The article is actually decently well written good-faith satire meant to address how poverty and hunger are inherent to capitalism as a system. The title was just too bold lol
Contending that it was what, assholes?
OP really should have just linked the article:
Y’all should actually read the article because it seems like it’s saying something completely different from what OP is trying to make it sound like. Basically, if I understood correctly, Kent was being critical of the idea that market-led solutions (i.e. capitalism fixes hunger) are better than community-driven solutions. He was also saying that hunger is part of capitalism, and you’ll never get rid of hunger while capitalism exists, because capitalism needs to withhold resources to force people to work.
This paragraph seems to sum up the article pretty well:
In Kent’s view, one gathers, global hunger is not a complex problem that is being addressed by free market capitalism; it’s a moral one that requires empowering intellectuals like Kent to solve it.
And to be clear you mean the original UN article, not the article from the libertarian think tank “Foundation for Economic Education” (“FEE”)
And the UN article link (archive) is in the comments
So he’s not defending/promoting “world Hunger”, just arguing that it’s not a bug but a feature developed to have cheap labor, and that the people in power don’t want to end it
Sounds good at a glance, but when you look at the way he reaches that conclusion (that the threat of hunger is the only reason people are willing to work), and his solution (for a class of “intellectuals” like him to take charge) however, are just neoliberal swill…
I imagine the UN wouldn’t let an author publish something that calls for revolution though lol
Maybe they should build a city in the ocean where these intellectuals have full control. Maybe experiment with some cool drugs.
Lmfao, I’d pay to watch them descend in to chaos as they insist on ranking each other by importance or whatever arbitrary measure of superiority they choose, because they simply can’t function otherwise, until they all end up dead from refusing to “lower” themselves to cooperate with “inferiors”.
Usually most sane people go “Hunger is used to extract labour from people so rich people can make money, so we should change this state of affairs” not “this is good and how we should continue, in an evil usually the preserve of 19th century British Imperial officials.”
How does the saying go? When your only tool is a hammer, every problem is a nail?
The only tool he has is what capitalism gave him - the idea that people will only work if threatened with starvation, homelessness, or other punishment.
The idea that the benefit of a community and society at large, and by direct extension - our own, could motivate people, or to be more precise, the idea that society would benefit everyone not just a “select” few, doesn’t even come in to consideration.
his solution (for a class of “intellectuals” like him to take charge) however, are just neoliberal swill
This is such a common pitfall that even self-described communists fall into it as well. When you hear people talk about a “dictatorship of the proletariat,” what they’re describing tends to devolve into “a class of intellectuals needs to guide the working class to the correct decisions” when questioned about what a “dictatorship of the proletariat” actually entails. Often they’ll try to justify it by saying it’s only temporary, but we all know how that pans out (see the USSR). This is why I consider myself an anarchist rather than a communist and regularly critique marxism-leninism.
Isn’t this what Anarchists and other Anti-capitalists have been saying for well over 100 years? That despite having the ability for abundance, we use scarcity to extract labour from people to make rich fuckers money?
Lenin made the clearest case for it in Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism. Financial and Industrial Capital is exported directly to the sources of raw materials and lower cost of living, which is then hyper-exploited for super-profits domestically.
Even within Capitalist countries, starvation is kept dangerous because Capitalism requires a “reserve army of labor,” as Marx put it. It’s the idea of “if you weren’t doing this job, someone would kill for it” that suppresses wages.
Well, he’s not wrong about hunger being an intended part of capitalism so workers are coerced into working for even less pay.
Calling it a “benefit” is very clickbaity though.
Read that fee article as well and it seems like the author just stated, that certain institutions benefit from world hunger.
In the interview, Kent explains he was not advocating global hunger but was intending to be “provocative” by saying certain individuals and institutions benefit from global hunger.
“No, it is not satire,” Kent told Marc Morano, founder and editor of Climate Depot. “I don’t see anything funny about it. It is not about advocacy of hunger.”
It doesn’t look like he’s advocating for global hunger, but criticizing those who do benefit from it
He calls it “not satire” but “provocative”. So he doesn’t mean it, but says it to provoke a reaction… Like satire.
It sounds like he just doesn’t find it funny, which is why he doesn’t want to call it satire.
Yeh it’s pretty clearly not sincere in voice. Seems like by saying ‘not satire’ they’re trying to avoid people thinking they mean the content of what the article describes isn’t sincerely true, but given how it’s written, it’s hard to conclude the author cheering on from the sidelines. Te nonchalance and unaffected language when discussing a travesty seems pretty clearly to be a device used for effect which frankly is pretty close to what gets called satire.
