The hard left is woeful that America’s financial trouble hasn’t led to the kind of revolt here that we’re now seeing in Egypt. You hear it bubbling up between the lines of their other ‘class based’ arguments, and their demands to lynch Clarence Thomas. It’s also where the defense for Frances Fox Piven (whose been hoping for bloody revolution for years) has come from.
But it occurred to me today that the reason we’re not seeing it is not because the underclass isn’t interested in rebellion, but because we no longer have an underclass. Our poor people in America are overweight. They have air-conditioning, cable TV, and usually a car. If you’ve spent as much time traveling in the third world as I have then you’ll know that a description like that simply doesn’t fit ‘poor people’ at all.
The single mother living on public assistance in a Chicago housing project may not have a life I would want for my daughter, but she has exactly the kind of life that millions of poor people in the third world would want for themselves. I think you’d be hard pressed to find anyone from the slums of Caracas or Jakarta who wouldn’t swap in an instant. In Lagos or Nairobi even the better off citizens would take that trade. And that’s why they aren’t rioting in the streets in Chicago. Because when your children are going hungry it’s easy to see violence as an answer. But it’s much tougher when you may not have all you want, but you do have all you need.
You could argue that the hard left is a victim of it’s own success – but I disagree. The fact is, their success isn’t their own – it is by definition someone else's. Without someone else generating wealth, they would have nothing to redistribute. But the fact is, their redistribution is already too pervasive to foster the kind of violent uprising they’re hoping for. And that won’t change until the government has run completely out of rope.
Rising food prices domestically would get them there by increasing the desperation of our poor. International socialism starved nearly 70 million people in the 20th century, so we know they have no problem with it as a political tactic. But I think we’ll see open warfare abroad before domestic food prices will get to the level the hard left requires to fulfill their goals.
As a country, lost cost food production is the one area where we continue to utterly dominate the world. Places like Brazil, Mexico, and China will fall apart and places like Nigeria and Indonesia will be in flames first before our food costs reach a crisis level. But don’t think the hard left doesn't have it in them to push that way anyway.
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Affordable energy = Affordable food
Many do not realize how energy costs affect food costs. Not just from the transportation end, but from the point of growing the food in the first place:
Fertilizers: Petroleum and natural gas based.
Pesticides: many components also petro based.
Aquaculture, greenhouse based agriculture = requires a source of energy.. mostly fossil fuel based.
Way back in my college days, I worked for Foster Wheeler. They had a plant out in PA burning waste coal. The waste heat powered a large greenhouse complex that grew peppers and tomatoes.
The greenhouse grew crops under superior conditions: High CO2 concentrations, precise fertilizer and water delivery, artificial lighting for when the weather doesn't cooperate.
The output of this modest sized facility was amazing. However, its only possible because the greenhouse had a cheap source of energy. A facility like this could be located in a densely populated area... But it only viable if the energy to run it is cheap and available.
The Left will gets its food crisis. The trigger though will be the restriction of the development of greater energy resources. This will be done through outright bans (Obama admin blocking drilling) or diverting resources to economic white elephants like wind power.
I get your point and I think it’s valid, but I also think you miss an issue or three.
First of all, the cost of food is only correlated to energy if you do it right. We automate our food production to a massive degree so the cost of energy is a big component of it. But as the price of food rises its correlation to energy falls because it becomes more efficient to devote labor to it instead of capital. It’s a small thing probably, but it puts a ceiling on food prices independent of energy that I think will be enough to keep us from a genuine crisis. Lots of people won’t be able to afford to eat what they want, but in this country at least, few will be going hungry.
Secondly, I think the left has it all wrong by trying to attack energy production. Global warming as a movement is as dead as the dodo. No one buys that nonsense anymore. And the success of the ‘high energy cost’ lobby will be inversely correlated to unemployment. If it costs someone a job (and it will) they won’t be able to do much of anything. Obama will try to do the whole thing through the EPA - but whoever is elected president after him can reverse whatever is done that way just as easily.
The key to implementing leftist strategies is to disconnect cause and effect for the voters. As an example, people don’t really understand where the costs of medical care come from so implementing a leftist strategy is comparatively easy. But people understand what high energy costs do to unemployment. More people learn it every day by being unemployed. The solar panel and windmill crowd is already reduced to college students and the cynical a-holes who manipulate them. So I don’t see them making much more ground.
This country runs on oil, like it or not. And when oil reaches 200 a barrel, they’ll be drilling for it in the middle of the Berkeley English literature department and they’ll shoot anyone who protests.
Thirdly, there are things that are going to bring the whole house down way before we get into a serious food crisis, so don’t lose any sleep over going hungry.
I didn't mean that the food situation would reach crisis proportions here in the USA. Though my last trip to the store was somewhat pain inducing to my wallet.
Third world though will be a different story. Add high energy costs to blocking GM crops (vitamin A enriched rice as a primary example) will have a deadly affect at some point. Cold weather around the world has been affecting staple crops such as rice. We are getting a repeat of 2008.. only worse.
As for global warming scam being dead... don't count it out just yet. There is a large contingent (from the like of Soros to a bunch of large corporations) that have too much invested in the scam. Want to know why your electric rates went up 50% (really.. they did) from a few years ago? Its to pay for all those solar and wind turbine subsidies.
Lots of people are making money off of this scam for it to disappear anytime soon.
Lot of countries facing food inflation, import their food. America does not really need to.
http://www.fas.usda.gov/psdonline/psdgetreport.aspx?hidReportRetrievalName=BVS&hidReportRetrievalID=884&hidReportRetrievalTemplateID=1
At less than 5% of world's population, US produces about a 3rd of worlds grains. Yes, worst case is just eating something we don't like. It is not easy to go hungry in America.
What other things are you talking about, that can bring the house down?
I'm not keeping secrets here Vishnu - there are lots of things that can end badly and some (like our fiscal issues) that will almost certainly end badly.
All I meant was that food prices at a 'crisis' level are miles off in the US, and rising prices will cause all sorts of things to fall apart overseas long before it's a government toppling issue here.
500% food price inflation and half the world will be in flames. There's no way to predict the myriad of issues that will raise.
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