But we also have recent history demonstrating that this will not be allowed to happen, no matter how much starvation there is in poorer countries, we WILL have our steaks. Not negotiable.
Indeed, though given Trump's behaviour I have wondered what will happen when it's poorer *US states*.
Fortunately, the farmers had a word and seem to have stopped the deportation of the undocumented (illegal) immigrants who do so much farm work.
Also fortunately, the reservoirs (that weren't even connected to where the fires in SoCal were) were not actually emptied, so my worst-case scenario at the time didn't come up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_water_release_from_Lake_K...
Long may it continue that people who can say no to bad decisions, remain able to say no. Last thing anyone in the world needs with the Eurasian breadbaskets of Ukraine and Russia destroying each other's grain export capacity is the US shooting itself in both legs with an M134.
He may do a Mugabe and reward the faithful at the expense of the nation. He may do a Pol Pot, and punish the opposition until there are none left and then turn on the faithful and only get stopped when their internal crimes against humanity cross an international border and a foreign army steps in. He may do a Stalin and deny (or be ignorant of due to all the sycophants) the existence of a problem. He may say the equivalent of "Let them eat cake" and bring a repeat of all that entails.
Based on precedent, in such a hypothetical, I suspect he will put a 1000% tariff on all food imports to raise enough money to feed everyone, which obviously won't work but he won't know that, and then complain about how unfair everyone is being.
poor americans will starve outside the walls
I assure you, take one look at us and you’ll instantly see that very few of us are in any danger of starving.
Other countries have a lot of money and excess food too - EU, China, Brazil. I would look forward to hearing their proposals to solve hunger and to shake the hands of each volunteer and soldier and pilot/ship captain going to help feed people.
"Local government distributes food relief to starving residents"
They're the same picture, it's just a judgement call on whether you see them as legitimate. Whether or not that's the case with Hamas, Israel & the US have ensured that Hamas's paramilitary wing specifically are the most legitimate of the local governing bodies, ranging from overturning Palestinian democracy when they attempted to turn into a political party 20 years ago and operating a occupation puppet government in the West Bank, to ensuring that grievances exist with regular provocations at holy sites, with embargoes, or power cuts, to literally assassinating not-explicitly-Hamas-aligned public figures who become popular in Gaza.
The nice thing about food aid is that no matter who seizes it, it's food aid. Unless they're literally lighting it on fire, its entire political power is derived from it eventually being eaten by somebody, and a warlord plus 500 tons of peanuts does not add up to a 500 ton warlord. Better: In some forms of food aid, it rapidly spoils, so its utility to the local power structure is zero if it's hoarded.
No? Not at all? They can just sell the aid which means they can sell it to anyone including folks who weren’t the intended recipients, they can hoard it and not give it away, they can let it go bad rather than give it away, they can use it to recruit soldiers to repress other people so they don’t starve, they can use it to buy slaves, there are plenty of ways in which the food aid doesn’t make it to the people who need it.
There’s no moral justification or anything to say here to help you sleep at night. When a terrorist group, local warlords, whomever steal the aid it’s just bad. Trickle down economics doesn’t work.
You are describing problems with government cheese, with directing food to means-tested registered impoverished people who live alongside the wealthy & fat.
"Folks who weren't the intended recipients" - the residents of the region were the intended recipients. Literally the first people who make it to the truck and (hopefully) form a line, is how it's usually done.
What's the economic or political benefit to spoilage?
The local power structure is already a local power structure. If your intention is that you MUST disrupt the local power structure and you're willing to exacerbate the famine to ensure that, then sure, don't distribute food aid.
No I'm not. Your characterization is wrong too. Poor people tend to be more overweight than the wealthy and also receive more food aid.
> I am describing a region under broad famine.
Sure whatever, but describe how the rest of the world (not the US) should solve the broad famine you've highlighted.
> What's the economic or political benefit to spoilage?
If you're a local warlord it would be control or to ensure certain groups or enclaves are dead or weakened. Withholding food or other resources is a strategy as hold as civilization.
> If your intention is that you MUST disrupt the local power structure and you're willing to exacerbate the famine to ensure that, then sure, don't distribute food aid.
If giving food aid just entrenches the local power structure then it just turns into a new tax of sorts that has to be paid basically forever. I stand in strong support of the countries (not the US) who would like to do this. Go for it.
Yes. The answer is yes.
See also: Welfare queens, a cartoon specter of a moral hazard, the opposition to which is so important we must simply end welfare.
Yes the local power structure is allowed to charge taxes, or taxes by other means.
> Would we rather bomb the whole place into rubble than allow them to feed the hungry?
Maybe we just don't do either and decide to do other things?
I assume this is why in really dire circumstances with unsecured territory you airdrop stuff (at the risk of crushing a few people).
At least then the people nearest get a chance at grabbing it first.
