The problem at hand of solving world hunger cannot be a one-stroke deal
He cannot be the solution to world hunger REUTERS
Mohammad Tareq Hasan
Publish : 10 Nov 2021, 08:56 AMUpdate : 10 Nov 2021, 08:56 AM
David Beasley -- the director of the World Food Program (WFP) -- recently proposed that the ultra-wealthy individuals like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos should “step up now, on a one-time basis” and “help 42 million people that are literally going to die if we don’t reach them.” It was an urgent appeal to save millions of lives.
The news became viral as Elon Musk dramatically pledged in a Tweet to donate $6 billion by selling parts of his Tesla share if the WFP could describe “exactly” how the donation would solve world hunger. Some more exchanges were made on Twitter, but nothing concrete is yet to be announced.
As David Beasley himself also indicated but did not get much attention during the exchanges -- the problem at hand of solving world hunger cannot be a one-stroke deal. Even more important is to realize that we must take the initiative to ensure that the world does not have more people on the brink of starvation to death. To make a hunger-free world real, we must address the root cause -- a much bigger issue.
Elon Musk’s insistence about a workable plan that would explain how hunger can be eliminated indicates the problem of poverty is more of an issue of entitlement and a crisis of distribution. This dual problem is intricately related to the capitalist world system that somehow is not coming into the light from the Beasly-Musk rhetoric.
In short, capitalism as a system is based on private ownership of property, free market, and minimal government. As such, everyone is on his own; transactions occur without many external regulations following the logic of supply and demand in a market.
In this process, three fundamental features are noticeable. First, people primarily produce not to consume but to sell at the market. Secondly, the motive of production is profit-making, and hence, production does not directly meet our needs evading market transactions. Thirdly, human labour becomes a commodity.
For labour to become a commodity -- a segment of the population must not have access to means of production, who then are forced to sell labour to the owners of the means of production in exchange for money.
And by selling labour, a worker loses control of how the labour will be used and the end product. On the contrary, the capitalist, being the owner of raw materials and tools and paying for the labour, gets the end product, which is then sold in the market for more than the initial investments.
Hence, the capitalists could increase profit only if they could reduce the share of the labourer. This is either done by increasing the working hours at factories/workplaces or by improving the technology that increases the production rate, reducing workers’ share as they sell labour for a fixed amount.
Because of this unfair distribution of profit, the capitalists benefit even if our collective wealth increases while the working class barely survives. According to recent estimates, eight people own as much wealth as 50% of the global population. In the US, the richest 1% own 34% of the wealth, and the proportion is even more skewed in favour of the richest 10%, who own 74% of the wealth. Any form of growth under capitalism is not intended to meet human needs. Instead, it is about generating and accumulating surplus value.
Over the generations, the capital owners, by the logic of inheritance, continue to be at the side of profit-makers. Yet, at the same time, the labourers inherit the ability and condition to sell labour. This is clear because billionaires worldwide have amassed unprecedented amounts of wealth during the pandemic and the working class remain in uncertainty, income reduction, joblessness, and misery.
In capitalistic reasoning, development rhetoric diverts our attention to aggregating indicators such as the GDP and growth, but inequality reduction does not coincide. As Thomas Piketty, in the book Capital in the 21st Century argued, in a free-market capitalist economy, inequality rises faster than growth because the rich have become reliant more on asset wealth-income than salaries. It reflects that the old forms of redistribution, such as income and/or corporation tax, do not ensure fair redistribution.
If we want to escape this form of impending inequality, what measures could we apply?
We must implement Universal Basic Income (UBI) and progressive tax. One may argue that providing something like the UBI will make people lazy; contrarily, once the basic income is guaranteed, people will be open to trying new livelihood options and becoming entrepreneurs. This will work better than the trickle-down approach towards development that guides public investments only into the formal sectors and benefits the capitalists.
To fund the UBI, we can rely on a progressive income tax and taxes on inherited wealth. As such, Thomas Piketty theoretically proved, it is possible to set up an egalitarian economy if we can set both income tax and inheritance tax around 60% to 70% for the rich. Thus, we can try to tax capitalism out of existence. We will need global efforts to apply this radical approach and eliminate the divide between the rich and the poor.
This is not to say that agendas to ensure the quality of education, health care, food, or other basic necessities, etc do not matter. However, ironically, the conventional approaches only produce healthy and capable workers who are then used as labour in the capitalist system as an agent for profit-making.
Saving the people at the brink of starvation is an urgent matter, and we all should participate in the struggle in every way possible. But, unfortunately, the debate around solving world hunger somehow revolves around a comfortable agenda of donation rather than asking questions that could make a fairer future.
