Jesus actually compelled the rich to give their riches to the poor, sounds like a real bugger to me! I want to keep all my food and watch the hungry folks starve for entertainment! Back me up, bro.
Jesus actually compelled the rich to give their riches to the poor, sounds like a real bugger to me! I want to keep all my food and watch the hungry folks starve for entertainment! Back me up, bro.
Indeed He did. But he did not say to take from the rich, or beg Rome to do it. That is the distinction between society and politics. There is no righteousness in jealousy or hatred.
While one can certainly criticize the political concentration of wealth, as I often do, it is nonsense to denounce wealth as evidence of greed in and of itself. It is saving and investment that built the economy we have today, and allow people to be charitable on a level previously impossible. There is nothing inherently abusive in such actions, but you are blinded by your ideology, and in turn accuse people of selfishness and greed in order to create the illusion that you hold a moral high ground while advocating the very political plunder that creates systemic injustice. You think it can be reformed. It can't.
Let me ask you this, did Bill Gates earn his money? Oh wait, I already asked you that and you didn't have a coherent answer lmao.
It's almost like you live in a fantasy world.
http://www.foodaidfoundation.org/world-hunger-statistics.html
I did have an answer. You just didn't like it because it requires more than a simple yes/no answer in an economy polluted with corporate cronyism and regulatory capture.
Your hunger statistics are simple statements, and I'll assume for the sake of argument that they are accurate. However, the fact that problems exist is not evidence that your solutions are correct. If hunger concerns you, you should be promoting free markets and trade. It may sound mercenary to you, but people who have no food want food. People who can produce food want to sell it. Food production and transportation have costs and risks. Profit is the reward for serving needs, and offers an incentive to producers for bearing those costs and risks. It's a decentralized grassroots mechanism requiring no planners or programs. Governments actively intervene in food production and transportation when markets are eager to serve, and destroy the economies of these impoverished nations. We have known for decades that misguided charity stifles local economies and prevents the growth of regional economic self-sufficiency in agriculture.
Your solution seems to be the system that intentionally starved Ukranians by the millions. My solution is the system that is so productive despite political intervention and corporate manipulation that obesity is an epidemic in America.
It's almost like you live in a fantasy world.
So you think throwing out food from fast food places and supermarkets into dumpsters is only a thing because of "lack of free trade"?
Primarily, yes. Government regulations often explicitly prohibit the distribution of food that is deemed "waste." Do you think hunger is a thing simply because restaurants and grocery stores throw away food that doesn't sell? What fundamental economic system do you think makes this reliable food surplus possible in the first place?
Yeah, it's not as if grocery stores and restaurants are throwing out food in some conspiracy to starve the poor. They throw it out because any alternative is difficult or impossible because of federal, state and local regulations.
The federal government actually is less involved than the corporate government in these situations.
Corporate government is involved in the sense that they set the policies they do in order to avoid lawsuits and prosecution. State health laws are the biggest driving factors in setting those policies. The other thing that is sometimes an issue is the fact that food banks often won't accept such donations for a variety of reasons (logistics, not enough volume, etc.). Again, this isn't because of corporate greed or some sort of conspiracy against the poor. Assuming the law didn't make it difficult or impossible and there was a place to accept such donations, what would be the downside for the corporation? It would be good press and a tax write-off.
There are in fact federal (and in some cases state) laws that protect businesses from liability in the case of donations but these come with strings attached. Certain labeling and food treatment requirements that vary from state to state and may not be practical for a business to follow in the case of leftover food.
Having said that, there are many large corporate restaurants that donate vast amounts of food every year, including Pizza Hut, Starbucks, Panera, Olive Garden, LongHorn, Chipotle, The Cheesecake Factory, Kentucky Fried Chicken, and others. But even in these cases they are often doing this only in limited markets because of the legal and logistics issues already mentioned.
Having been inside managerial places, it's not because of "free trade" or "government". It's because the corporations force them to because they don't want "free-loaders" (homeless people) "taking advantage of them".
The federal government, on the other hand, could pass a law that demands food surplus be sent to those who need it, though.
Laws vary from state to state in the US and from country to country, but it's not like my argument is made up. The US is very litigious, and businesses can't afford the risk of lawsuits. They rely on byzantine laws as interpreted by many layers of bureaucrats and lawyers. They err on the side of not being destroyed by lawsuits.
The federal government can pass all manner of laws, but their focus is primarily on gaining and entrenching more power, not actually caring for people. And if they did pass such a law, I guarantee it would become an expensive burden, not a blessing, because governments have no measurement tool against which they can balance their opinions. They pay no penalty for being wrong. They always claim virtue regardless of the unintended consequences.
If this were 2016 or 2017, you'd be right. But we are in a world post-2018 where there are clearly signs (AOC, Ilhan Omar, Bernie Sanders' campaign) that your way of thinking isn't dominant anymore, and that's the first stepping stone to fixing the problems you and I discuss. You just need to stop living Online, and try going outside and talking to real people about their material needs.