Or look at how the IDF had to stand by powerlessly as Israelis blocked supply trucks from entering the refugee camps. Or how the IDF had to indiscriminately shoot up Palestinian civilians who crowded a supply truck in Gaza. Or how the IDF had to launch targeted missile strikes against supply trucks in Gaza that had been identified to and were in continuous communication with Israeli authorities. All because Hamas forced the IDF to indiscriminately destroy practically all infrastructure in the Gaza strip, cut access to Israel-controlled utilities, lock down the border to Egypt, send a population of millions on a death march along designated routes it continued bombing, deliberately assassinate news reporters, bomb hospitals, destroy UN and NGO facilities and literally shoot hostages it mistook for Palestinians.
I have to believe you were intentionally trying to be provocative because to float "Hamas seizing food supplies for starving Palestinians" in 2026 without providing context for why those Palestinians are starving, let alone that the original claim has since pretty much been refuted, feels like a deliberate choice:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/26/world/middleeast/hamas-un...
https://www.timesofisrael.com/usaid-finds-no-proof-hamas-sys...
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israeli-officers-say-hama...
There are of course gangs stealing supplies to resell them at inflated prices on the black market but that tends to come with the territory when the only authorities in place become defunct because the entire region is turned into rubbles by a military force that considers anyone without a Jewish Israeli passport a likely terrorist unless proven otherwise.
Anyway, more on point: countries don't have excess food, economic entities do. And our economic system is generally fairly averse to making economic entities give up any property (even with fair compensation), especially when it comes to large corporations. If you want to form any plan that doesn't start with (literally) "seizing the means of (food) production", I think it would have to include the phrase "create market incentives" but I'm not sure there is a better incentive than "people are willing to give you all their money because your product has become scarce" - though of course that hinges on "all their money" being more than you make now and that doesn't tend to hold up when it comes to the resource extraction economy based parts of the world.
But anyway, they do interfere with aid [1]. Them doing it a single time ever proves my claim. But again I'm not trying to litigate the whole Israel vs Hamas war, just pointing out how it is logistically difficult. The rest of the world needs to step up across the board, specifically China and the EU as they are the other main global economic entities, countries, whatever you want to call them.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/un-official-says-hamas-obstructing-aid-gaza-2026-07-13/
And it goes back decades:
https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-209885/The IDF has done far more, larger terrorist acts for far longer.
If you want to make your own post and talk about how Israel is seizing aid as a point about how difficult it is to distribute aid and how the EU, China, and other major economies need to step up, deploy ships, send combat forces in to ensure aid delivery, &c., you’re more than welcome to.
The only thing preventing food being distributed to everybody that needs it is economics, specifically the type of economics which rewards exploitation, hording, and maldistribution. The people with power actually prefer it that way, some people being hungry is fine actually, as long as the rich and powerful in their own country gets to make more money.
Now I am not gonna dignify your genocide apologia with an answer. But you should feel ashamed to have written such hateful words right here on a tech forum.
However this 90% estimate is cherry picked. It is one report at one time, during a time when Israel was intentionally starving Palestinians during a genocide.
They could just intercept it and hoard it thus driving the price up or as a tool to recruit others into their criminal organizations.
Or maybe you can tone down the rhetoric yea?
Accusations of genocide were made before Israel’s response to Oct 7 even began, with many claiming the genocide has been going on for 80 years — the only genocide in history where the population being genocided grew exponentially during their genocide.
Even Gaza has had population growth over the past 3 years, despite the war (reported births > reported killed).
I probably should engage with these claims as they are written, but I don’t think anything here is in good faith. I am clearly engaging with somebody who is full of hate, so much so they deny (or even support) a genocide.
Also, you are arguing with bad faith assumptions regarding my views on actual genocide.
As a descendant of survivors of a real one, I’m not about to give you and your ilk my identity. You seem to think that this is something to gloat about. Good on you for feeling that your side has nothing to be afraid of — not everyone is that fortunate.
Food aid organizations were highly critical of Live-aid’s logistics, claimed it would not work because the food just gets looted by the armed factions who will use it to buy more weapons. Live-aid distribute the food anyway, and yes, a lot of it went to the armed factions, but overall food became less scarce and fewer people were hungry.
I think food is one of these things we should just not fuck around with. Wherever people need food, it should be delivered, unconditionally. The food exists, and the distribution networks exist, the only thing preventing people from getting it is most of the time money. Getting food to e.g. Darfur is very expensive (due to bribes etc.), and very few charities can afford it, governments however can afford it, but simply choice not to.
But even outside of armed conflict, where things do get messy, we are still failing people miserably. Many earthquake survivors in Indonesia are now hungry, and food is not being delivered to them. And there is absolutely no excuse why the international society is failing them (except via capitalism).
Incorrect. Capitalism isn't failing them. Capitalism is what enabled surplus food to be produced in the first place. Instead, it is governments and other international organizations that are failing to agree upon and fund the mechanism to deliver food.