Mohammad Tareq Hasan is an anthropologist and teaches at the University of Dhaka. Currently, he works as a research fellow at the International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS), Leiden University, the Netherlands.
OP-ED: Looking over the Beasley-Musk rhetoric
David Beasley -- the director of the World Food Program (WFP) -- recently proposed that the ultra-wealthy individuals like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos should “step up now, on a one-time basis” and “help 42 million people that are literally going to die if we don’t reach them.” It was an urgent appeal to save millions of lives.
The news became viral as Elon Musk dramatically pledged in a Tweet to donate $6 billion by selling parts of his Tesla share if the WFP could describe “exactly” how the donation would solve world hunger. Some more exchanges were made on Twitter, but nothing concrete is yet to be announced.
As David Beasley himself also indicated but did not get much attention during the exchanges -- the problem at hand of solving world hunger cannot be a one-stroke deal. Even more important is to realize that we must take the initiative to ensure that the world does not have more people on the brink of starvation to death. To make a hunger-free world real, we must address the root cause -- a much bigger issue.
Elon Musk’s insistence about a workable plan that would explain how hunger can be eliminated indicates the problem of poverty is more of an issue of entitlement and a crisis of distribution. This dual problem is intricately related to the capitalist world system that somehow is not coming into the light from the Beasly-Musk rhetoric.
In short, capitalism as a system is based on private ownership of property, free market, and minimal government. As such, everyone is on his own; transactions occur without many external regulations following the logic of supply and demand in a market.
In this process, three fundamental features are noticeable. First, people primarily produce not to consume but to sell at the market. Secondly, the motive of production is profit-making, and hence, production does not directly meet our needs evading market transactions. Thirdly, human labour becomes a commodity.
For labour to become a commodity -- a segment of the population must not have access to means of production, who then are forced to sell labour to the owners of the means of production in exchange for money.
And by selling labour, a worker loses control of how the labour will be used and the end product. On the contrary, the capitalist, being the owner of raw materials and tools and paying for the labour, gets the end product, which is then sold in the market for more than the initial investments.
Hence, the capitalists could increase profit only if they could reduce the share of the labourer. This is either done by increasing the working hours at factories/workplaces or by improving the technology that increases the production rate, reducing workers’ share as they sell labour for a fixed amount.
Because of this unfair distribution of profit, the capitalists benefit even if our collective wealth increases while the working class barely survives. According to recent estimates, eight people own as much wealth as 50% of the global population. In the US, the richest 1% own 34% of the wealth, and the proportion is even more skewed in favour of the richest 10%, who own 74% of the wealth. Any form of growth under capitalism is not intended to meet human needs. Instead, it is about generating and accumulating surplus value.
Over the generations, the capital owners, by the logic of inheritance, continue to be at the side of profit-makers. Yet, at the same time, the labourers inherit the ability and condition to sell labour. This is clear because billionaires worldwide have amassed unprecedented amounts of wealth during the pandemic and the working class remain in uncertainty, income reduction, joblessness, and misery.
In capitalistic reasoning, development rhetoric diverts our attention to aggregating indicators such as the GDP and growth, but inequality reduction does not coincide. As Thomas Piketty, in the book Capital in the 21st Century argued, in a free-market capitalist economy, inequality rises faster than growth because the rich have become reliant more on asset wealth-income than salaries. It reflects that the old forms of redistribution, such as income and/or corporation tax, do not ensure fair redistribution.
If we want to escape this form of impending inequality, what measures could we apply?
We must implement Universal Basic Income (UBI) and progressive tax. One may argue that providing something like the UBI will make people lazy; contrarily, once the basic income is guaranteed, people will be open to trying new livelihood options and becoming entrepreneurs. This will work better than the trickle-down approach towards development that guides public investments only into the formal sectors and benefits the capitalists.
To fund the UBI, we can rely on a progressive income tax and taxes on inherited wealth. As such, Thomas Piketty theoretically proved, it is possible to set up an egalitarian economy if we can set both income tax and inheritance tax around 60% to 70% for the rich. Thus, we can try to tax capitalism out of existence. We will need global efforts to apply this radical approach and eliminate the divide between the rich and the poor.
This is not to say that agendas to ensure the quality of education, health care, food, or other basic necessities, etc do not matter. However, ironically, the conventional approaches only produce healthy and capable workers who are then used as labour in the capitalist system as an agent for profit-making.
Saving the people at the brink of starvation is an urgent matter, and we all should participate in the struggle in every way possible. But, unfortunately, the debate around solving world hunger somehow revolves around a comfortable agenda of donation rather than asking questions that could make a fairer future.
Mohammad Tareq Hasan is an anthropologist and teaches at the University of Dhaka. Currently, he works as a research fellow at the International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS), Leiden University, the Netherlands.