Permanently Deleted

  • RNAi [he/him]
    ·
    1 year ago

    Tiers of "quality" for products exist under communism too. Some people need powerful computers, other just need to open their mail. There is a demand for several tiers and flavors, that demand can be met in a planned economy.

    • trex@discuss.tchncs.de
      ·
      1 year ago

      Then how do you decide who gets the better and who gets the worse food? Doesn’t that introduce inequality. And yes good food isn’t a necessity so you can argue that there is no real need for good food but that’s just depressing for people who like food

      • Saeculum [he/him, comrade/them]
        ·
        1 year ago

        The first priority is that everyone gets adequate food, and once that has been achieved, variation can be achieved from locally sourced produce.

      • ewichuu
        hexagon
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        deleted by creator

        • trex@discuss.tchncs.de
          ·
          1 year ago

          I don’t think that is true at all. Food is “bad” because as you said the producers cut costs. But you are forgetting that these costs represent real world resources. You have the choice to A. Produce less with a better quality or B produce more but with a worse quality. In order for us to be able to provide for food for everyone food quality is going to suffer even if only a bit

          • RNAi [he/him]
            ·
            1 year ago

            Even if that was the case, which it isn't at all, would you NOT trade everyone eating adecuately for you not eating the fancy variety of tomatos?

            How much human suffering is caviar worth to you?

          • ewichuu
            hexagon
            ·
            edit-2
            1 year ago

            deleted by creator

            • Llituro [he/him, they/them]
              ·
              1 year ago

              The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit- and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains. And the smell of rot fills the country. Burn coffee for fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire. Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out. Slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the earth.

              There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificate- died of malnutrition- because the food must rot, must be forced to rot. The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quick-lime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.

              • ewichuu
                hexagon
                ·
                edit-2
                1 year ago

                deleted by creator

      • RNAi [he/him]
        ·
        1 year ago

        You can have a planned economy that encompasses "niche" consumer products too. Regardless that nowadays most "niche" things scale up in consumption really quick thanks to quick logistics. Something being niche doesn't mean it shouldn't be produced.

        Also, you can have systems where the state controls the big and medium levers of economy (energy, grains (wheat/corn/soy/etc), healthcare, housing, education) through different kinds of state organisms/"enterprises", while the small scale production, say fresh-bread bakeries is handled by small coops.

      • Llituro [he/him, they/them]
        ·
        1 year ago

        how about we worry about that when everyone has food that is high enough quality to not kill them. but presumably first come first serve or something? people will have more free time to prepare food better regardless? reorganizing the entire economy around human value instead of profit would so completely alter american foodways so much that the question is borderline pointless?