Food Riots Could Overthrow Governments

[dr_mabeuse]

Article from Yahoo

http://http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20080414/wl_time/howhungercouldtoppleregimes
==========================

The idea of the starving masses driven by their desperation to take to the streets and overthrow the ancien regime has seemed impossibly quaint since capitalism triumphed so decisively in the Cold War. Since then, the spectacle of hunger sparking revolutionary violence has been the stuff of Broadway musicals rather than the real world of politics. And yet, the headlines of the past month suggest that skyrocketing food prices are threatening the stability of a growing number of governments around the world. Ironically, it may be the very success of capitalism in transforming regions previously restrained by various forms of socialism that has helped create the new crisis.

Haiti is in flames as food riots have turned into a violent challenge to the vulnerable government; Egypt's authoritarian regime faces a mounting political threat over its inability to maintain a steady supply of heavily subsidized bread to its impoverished citizens; Cote D'Ivoire, Cameroon, Mozambique, Uzbekistan, Yemen and Indonesia are among the countries that have recently seen violent food riots or demonstrations. World Bank president Robert Zoellick noted last week that world food prices had risen 80% over the past three years, and warned that at least 33 countries face social unrest as a result. [my bolds - dr.M.]
==============================
Gonna get worse before it gets better...

 

[dr_mabeuse]

op. cit.
=======================
The social theories of Karl Marx were long ago discarded as of little value, even to revolutionaries. But he did warn that capitalism had a tendency to generate its own crises. Indeed, the spread of capitalism, and its accelerated industrialization and wealth-creation, may have fomented the food-inflation crisis - by dramatically accelerating competition for scarce resources. The rapid industrialization of China and India over the past two decades - and the resultant growth of a new middle class fast approaching the size of America's - has driven demand for oil toward the limits of global supply capacity. That has pushed oil prices to levels five times what they were in the mid 1990s, which has also raised pressure on food prices by driving up agricultural costs and by prompting the substitution of biofuel crops for edible ones on scarce farmland. Moreover, those new middle class people are eating a lot better than their parents did - particularly more meat. Producing a single calorie of beef can, by some estimates, require eight or more calories of grain feed, and expanded meat consumption therefore has a multiplier effect on demand for grains. Throw in climate disasters such as the Australian drought and recent rice crop failures, and you have food inflation spiraling so fast that even the U.N. agency created to feed people in emergencies is warning that it lacks the funds to fulfill its mandate.
===================

 

[R. Richard]

Even if the UN had funds, there remains the problem of finding food to buy.

US farmers are raising a lot of corn for biofuel, mainly due to government subsidies. The removal of the corn from the food market creates shortages which drive up prices. In addition, there is a lot of soybean acreage being replanted to susidized corn. The corn to biofuel is not a capitalistic problem, but a government/socialistic problem.

As you have pointed out, the rising economies of India and China are demanding more and better food. The increase in demand has driven up prices. Now, people in places like Haiti can no longer afford to buy food. The Haitians were spending something like 70% of their money on just food. The cost of food has at least doubled.

The problem will grow even worse and, in the not too distant future. The price of oil continues to increase. The world economy runs on oil. Short term the US need to produce more oil. Mid term, the US needs to build nuclear reactors. Long term, the US needs to establish 'food power.' Your country thinks that we are the 'great satan?' Fine, we will just take our wheat and use it ourselves. JMHO.

 

[shereads]

Article from Yahoo

http://http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20080414/wl_time/howhungercouldtoppleregimes
==========================

The idea of the starving masses driven by their desperation to take to the streets and overthrow the ancien regime has seemed impossibly quaint since capitalism triumphed so decisively in the Cold War. Since then, the spectacle of hunger sparking revolutionary violence has been the stuff of Broadway musicals rather than the real world of politics. And yet, the headlines of the past month suggest that skyrocketing food prices are threatening the stability of a growing number of governments around the world. Ironically, it may be the very success of capitalism in transforming regions previously restrained by various forms of socialism that has helped create the new crisis.

Haiti is in flames as food riots have turned into a violent challenge to the vulnerable government; Egypt's authoritarian regime faces a mounting political threat over its inability to maintain a steady supply of heavily subsidized bread to its impoverished citizens; Cote D'Ivoire, Cameroon, Mozambique, Uzbekistan, Yemen and Indonesia are among the countries that have recently seen violent food riots or demonstrations. World Bank president Robert Zoellick noted last week that world food prices had risen 80% over the past three years, and warned that at least 33 countries face social unrest as a result. [my bolds - dr.M.]
==============================
Gonna get worse before it gets better...

Let's feed them sethp.

