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Comment by _8ca6 | Hacker News Reader

On the contrary, the image itself is uncomfortably well suited to make a point. This comment is a classic example of defending an obvious absurdity of capitalism by appealing to the overall system.

It's true that individuals are all acting rationally, and that imposing limits on exports would not be a panacea. However, at the most basic level, it is monstrous that food exports are happening in the context of local starvation. The rationality of the outcome within capitalism shouldn't blind us to the absurdity of the outcome itself.

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There's really nothing absurd about this. A country like Ethiopia consists of independent actors. Someone might sell food abroad to Europe, someone in Europe might decide to send food to Ethiopia.

There's really no way to stop this other than to outlaw all exports of food while starting to centrally distribute food in Ethiopia. This is neither productive nor would it reduce the amount of starving people in Ethiopia. In fact, it would increase the amount of poverty.

There are certainly poor people who have trouble affording basic goods in California. Still the solution is not to stop all exports of goods from California to Washington and vice versa. This would just make everybody worse off.

Any country that pretend to develop and keep some independence need to prioritize a minimum of food production. That's a strategic need. Europe is a good example of that, where food production is strongly protected. I bet is the same in the States.

The point of the original post is that those "independent actors" are not "independents", not from Ethiopia.

> Any country that pretend to develop and keep some independence need to prioritize a minimum of food production. That's a strategic need.

To turn this back to software, I am strongly reminded of Joel Spolsky’s discussion of when and what to outsource:

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/10/14/in-defense-of-not-...

“If it’s a core business function — do it yourself, no matter what.”

- "independent actors are acting rationally in this situation."

- "the only alternative is this particular strawman policy, which would make things worse"

- "there's nothing absurd about people starving due to preventable causes"

A thing could be both morally/ethically absurd and, when viewed through the tinted lens of capitalism, totally logical, rational, and expected.

> It's true that individuals are all acting rationally

At least one party in the food market isn't acting rationally. The situation where food is produced in Ethiopia for consumption in Europe and food is produced in Europe for consumption in Ethiopia could equivalently be solved by keeping the food in its country of origin and everyone saves on transport costs.

But maybe the Ethiopian "food" was just something like coffee beans which can't really feed a population, in which case there also isn't any problem with exporting them.

That is a simplistic argument that ignores trade. Sure Ethiopia could grow it own food: cut down the coffee trees (bush?) and plant something else. What you are missing is that those foods that would replace the coffee tree don't grow as well in Ethiopia as coffee does.

Both Ethiopia and Europe would be worse off for your plan. Ethiopia because instead of the profit from coffee they subsistence farm something that doesn't grow as well. Europe because they don't have coffee and they get even more of the crops they already grow too much of.

Now some have pointed out that the profit from Ethiopian coffee might not got to Ethiopia. That might be true (I don't know), but even if so, Ethiopia retains more money than if they quit exporting coffee and the profits.

This is all well and good as long as Ethiopia can buy more food then it could have grown in those coffee fields.

Unfortunately, it also puts it at the mercy of forex rates, collapse of their monoculture, food shortages in other parts of the world causing rising food prices, any disruptions in foreign trade... Any of those things go south, and now you have millions of starving people. Sitting on a pile of coffee beans.

Why do you think the US government pushes billions of dollars into agriculture subsidies? Wouldn't it be so much cheaper if it just imported all of its food from abroad - where farmers get paid ~$1/day, instead of $6/hour.

There's a simple reason - it's because it doesn't want food riots, caused by some factor outside of their control. Nothing brings about regime change faster then the price of bread. [1] No well-ran country wants to be dependent on food, or oil imports.

Ironically, these same agriculture subsidies are what cripples agriculture in other nations - they can't always compete with Uncle Sam's subsidies.

[1] Just ask Mubarak. Or the Romanovs.

> everyone saves on transport costs

These things became more common in the modern world because transport costs fell so low that it doesn't matter in most cases.

> it is monstrous that food exports are happening in the context of local starvation

This is only absurd if you consider the nation-state to be the fundamental unit of mutual aid.

If you consider a different division of population - the corporation, or the city-state, or the tribe, or the individual, for example - it makes perfect sense. Even before "monstrous" capitalism, you'd get plenty of situations where one tribe would actively pillage the farms of a neighboring tribe - food "exports" and local starvation.

You might argue that this is monstrous as well, and I'd even agree with you, but that's an argument against being shitty to your fellow human beings, and not specifically against capitalism. Capitalism is just yet another definition of "tribe", where the corporation that employs you is the tribe that you owe allegiance to, damn all the other tribes.

Yes, before capitalism, which is bad, things were even worse. I can critique both capitalism and what came before it. And it's not just an argument"against being shitty."

Capitalism really doesn't have anything to do with tribalism though. Workers don't have any allegiance whatsoever to their employer beyond that dictated by the imperative of not starving to death. The structural constraint under critique is the one where capital seeks to maximize profits regardless of the human cost. So, when a grower exports food for money instead of giving it to starving people for free, that's what I'm talking about.

It seems to me that the problem is that open markets (capitalism is too general for this I think) is sold like the perfect panacea that will solve all the problems, even if the evidence is against it.

The path followed for development by the developed nations have nothing to do with the path they (we?) recommend to underdeveloped nations.

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