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Comment by delis-thumbs-7e | Hacker News Reader

> Combine excess food with amazon or army level logistics, and famine is gone.

We do this. Have you ever heard of UN World Food Programme? $14B funding in 2022 (since then dropped drastically, guess why).

Has it solved famine? No. Would it solve famine if it got the funding it needs? Unlikely.

Because you cannot just spend billions of dollars to send amazin food parcels across the world and expect that to fix climate change, draught, poverty, colonialism, racism, illiteracy, lack of education, and propably 100 other issues all contributing to the fact that we still have not end hunger. And no, AI won’t solve it either.

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The UN estimates it would cost $93 billion a year to end world hunger (https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/11/1166397)

So one would expect $14b/year would solve about 14/93 = 15% of world hunger.

> The World Food Programme supports over 152 million people annually and delivers life-saving food assistance where needed most. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Food_Programme)

An estimated 757 million people are food insecure (https://www.who.int/news/item/24-07-2024-hunger-numbers-stub...)

152/757 = the world food program helps ~20% of people who are food insecure. That's well in the ballpark of the estimated 15% spend.

If we spend that extra $93b, we'd be well within the range to actually stop world hunger.

Yes, "climate change, draught, poverty, colonialism, racism, illiteracy, lack of education" are still issues. No, you don't have to solve those problems to feed people. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good.

> "If we spend that extra $93b, we'd be well within the range to actually stop world hunger."

Almost all recent famines have been caused (either deliberately or incidentally) by government policies, not lack of money. The UN spending 93 BB may (somewhat) improve the situation, but is unlikely to end food insecurity.

Eliminating corrupt leaders (i.e. Kim Jong Un, Vladimir Putin, etc.), and poor regulation (e.g. Bombay Fodder and Grain Control Act, 1939) would be much more effective.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famine#20th_century

> Almost all recent famines have been caused (either deliberately or incidentally) by government policies, not lack of money.

Actually, they were caused by lack of food.

> Eliminating corrupt leaders (i.e. Kim Jong Un, Vladimir Putin, etc.)

Yes, which of the 757 million food insecure people is Putin responsible for their food insecurity?

North Korea has about 26mil residents, so if they were all starving that'd be 3.4% of the food insecure people. Gaza has about 2mil, so we can pin a further 0.03% on shitty governments.

Obviously it'd be great if putin, un and netanyahu were gone. They suck for a variety of reasons. But it doesn't change the fact that we could spend money and feed most of the people who are going hungry

>"Actually, they were caused by lack of food."

This is a tautology; a lack of food can't be caused by a lack of food, as it is a lack of food.

>"Yes, which of the 757 million food insecure people is Putin responsible for their food insecurity?"

In Putin's case, he has caused the price of food to increase through his war on Ukraine, as the cost of fertilizer makes many agricultural products uneconomical to grow for customers in less-developed nations.

>"But it doesn't change the fact that we could spend money and feed most of the people who are going hungry"

There was food literally rotting away (elsewhere in India) during the 2013 drought in Maharashtra, but it wasn't possible/worth transporting it to the affected region (due to government interference).[1] In places like Bangladesh, recent governments have used famine as a tool for obtaining foreign aid while also exterminating or weakening opposition.[2] During the 1990s North Korean famine, plenty of food was offered to the regime, but it was mostly rejected, and that which was accepted was not widely distributed. [3]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_drought_in_Maharashtra

[2] https://asianews.network/over-a-quarter-of-bangladeshis-suff...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1990s_North_Korean_famine#Fail...

I'm not arguing that governments don't cause famine directly or indirectly, I'm arguing that there are very few examples of govs that won't let food aid in. Or, enough food aid. For those specific cases, yes the only solution is to engage with the government - either pressuring them diplomatically, or by use of force. But for everywhere else, where people are going hungry because of poverty and neglect, the thing they need is literally just food, and someone willing to spend the money to get that food to them.

Basically you are asking $93b yearly at point when the biggest donor US has already slashed the funding and cannot even stop poverty insode it’s own nation. Maybe you are just trolling or arguing for sports, but you are completely missing the point why hunger and famines happen and why they cannot be solved with throwing money at them. Look at it this way, would Trump end hunger in Mississippi (about 600k people) if, say, Luxemburg would donate USA anout $400m required to end it[1]?

Mind you, UN’s Food -programme (together with education, progress of farming technologies etc) has been a huge success and hunger has dropped historically low. I couldn’t find data on how Trump’s cuts have affected the levels, but I doubt it has been a positive change by any regard.

Going back to the original allegory, just like cancer, hunger is a vastly complex problem with strong political ties (why have still have we not illegalised cigarettes for instance?) and no gee-wiz tech gadget, even as expensive as LLM model, will solve neither of them.

[1] https://www.feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america/mississippi

As my first link points out - $93b is less than 1% of annual military spending.

I am arguing nothing except that it’s possible if we are willing to spend the money. No AGI is required to come up with a magic solution. It literally just requires spending a lot of money.

> Look at it this way, would Trump end hunger in Mississippi (about 600k people) if, say, Luxemburg would donate USA anout $400m required to end it[1]?

Probably not. But would trump step in and prevent luxemburg from stocking mississippi’s food banks? Could luxemburg send containers of non-perishable food to community centers in every city in the state?

> (since then dropped drastically, guess why).

> Has it solved famine? No.

Hoist by your own petard

Assuming everything they said is true, how on earth is that a self-own?

You know that saving millions of lives every year is better than NOT saving millions of lives, right? Just because something doesn't solve the problem 100% doesn't mean it's not VERY VERY good.

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