much satire. Thanks for the added context and commentary!
It’s satire. And it’s apparently doing its job swimmingly because people are on here talking about it.
Yeah, started reading the original article and I totally get the tone now. Definitely worked well on me!
I think about this all the time.
All the “just a prank” folks.
All the “I’m just asking questions” folks.
The “It’s just a thought experiment” folks.
“a modest proposal” was another banger on a similar topic
I’ve seen it firsthand from people before and I’m just like… why? Why do you think this way? It’s just cowardice at the end of the day. They’ll say those things because it’s an easy escape from being called out for having fucked views that allow fascism and corporate interests to flourish.
“I’m just asking questions” is so fucking annoying. You and I both know you’re not and you’re trying to frame this like you’re not the sociopath in this situation. It’s so disingenuous.
It does explain those things! I quote:
“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.”
The title is clearly thinly veiled satire and a pointed reminder that our current wealth is founded on the suffering of the poor.
Just read the article, it’s one page. https://www2.hawaii.edu/~kent/BenefitsofWorldHunger.pdf
But I’m sure George Kent, author of “Freedom from Want: The Human Right to Adequate Food” is actually a shill for wealthy scum.
I appreciate the added context as I hadn’t had a chance to read the actual article yet. It could use a better title though. In the context of being on a a UN website, the satire gets lost completely.
I honestly kind of like the title and the angle of being brutally honest about the fact that the author (like most who are well off) actually benefit a lot from world hunger. That’s an important point, not because we should support world hunger, but because if we are to tackle it we must be willing to lower our standard of living.
Started reading the article and I totally get the tone now.
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