• kate
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      34 hours ago

      covid -> fucked up supply chain -> financial instability -> panic in govt

    • @derekabutton
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      121 hours ago

      I am not an expert in any relevant field, but I have thoughts. I’d love to be told I was wrong by experts.

      1. Are governments actually in more disarray today than in previous periods of history? Or do they just seem that way due to the media sensationalizing the bad? Do we just not hear about wins around the world due to their inability to generate clicks and therefore conclude that the world is only horrible? I posit that we tend to overestimate the bad when compared to the good.

      2. Again, not an expert, but have the richest had this much influence across history? We have never been so reliant on the goods owned by huge corporations? We (humanity) grow so much food, but let people go hungry to keep the cost of food high, because the bean counters determined it more profitable. In a post-scarcity society, we shouldn’t need to work 3 jobs or skip insulin. Scarcity is artificially baked into the economy so that the rich can exploit our labor. Late stage capitalism, basically.

      • @[email protected]
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        20 hours ago

        Some of both, I think. Plus brain damage from lead poisoning and similar factors (at least in the US, I don’t know about leaded gas and paint in the rest of the world). I don’t know if it’s been studied yet, but I suspect that nonfatal COVID infections also had an impact on brain function. And the whole social aspect of the pandemic surely had an effect on behavior, but then that ties back to your point about media.

        But food scarcity isn’t exactly a manufactured problem. We do have a surplus of food in places like the US, and a deficit in places like impoverished Africa, but to connect the two is a logistics problem. You can’t get the food there before it spoils. What should really happen is that local farmers should be empowered to grow sustainable crops locally… but in most of those places, the bulk of money and resources are stolen by corrupt local governments.

        • @derekabutton
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          216 hours ago

          Ancient people used lead dishware for millenia. I honestly don’t think any modern lead poisoning is new or worse than it has been in most of the world. Id buy it if lead poisoning for the common person was more likely now, but there is no chance it is more severe with all of the regulations most of the world has today.

          Yes, perhaps global food scarcity is less manufactured than I made it out to be. I agree with that solution, too. But the fact that people in the “richest” country in the world are dying of hunger is downright despicable, and there is no doubt that it is manufactured here in the US. We have the food and the owning class lets it rot so they can have cheaper servants.

          From what I’ve come to understand, local governments are your friend. It’s the corporations running a train on them that messes up money allocation! Not to mention investors coming in and buying up swathes of land and using all of the public water for their alfalfa in the desert