 

[Weird Harold]

The idea of the starving masses driven by their desperation to take to the streets and overthrow the ancien regime has seemed impossibly quaint since capitalism triumphed so decisively in the Cold War. Since then, the spectacle of hunger sparking revolutionary violence has been the stuff of Broadway musicals rather than the real world of politics. ...

My intitial reaction is that Marie Anionette could testify that famine can indeed overturn governments -- well she could if she still had a head.

The French Revolution was about more than bread, but the reaction to her (apocryphal?) comment "Let them eat cake" was an indicator of how powerful hunger can be as a political force.

 

[Boxlicker101]

My intitial reaction is that Marie Anionette could testify that famine can indeed overturn governments -- well she could if she still had a head.

The French Revolution was about more than bread, but the reaction to her (apocryphal?) comment "Let them eat cake" was an indicator of how powerful hunger can be as a political force.

Do you actually think she said that? I doubt it but, if she did, it was probably an indication of her own ignorance rather than any hostility. "I don't understand. If they have run out of bread, why don't they eat cake?"

 

[Lee Chambers]

Do you actually think she said that? I doubt it but, if she did, it was probably an indication of her own ignorance than any hostility. "I don't understand. If they have run out of bread, why don't they eat cake?"

It was ignorance on a staggering scale. Read up some on some of the things she did as queen and you'll build a fucking time machine just to go back and slap that bitch upside the head.

That being said, I've been hearing a lot about this problem in the news since the beginning of the year, since it's not become a crisis level problem. And not to sound cold hearted, but I had to stop and say "WTF" when I was listening to a BBC broadcast and they interviewed an Egyptian woman who was complaining about not getting enough government bread to feed her EIGHT children. That says to me that the explosive population growth in the world is also one of the factors making this food shortage such a problem.

 

[neonlyte]

It's a temporary problem. It'll self correct over a few years.

 

[Weird Harold]

Do you actually think she said that? I doubt it but, if she did, it was probably an indication of her own ignorance than any hostility. "I don't understand. If they have run out of bread, why don't they eat cake?"

Yep, it was ignorance rather than malice, but whether she actually said it or it was a spurious allegation to fire up anti-monarchy sentiment, the point was that bread riots and famine were a large part of the driving force behind the French Revolution.

Any time basic requirements like Shelter and Food are in short supply and the government in power can be portrayed as at fault or ineffectual, the government won't be in power for very long. It won't necessarily go down in blood and flames like the French monarchy, but it willl go down.

 

[cantdog]

It was ignorance on a staggering scale. Read up some on some of the things she did as queen and you'll build a fucking time machine just to go back and slap that bitch upside the head.

That being said, I've been hearing a lot about this problem in the news since the beginning of the year, since it's not become a crisis level problem. And not to sound cold hearted, but I had to stop and say "WTF" when I was listening to a BBC broadcast and they interviewed an Egyptian woman who was complaining about not getting enough government bread to feed her EIGHT children. That says to me that the explosive population growth in the world is also one of the factors making this food shortage such a problem.

Well, yes, Lee. Fact is, though, the causative link works in the other direction. Honest. Population dynamics are an integral part of the study of biology. Populations are limited by food supply, far and away above any other factor. Pop expands to use available food, and shrinks as the supply shrinks.

It's much more self-regulating than any Invisible-Handed Market, and frankly, rather brutal. In the end, the greatest competition faced by any organism comes from other members of its own species, since their requirements are identical. They will kill one another in order to eat, when things get bad enough, in other words.

Like Shanghai and México and a few other cities, Cairo's population ballooned to the point of complete unmanageability. No one even knows the number of people who live in it. They cannot even map the streets, because new shantytown neighborhoods are created faster than the government can take note of them. The people can certainly replace the government by riot, but there is no government possible which can make benign order out of the chaos of Cairo.

So, death rates in Egypt are pretty impressive from disease and malnutrition. Under such circumstances, it is rather simple-minded to refer to EIGHT children in a disapproving tone, as though to blame the starving for their difficulty.

If you visit Cairo, you will be advised not just to eschew the Nile for drinking or bathing, but to stay at least a block from the water's edge. The water carries so many diseases and poisons that a good amount of distance from it is only prudence. Many days, going outside to breathe is a health hazard, particularly right after the rice harvest.

Enough. Suffice it that conditions there are not like those in a Houston armchair.

 

[OhMissScarlett]

It was ignorance on a staggering scale. Read up some on some of the things she did as queen and you'll build a fucking time machine just to go back and slap that bitch upside the head.

That's what happens when they let stupid rich kids rule a country. Thank God that can't happen now...oh, wait.

