Hacker News Reader

Comment by jsprogrammer | Hacker News Reader

Your simplistic worldview ignores facts: humans need large amounts of food and water to survive and thrive. Those things don't get to your body for free [as in 'effort']. At least, not on the scale that humans are currently occupying the planet.

To remain at our current level requires tremendous physical labor and organization of process just to deliver the required nutrients to every person, every day (and we still fail to achieve 100% distribution). There is a base level of effort required to sustain our current state. To believe otherwise is foolish delusion.

If you supply your own nutrients and use no product of another, you may exempt yourself from the previous analysis. Otherwise, I suggest we figure out how to achieve the above with as little 'work-hours' as possible.

View on HN

The current world food production is enough to feed 10 billion people (50% more than the current world population) a diet of 4000 calories/day (double the recommended amount for a woman, >50% more than for a man) [1]. And that's not including fruits & vegetables, only staple grains.

People go hungry because of distribution problems, not because we don't produce enough food. Southern Nigeria exports food to the rest of Africa while people starve in Northern Nigeria because the roads are not good enough to transport food. The Red Cross sends enough food into Somalia to feed the whole country, but it is all appropriate by warlords at gunpoint. Americans grow fat on fast food while peasants elsewhere starve because many of the calories we produce are used to feed animals. That's not even talking about the millions of tons of corn that are poured into our gas tanks through ethanol subsidies.

[1] http://www.gardeningplaces.com/articles/global-food-crisis.h...

I agree. That is why I focused on the 'get to' and not the 'produce for' aspect. However, there is still labor involved in producing food and those who actually produce it (as opposed to those who only claim to [ie. corporations]) are often exploited.

Not to mention the "ugly food" [1] dumped in the trash because it looks OMG ugly!

[1]: http://time.com/3761942/why-people-are-falling-in-love-with-...

humans need large amounts of food and water to survive and thrive

So, are you shooting for a subsistence income level for ALL humans?

I don't know why we should work for 60 hrs/w with no OT compensation to feed the planet when the 1% of Earth's population are hoarding over 35% of global wealth if not more.

Maybe you should talk to them and convince them to give some of that wealth back to the poor so they don't starve to death?

You're spinning strawmen. When did I claim any of that?

'Wealth', in the context you speak of it, is an illusion. Your question:

>Maybe you should talk to them and convince them to give some of that wealth back to the poor so they don't starve to death?

Is non-sensical. A person cannot eat 'wealth', just as one of the other responders cannot eat his employer's bank credits.

"Wealth" is what enables those putting in "effort" to trade for others' "effort" in order to sustain oneself. Although nobody can eat "wealth" or his employer's bank credits, one can absolutely trade "wealth" for "efforts". This is the point of currency. Your strawman that "wealth" cannot be eaten is completely false.

>Your strawman that "wealth" cannot be eaten is completely false.

It's not a strawman, it's essentially what the person I was responding to claimed:

>Maybe you should talk to them and convince them to give some of that wealth back to the poor so they don't starve to death?

The real strawman is the specious concept of 'wealth' that is being perpetrated here.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com