Makes you wonder why we need money for food.
money is theft. the value of it is backed by violent theft
Because the current economic systems of the world don’t compensate food producers otherwise. Under capitalism, farmers still need money to buy things that aren’t food so they’re incentivised to sell their products for profit, like anything else.
Hell even the government makes you pay money for water, electricity, and other utilities, if ever there is something that should be free.
Why do we collectively agree to these playground rules?
Because the government has a monopoly on violence
Does it really? Why not us?
because the government will kill you
So we should kill the government in self defense.
They’re saying the government can kill you without consequences, you can kill them but you’ll face consequences
Money is great. Without money you’re back to carrying big sacks of grain around to trade for some horseshoes.
Except that’s not how things were done before money, that’s how things are done in the absence of money.
How were they done before money?
Could start with reading the wikipedia about this book and go from there, maybe check out the book and look up the archaeological and anthropological data yourself, but the gist is summarized there.
"Graeber lays out the historical development of the idea of debt, starting from the first recorded debt systems in the Sumer civilization around 3500 BCE. In this early form of borrowing and lending, farmers would often become so mired in debt that their children would be forced into debt peonage. Because of the social tension that came with this enslavement of large parts of the population, kings periodically canceled all debts. In ancient Israel, the resulting amnesty came to be known as the Law of Jubilee.
Graeber argues that debt and credit historically appeared before money, which itself appeared before barter. This is the opposite of the narrative given in standard economics texts dating back to Adam Smith. To support this, he cites numerous historical, ethnographic and archaeological studies. He also claims that the standard economics texts cite no evidence for suggesting that barter came before money, credit and debt, and he has seen no credible reports suggesting such.
The primary theme of the book is that excessive popular indebtedness has sometimes led to unrest, insurrection, and revolt. He argues that credit systems originally developed as means of account long before the advent of coinage, which appeared around 600 BCE. Credit can still be seen operating in non-monetary economies. Barter, on the other hand, seems primarily to have been used for limited exchanges between different societies that had infrequent contact and often were in a context of ritualized warfare.
Graeber suggests that economic life originally related to social currencies. These were closely related to routine non-market interactions within a community. This created an “everyday communism” based on mutual expectations and responsibilities among individuals. This type of economy is contrasted with exchange based on formal equality and reciprocity (but not necessarily leading to market relations) and hierarchy. The hierarchies in turn tended to institutionalize inequalities in customs and castes. "
This make sense. It is so easy and natural to get “indebted” to someone from your social circle. You start recording all of that + some trade in that circle, and voilà money
and voilà
moneycredit system.If you’re talking about money as a “quantitive measurement of debt” then that’s really just a credit system or form of social currency, and was created specifically for debt forgiveness and debt cancellation, with the strict purpose of not holding debt over other people through violence or slavery.
If you’re talking about money in terms of coin, it’s strict purpose is to pay armies, mercenaries, or bandits and to be used for colonial purposes of unfairly taxing conquered lands to pay back the costs of being conquered. “We could’ve killed you, but we didn’t, and it was rather expensive to conquer you so we expect compensation. Here’s 500 pieces of silver with some dudes head printed on it, you owe us 100 pieces of this silver every year, forever, or we’ll kill/starve/enslave you all. Join our market or die.” Thus posessing said silver becomes a mafia-style protection racket of debt pionage whereby communities are forced to adopt the currency or face the threat of violence.
Money as a social contract vs what money is today are two very different things.
Because farmers need goods and services that they can’t get without money, and because if they’re not compensated for that food they’ll just… not farm it except the amount necessary to feed themselves and their families. This also applies to shippers and everyone else who’s part of the farm to consumer supply chain so you end up having to compensate all those people and the way the current system (and most other systems) do that is money.
The UN made food a human right in 2021. Only USA and Israel objected. https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-213844/
We’re capable of making the channels to effectively end world hunger. One uncertainty of life would completely eliminated. But we don’t because there isn’t enough of a financial incentive to do so.
Green energy too. That shit pays for itself. Profits shouldn’t exist for basic needs.
They don’t make food to feed people - they make food to create profits
Scarcity is an artificial creation, used to force people in line and willing to accept lower wages.
Logistics is not an artificial creation however
Im so excited to pay $30 for a tomato when you move the source to be 5 miles outside the city limits.
Food scarcity is a logistics issue, production location is a result of labor availability. Would you accept $7 an hour to be a farmer in Seattle?
Been saying this for years. Economies are just a reflection of societal will.
If everyone went Vegan it would be a hell of a lot more than that, probably 5-10 more billion.
The primary cause of food scarcity and insecurity is the distribution of it. It’s extremely difficult to transport food to the target destination when it’s more than a couple hundred miles from the source. We’ve had to literally genetically modify our foods due to how complex it is to safely and quickly distribute food before it spoils.
I think that would be a problem that would be more easily solved if the goal was to feed people and not to create profits
Most nations manage agricultural outputs and goals directly with subsidies and quotas, at cost not profit.
This is about 1 lb per year of food per person … should be at least 1 lb per day.
It also ignores logistics.
…money is. an invented value to certain things and services…
Not a soul in this post has ever grown their own food.
“whY iSn’T iT FrEE!?”
I get all the inequities and distribution and capitalism issues, but maybe take a ride through a red state and see how pork rinds end up in your fatass pie hole.
I do grow my own food for the most part I buy a 20 kg bag of rice once in a while, and I buy meat from my local farm when I want to cook meat
I still think we should make sure everyone has enough food considering we create more food than everyone needs.
Do I think Farmers or food growers should suffer because of that? No. But that is why the government or whoever is in charge should subsidize it. If everyone has food we are already better off as a populace.
It’s insane to me that people think that others shouldn’t have food or water
Urbanites are often laughably detatched from where their food comes from.
Everybody is capitalist until they became poor
