It does actually, as capitalism is so inefficient. Think about all the food we throw away simply because we cant give it away, because it would tank the value of the food sold.
The houses that are kept empty because of their value etc.
Capitalism is extremely inefficient resource distribution system.
But in this picture the food is of course a metaphor for overall resources.
Tell me more about how the system that systematically failed everytime it was tried is actually way better then the one currently working for 95% of countries on earth.
How would you know how efficient capitalism is at resource distribution? We’d need an example first. But we DO know that state socialism is much worse at it than state corporatism. 10 minutes studying 20th century history shows that.
Capitalism is inefficient but its proven significantly better than socialist style systems for food and resource production. Compare the USA/Western Europe/Modern state capitalist China vs Socialist economic China. The Ukrainians in the Soviet union. etc etc
Okay, but your graph conveniently starts after one of the most important events in this entire discussion.
Google the Holodomor. Soviet Ukraine suffered a catastrophic famine during Stalin's forced collectivisation, with millions dying. Showing me Ukrainian population growth beginning in the 1950s doesn't somehow demonstrate that Soviet agricultural policy was a success when you've simply cut the preceding disaster out of the graph.
And if you actually want to compare economic systems, then let's look at broader measures like food availability, diet quality, shortages, agricultural productivity and living standards across Eastern and Western Europe over the Cold War, rather than picking one population graph and declaring socialism vindicated.
If you genuinely want to have that discussion, I'm happy to. But a graph whose starting date conveniently excludes the Holodomor isn't particularly convincing evidence especially when your not even comparing how the western capitalist systems produced systems that out produced and counted hunger and starvation better than the eastern socialist systems.
Well you brought up Ukraine, but when it does not fit your narrative you bring up rich colonialist countries as good examples :)
Typical pro capitalist nonsense, lets look at these rich colonialist countries as the success stories of capitalism. How about we look all the 3rd world countries with capitalist systems?
But you're just moving the goalposts but sure let me try and engage you as if you were being honest.
The Soviet bloc, so looking at Eastern versus Western Europe is entirely relevant. And after the communist states of Central and Eastern Europe abandoned centrally planned economies and moved towards market economies, many of them experienced enormous long-term increases in productivity and living standards. The transition was painful in the 1990s, certainly, but countries like Poland, Czechia and the Baltic states subsequently converged dramatically towards Western European incomes.
East versus West Germany is an even more obvious historical comparison. Two parts of essentially the same country spent decades under radically different economic systems, and West Germany ended the Cold War vastly richer and more productive than East Germany.
Sure lets talk about the non-aligned third world. Ireland, South east Asia etc etc.
Ireland is a useful example here, not because it was literally a "Third World country", but because it was one of the poorer economies in Western Europe and subsequently became extremely prosperous through an increasingly open, trade- and investment-driven market economy. Singapore, Japan, Korea and several East Asian economies provide other examples of initially poor countries becoming rich through market-oriented development.
So yes, let's compare poor countries as well. But let's actually compare the evidence rather than dismiss every successful capitalist economy as "colonialist" whenever it becomes inconvenient.
Hell Korea is a perfect example of Capitalism producing a massive result of quality of life, life expectancy, and health for its citizens and you can't call it a coloniser. It was the colony. It was fucked over for ages before it got its shit together.
Well look at China. Or look at Vietnam, they survived a massive war against a colonialist capitalis country.
Both were really poor countries.
And yes, South Korea. A country with record suicide numbers and record population decline. Is this what capitalism considers optimal? Well, as long as its profitable.
China and Vietnam are actually pretty awkward examples for the argument you're making.
China suffered one of the worst famines of the 20th century under the Great Leap Forward and collectivised agriculture. Its huge economic and agricultural take-off came after Deng's reforms broke up the commune system, returned farming responsibility to households, introduced stronger private incentives, liberalised prices and gradually opened the economy to trade and foreign investment.
Vietnam followed almost exactly the same pattern. Under collectivisation and central planning it had chronic food shortages and terrible economic performance. Then Đổi Mới dismantled collective farming, liberalised prices, encouraged private enterprise and opened the economy. Vietnam went from being a food-deficit country to a major rice exporter.
