The only people who would have to make serious sacrifices are the ultra-rich? That's hilarious. You don't remember last decade's hip musical Live8-equivalent, the Willie Nelson, Neil Young farm-aid concerts?
Do you have any idea how many poor countries whose GDP is 95% agrarian would spiral into the toilet if grain was given away? Overproducing grain would save thousands and decimate millions. This is exactly why IMF loans to third world countries are contingent on their governments moving away from agricultural exports and towards industrialization. It's also why well-meaning countries (particularly the US) take upon themselves a huge financial hit deliberately by paying their own farmers not to produce certain crops just to help sustain the fledgling economies of poorer nations whose entire sustenance is dependent on stable agricultural prices.
In fact, the US even spends money destroying their own crops when over-production threatens to destabilize world prices, not so much for themselves, but because the economies of third world countries suffer the most when 95% of their export values tank. Look at it this way. The ideological content but poor understanding of global economics in your post suggests to me that you are someone who sells beads on the street. What would happen to you and all the other bead-sellers if suddenly nicer, better beads all flooded onto the market, and all for free? If you wouldn't want that to happen to yourself, why would you wish it on the entire populations of those countries who produce and export only agricultural products? Why would you happily, let's say, feed the Sudan for free and in the process, starve Kenya? Why would you feed the perpetually-engaged-in-civil-war peoples of Nigeria by destroying the barely-functional economy of Zimbabwe?
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dancing_serpent
(no subject)
Date: 2005-07-14 03:45 am (UTC)Do you have any idea how many poor countries whose GDP is 95% agrarian would spiral into the toilet if grain was given away? Overproducing grain would save thousands and decimate millions. This is exactly why IMF loans to third world countries are contingent on their governments moving away from agricultural exports and towards industrialization. It's also why well-meaning countries (particularly the US) take upon themselves a huge financial hit deliberately by paying their own farmers not to produce certain crops just to help sustain the fledgling economies of poorer nations whose entire sustenance is dependent on stable agricultural prices.
In fact, the US even spends money destroying their own crops when over-production threatens to destabilize world prices, not so much for themselves, but because the economies of third world countries suffer the most when 95% of their export values tank. Look at it this way. The ideological content but poor understanding of global economics in your post suggests to me that you are someone who sells beads on the street. What would happen to you and all the other bead-sellers if suddenly nicer, better beads all flooded onto the market, and all for free? If you wouldn't want that to happen to yourself, why would you wish it on the entire populations of those countries who produce and export only agricultural products? Why would you happily, let's say, feed the Sudan for free and in the process, starve Kenya? Why would you feed the perpetually-engaged-in-civil-war peoples of Nigeria by destroying the barely-functional economy of Zimbabwe?