 

[cantdog]

About the thing of killing one another to eat? The whole point of civilzations is to create a way of living which mitigates the brutal dynamics of starvation and Hobbesian atomization. The fact that it's perfectly natural for wholesale death to occur with food distribution problems does not make it acceptable, if you're attempting to run a civilization. Solutions to the problem have to be somewhat more creative than allowing Malthusian death rates to correct them unchecked.

As it turns out, there is, in fact, food enough to feed people at current pop levels; the problem is one of distribution, not sheer supply.

 

[neonlyte]

About the thing of killing one another to eat? The whole point of civilzations is to create a way of living which mitigates the brutal dynamics of starvation and Hobbesian atomization. The fact that it's perfectly natural for wholesale death to occur with food distribution problems does not make it acceptable, if you're attempting to run a civilization. Solutions to the problem have to be somewhat more creative than allowing Malthusian death rates to correct them unchecked.

As it turns out, there is, in fact, food enough to feed people at current pop levels; the problem is one of distribution, not sheer supply.

Couldn't agree more, supply is not the problem. Even here in Portugal, supply could be increased by investing in irrigation. The lower half of the country lies virtually fallow. Irrigation costs money, higher food wholesale prices make irrigation an attractive option, but the food still has to get to where it is needed and non become embroiled in political gamesmanship.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

The problem isnt capitalism, the problem is corporations controlling competition. Its not really capitalism when business suppresses competition. Its corporate socialism.

When John D.Rockefeller created STANDARD OIL whale oil illuminated America, and cost 95 cents a gallon (plus had an effect on whales). Most of America east of the Mississippi River was de-forested for fuel and farms. Rockefeller's innovations decreased the cost of lamp oil to a nickle a gallon. And every politician and corporation tried their best to fuck him.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Soylent Green, anyone?

One thing's for sure, the dynamics of resource wealth and poverty is already climbing into the driver's seat of geopolitics and kicking ideology out of the truck. We're going to look back on the days of the cold war when we had the luxury of fighting about ideas as a kind of fat and golden age. In the near future, people are going to be fighting for their lives, not ideology. Gas & Petro giants like OPEC & the USSR are sitting pretty and resource paupers like Haiti and Egypt are in bad shape. The Sahel desert across the heart of Africa is already a Death Zone with one war after another stretching from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean, all poverty and shortage-induced. Darfur is just another link in that chain.

The next president we have should be an expert in international humanitarian crisis management, able to build alliances with other nations, because it's coming.

 

[cantdog]

Very true, Zoot. Darfur is, at root, a water resource problem, but those are not the terms we use to discuss it. Water will become much more central to the wars and disputes in the world, in this century.

 

[Selena_Kitt]

We are going totally sustainable this year... and next. Growing our own fruits and vegetables (organic), chickens for laying and eating (renewable resource - they breed) and fish (also renewable). We're putting in solar heating (unfortunately, not cooling... *sigh*)... working on solar electric, trying to do it affordably and effectively.

We'll at least be able to feed ourselves if it all goes to hell in a handbasket... but that doesn't do much for the rest of the world/country, I know.

 

[OhMissScarlett]

We are going totally sustainable this year... and next. Growing our own fruits and vegetables (organic), chickens for laying and eating (renewable resource - they breed) and fish (also renewable). We're putting in solar heating (unfortunately, not cooling... *sigh*)... working on solar electric, trying to do it affordably and effectively.

We'll at least be able to feed ourselves if it all goes to hell in a handbasket... but that doesn't do much for the rest of the world/country, I know.

It's all you can hope for, unfortunately. My grandpa said, in regards to the depression, that his family was unaffected because they were completely self-sufficient anyway. I think that people in this country who can't eat without a drive-thru are going to have a harsh awakening, if they're not already having one.

 

[Selena_Kitt]

It's all you can hope for, unfortunately. My grandpa said, in regards to the depression, that his family was unaffected because they were completely self-sufficient anyway. I think that people in this country who can't eat without a drive-thru are going to have a harsh awakening, if they're not already having one.

I'm glad we moved far, far, far from a city, too. Because if rioting is going to happen, that's where it will be. Selfish? Yeah... I guess it is.

 

[manyeyedhydra]

I'm glad we moved far, far, far from a city, too. Because if rioting is going to happen, that's where it will be. Selfish? Yeah... I guess it is.

Until the starving hordes come charging over the hill.

There's always the trusty shotgun for that though

 

[OhMissScarlett]

I'm glad we moved far, far, far from a city, too. Because if rioting is going to happen, that's where it will be. Selfish? Yeah... I guess it is.

