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Comment by roenxi | Hacker News Reader

If you think that is going to happen, you can buy up some supplies and store them yourself. I have relatives with some impressive and substantial pantries because they're prepared to be snowed in for an extended period of time. Running out of food is possible the least novel problem humanity has ever encountered.

And what would you rather happen? If they don't store up a surplus then everyone will run out of food and prices will go up anyway. If there is less food because of a drought, prices are going up. If corporations start building up a stockpile then prices aren't going to go up as much as if there were no reserves.

TLDR; Yes. Good. It is a great day when there is food available at the local supermarket.

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The world is bigger than your relatives.

I'm sure he was referring to already food insecure places. The rich countries will have food available, probably at elevated prices.

In places where there's actual famine people will do crazy things to get their hands on food.

If the plan isn't to stockpile food communally through a big corporation making a tidy profit for being well prepared in a disaster, and it isn't to stockpile it personally... what is the plan? There won't be any food.

There are very limited options here. Those two are, by far, the two best ones for reliably being able to access food. Someone has to build up a reserve. Literally, you should to be able to point someone out and say "this person will give me food next month, they've got a stockpile for this drought".

Ideally that someone who is very, very motivated to get it right and make it happen. Those big corporations charging extra are going to keep people fed.

> The world is bigger than your relatives.

I offer no commentary on the size of my relatives vs. the rest of the world :)

There is another option than individuals vs corporations though: The government could and should provide for it's citizens. That is what a welfare state is all about: useing the taxes it collects from its citizens for the common good.

I know, to the US centric crowd at HN that probably sounds insane, but as a Scandinavian this is what I would have expected in the past (though probably not these days).

"useing the taxes it collects from its citizens for the common good."

Not just taxes, §14 of the german basic law for example says:

https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/gg/art_14.html

Any property that is needed for the benefit of all (and where there is no alternative way to buy it normally etc) can be taken and redistributed.

So like a storehouse full of food, with a starving population and broken infrastructure - can be just taken and later compensated not with wartime prices, but "normal" ones. And I believe there are at least in theory some plans for that, which military trucks go to which warehouse and what are distribution centers etc.

I mean sure but if we're just going to give people the money to buy food what is the complaint about big corporations charging more?

It isn't like anyone would be unable to afford food, because a welfare state would imply a standing agreement to buy everyone food at the taxpayer's expense if required. And it is entirely reasonable for prices to go up when there is a shortage, the people who built up stockpiles in advance need to be compensated for their foresight. Someone has to be stockpiling food.

During the cold war, Sweden had vast stockpiles of long shelf life food (and other essential items) in case the war stopped being cold. This would have been rationed out in case of an emergency or war. As far as I know, this is no longer the case since the mid 1990s.

But what I'm suggesting is that a governments should perhaps build up such stockpiles again as we move into more uncertain and less peaceful times. This can help even in case of smaller regional disasters, not every emergency is a full blown war.

> the people who built up stockpiles in advance need to be compensated for their foresight

Why? And it's not foresight that sets those people apart, it's having the resources to hoard the food and the ethical framework that allows them to profiteer off their fellow humans misfortune. Why should we reward that?

> Someone has to be stockpiling food.

Sure, like a government or a coop or a commune or whatever. Some institution who's interests are aligned with the community, not somebody who happens to have capital and wants to make a buck.

It cost them more than normal food to maintain the stockpile. I’m not for profiteering but maintaining a stockpile implies excess production that spoils rather than being sold.

It does seem fair to pay enough to cover that at least.

>the people who built up stockpiles in advance need to be compensated for their foresight.

Or we do what we've always done to war profiteers and hang them after taking their supplies, because hoarding food and expecting to be paid for it while people are dying is immoral and tends to get people a little bit pissed.

There's no fucking bet to be made that people will need to eat tomorrow, or have a house, or have water. Those are basic needs.

> Ideally that someone who is very, very motivated to get it right and make it happen. Those big corporations charging extra are going to keep people fed.

Governments are also actors in this, and have incentivises on a different scale than "how much money this year?"; this remains true even when those governments are literally dictatorships, though as history has shown neither businesses nor governments (democratic nor dictatorship) are correct at all times, so it's nice we've also got super-national aid programs.

The problem with a company stockpiling food (or other basic need like water) in times of scarcity is that it has no obligation to distribute it evenly. This is fine for luxury items, but when it's basic needs, it gets really ugly quickly.

> Ideally that someone who is very, very motivated to get it right and make it happen. Those big corporations charging extra are going to keep people fed.

They (a corporation) are motivated, by profit. Meaning some people will remain fed because they can afford it. The rest will not be fed. I simply don't think that's ethical.

> If the plan isn't to stockpile food communally through a big corporation making a tidy profit for being well prepared in a disaster, and it isn't to stockpile it personally... what is the plan?

Stockpile food communally NOT through a big corporation making a tidy profit?

An African subsistence farmer makes what? A dollar a day. The average American makes $60k+ annually.

So who is going to be able to afford that bag of flour?

Further the African subsistence farmer has lost their harvest, so they don't even have that dollar.

The rich will always be able to outspend the poor. Making things uniformly more expensive doesnt change that. The west will continue to have an obesity epidemic while the poorest starve.

"Communally" and "through a big corporation making a tidy profit" are at odds.

It's either for and by the community or it's for and by a big corporation profiteering off the misfortune of the community. It can't be both at the same time.

The big corporations aren't "going to keep people fed", they will hoard and ration by wealth, not by need. The billionaire will get their twenty course fine dining experience, the beggar will starve. That's not keeping the people fed by any serious definition of the term.

You don’t know co-ops exist?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative

My local co-op is nearly a hundred years old now and has a combined members land area larger than the United Kingdom:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGjGsyMe_F8

* https://www.cbh.com.au/about-cbh/what-we-do

Thanks to being globally remote, easily isolated and events like WWII and COVID we're picky about having reserves (seed, fuel, grain) in storage to ride out <reasonable levels of shit happens>.

> "Communally" and "through a big corporation making a tidy profit" are at odds.

Not really. Corporations are social by essence, and on a much bigger scale than anything that came before. That’s precisely what makes socialism possible.

>Corporations are social by essence, and on a much bigger scale than anything that came before.

Corporations are transactional by essence, not social. Any relationship within or with a corporation has the singular goal of making the corporation money. Food deserts exist because corporations aren't social. Supermarkets and stores aren't there feed the community, they sell food only to those who can afford it, and only for a profit. If it comes down to it they'll station cops outside the store with shotguns to keep the poors away and let the food rot on the shelves because that's how capitalism works. That's the exact opposite of everything socialism is supposed to stand for.

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