The Benefits of World Hunger | Hacker News Reader

The Benefits of World Hunger

un.org

18 pointsluispa9 comments

The proported author of this does not have that article doesn't have that article his is CV. https://hawaii.academia.edu/GeorgeKent

There is an article written in 2009 - https://www.academia.edu/24893044/The_Humiliation_of_Hunger_...

My 0th guess theory is that someone maliciously replaced the 2009 article with the "benefits" one.

>Much of the hunger literature talks about how it is important to assure that people are well fed so that they can be more productive. That is nonsense. No one works harder than hungry people. Yes, people who are well nourished have greater capacity for productive physical activity, but well-nourished people are far less willing to do that work.

This feels like a weird take, especially for a UN article. I mean there may be some truth to that, but leave that to the philosophers. What does the UN want me to do with the information that hungry people work harder? How does this help them attain their goals?

The part about "hunger makes people willing to work, which is important for people who need cheap labor" also seems similarly strange. It's good for the people in need of labor sure, but they just gloss over the laborers. Surely, their condition matters too

The article asks you to understand that any successful 'let's end hunger' programme has powerful antagonists, even though they might well prefer not to show their antagonism openly.

It's brilliant, really. Not only do we empathize with the enslaved, but we also see how under capitalism the typical employee differs from them only by degree. Their enemies are our enemies. We have to stop identifying with the reptiles who own and manage the cane fields.

404 - here's the original -> https://web.archive.org/web/20220706173519/https://www.un.or...

https://twitter.com/_UNChronicle/status/1544804375595565056?...

>This article appeared in the UN Chronicle 14 years ago as an attempt at satire and was never meant to be taken literally. We have been made aware of its failures, even as satire, and have removed it from our site.

I just read the article and it basically talks about how hungry people let themselves be exploited. How is that a benefit?

Forcing companies to compete for scarce labor is a better outcome than having unemployment which props up unproductive companies that engage in low value activities because unemployment is even less productive than wasting people's time on inefficient production.

Is UN trolling?

Or hacked?

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