I've never liked the idea of being stuck in some city when the shit really hits the fan. Several recent disasters have only solidified this phobia for me. I can survive in the woods, but I'm not so sure about having to loot a Walgreens.

 

[Weird Harold]

The next president we have should be an expert in international humanitarian crisis management, able to build alliances with other nations, because it's coming.

So basically, you're saying we're fucked? I don't see any sign of competence in crisis management in any of our current crop of politicians, let alone the slightest hint of expertise -- unless you believe the tin-foil-hat brigade and the current crop of politicians are deliberately engineering humantarian crises, a la "Wag the Dog."

 

[elfin_odalisque]

It's a temporary problem. It'll self correct over a few years.

I disagree. Politics , NGO's and grant-funded scientists are a toxic mix that always causes problems. In the US, dim-witted politicos have chosen to distort the markets by subsidizing biofuel production thus encouraging farmers to stop producing food crops.

This happens so often when rigorous science is blown over by shoot from the hip lobbyists. Putting a 10 cent tax on gas would be better than the US needing to import 20% more grain.

Africa is going to hell in a handbasket. Zimbabwe, Zambia and Kenya used to keep the continent fed and have spare to export. Now they rely on food handouts.

Soylent Green, anyone?

Wasn't that Charlton Heston?

Very true, Zoot. Darfur is, at root, a water resource problem, but those are not the terms we use to discuss it. Water will become much more central to the wars and disputes in the world, in this century.

Cant, it's more than that. If China hadn't refused to stop buying Sudanese oil and had supported UN sanctions, this conflict would have stopped. The money would have run out.

I agree, more than food even, water resource is the biggest problem facing us at present.

We are going totally sustainable this year... and next. Growing our own fruits and vegetables (organic), chickens for laying and eating (renewable resource - they breed) and fish (also renewable). We're putting in solar heating (unfortunately, not cooling... *sigh*)... working on solar electric, trying to do it affordably and effectively.

We'll at least be able to feed ourselves if it all goes to hell in a handbasket... but that doesn't do much for the rest of the world/country, I know.

Spoken like a true daughter of the pioneers. Just an aside, a couple of windvanes can generate a goodly contribution to the elec for aircon.

My point - the real problem with food supply and price in the world is not overpopulation but interference with the market mechanisms by politicians. With completely different motives (save ego), governments in all five continents have created the unforgivable food shortage.

 

[neonlyte]

I disagree. Politics , NGO's and grant-funded scientists are a toxic mix that always causes problems. In the US, dim-witted politicos have chosen to distort the markets by subsidizing biofuel production thus encouraging farmers to stop producing food crops.

This happens so often when rigorous science is blown over by shoot from the hip lobbyists. Putting a 10 cent tax on gas would be better than the US needing to import 20% more grain.

US wheat production is in decline, has been for the last decade since the former USSR got its production back on target. China has improved its wheat production dramatically over the same timescale and has balanced supply and demand. Wheat consumption per capita in USA has declined from 145lbs/person to 120lbs/person over 8 years, this has depressed 'local' market prices and, together with loss of exports, wheat production has shifted to corn and barley - both of which are major exports for the USA. The USA does 'technically import wheat' but only to maintain a base line of wheat reserves to underpin pre-sold exports. World wheat stocks are declining due to poor recent harvests, causing the rundown in reserves and escalating the price as a hedge against future poor harvest. Production (area under wheat) worldwide has increased 11% over the last two years... unless there is a succession of poor harvests, prices will reduce as stocks re-balance to an acceptable level. US wheat imports 2006/07 - 3.3MMT declines to 2.4MMT - 2007/08 is measured against a production of 65MMT.

Africa is going to hell in a handbasket. Zimbabwe, Zambia and Kenya used to keep the continent fed and have spare to export. Now they rely on food handouts.

And yet, Kenya still continues to export for the European market (not sure about US). Zimbabwe's downward spiral is politically inspired - it will end, Mugabe cannot live for ever. It's astonishing other African leaders continue to support the man who's single-handedly destroyed his country. Don't know anything about Zambia.

Final point - Ethanol is a largely a corn product, though other grains can be used. The USA produces 60% of the world corn, forcing prices up ultimately hurts their export business as other countries will switch to corn production to meet their own demands and profit from the high prices. The argument is largely irrelevant, converting the entire US grain production to ethanol will meet less than 4% of the US energy need.

 

[TheeGoatPig]

There is also another solution that clears up two problems at once.

The tobacco lobby is already about as powerful as the oil lobby. So I say they switch over to making biofuels, which will cut down on supply of tobacco, stopping people from smoking, and also solve a few of the power needs of the world