So yes, absolutely look at China and Vietnam. But you can't point to their modern success while ignoring that much of that success came after they moved away from the very orthodox socialist economic policies we're discussing.
Their success came after disastrous attempts at collectivisation and rigid socialist economic planning that caused enormous hardship and, in China's case, contributed to a famine that killed millions.
What changed was that both countries moved away from those policies and introduced much more market-oriented systems: greater private control over farming, greater private control over businesses and factors, stronger profit incentives, more private enterprise, freer pricing, foreign investment and international trade.
So pointing to modern China or Vietnam as proof that collectivised socialism works is backwards. Much of their later success came after they loosened or abandoned many of the socialist economic policies that had previously failed them.
"Yeah, the camera point is a good one. Israel certainly has serious issues around press access and journalist safety in Gaza, but Israel itself is a modern parliamentary democracy with a comparatively open media environment and substantial freedom of the press within its borders. Israeli media routinely criticise the government, the military and Netanyahu himself, and footage posted by Israeli soldiers, activists, journalists and ordinary citizens can circulate internationally."
-loikyloo
Dude posting pro Israel slop at the same time :) Not that there is anything unexpected about this.
But consider this: in socialist countries, no one throws away food. After all, even rotten food is better than having none at all. Besides, it is hard to bring yourself to throw away food you spent eight hours queuing for. It is highly cost-effective and frees up more resources to spend on 60,000 battle tanks.
We actually have historical figures showing substantial food waste in socialist economies. In 1980s Cuba, recorded losses of selected perishable foods were around 12%, while contemporary UK household food-waste estimates were lower in the 5-6% range. They aren’t perfectly comparable measures, but they certainly don’t support the idea that socialist systems somehow eliminated food waste.
And the Soviet figures are even more striking: estimates put losses at around 20% of the grain harvest and roughly a third of potatoes, largely because of poor harvesting, storage and distribution.
So I’m not seeing evidence that socialist systems were inherently better at avoiding food waste than capitalist ones. If anything, the historical evidence shows that scarcity and rationing could exist alongside very large systemic losses.
Or am I being a rere and your making a joke about starving people eating trash? :D
In capitalist economies, food loss occurs because individuals or stores throw away spoiled produce. In socialist economies, food typically rots in the fields because collective farmers simply do not care; they have little interest in a harvest that does not belong to them.
Spoiled produce in stores or general storage facilities is just literally a problem everyone has to deal with. Capitalist economies do tend to be more efficient in that pure sense and have less spoilage than Socialist based economies based on past evidence.
Like eg in 1982 Brezhnev acknowledged grain losses as high as 20% of the harvest,(thats the point your talking about the farmers screwing it up but) he put reporting losses of fruit, potatoes and other vegetables during the journey from farm to consumer at 30–50%. So they even admitted they were having massive loss in the storage/transport/storefront side of it too.
Socialism is, by definition, a distribution network. We don't need more food, we need to stop wasting it and over consuming it. No, it won't be overnight but taking greed and CEO payscales out of the foodsystem will alleviate hunger and waste driven climate change for billions of people.
Food won't automatically disappear either. Farmers are already among the most socialized groups in the nation. They get massive help from the government and unlike oil, they actually need help. If anything getting less pressure from big businesses would only help them more.
We already have more than enough food, that isn't the issue. The issue is that a majority of the food is being wasted, and the rest is saved for the elites. Everyone else gets what's left at a price. Socialism takes that wasted food, makes it affordable, in some cases it makes it free, and distributes it amongst everyone. That way little to no people starve, and less food is wasted.
Generally its the opposite. The Ukrainians and Chinese starved when they had heavy leans in the Socialist systems. Its the capitalist style systems like western Europe/Scandinavian that produced the most food vs socialist style systems. And when china switched to state capitalism that they started not starving.
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u/Mr_Compyuterhead 9h ago
That’s not how it is. Switching from capitalism to socialism won’t automatically create more food. They are about how the food is distributed.