Name: Lauryn Gallagher Date: 18 October 2010 Class: Anth 366
In chapter six Robbins discussed the relation of world hunger and poverty to capitalism. “Each year in the world some five million children die of hunger, and each day from 600,000 to over one billion people--one in every five--go hungry.” However, overpopulation doesn’t seem to be the only problem because there is more than enough food to feed everyone in the world. In the 1960s the World Health Organization set as its goal the complete eradication of disease. As explained in chapter 8, they have got rid of many of them. Smallpox, polio and plague once took millions of lives. Although today we have found cures and treatments for these diseases there are many still out there. New diseases such as AIDS and others that are appearing keep threatening lives. Malaria, as mentioned in this chapter a lot has claimed to take more lives each year world-wide than any other disease. After reading chapter six and eight the main topic that was stretched to make you think of the world-wide diseases was how does the way one lives have such an impact on the spread of disease and how does increase of diseases relate to the globalization of capitalist culture?
It is interesting how people convince themselves they are sick instead of malnourished. Robbins says how having malnourished people in a country is a threat to the state; meanwhile, having sick people instead holds no one accountable for the problem. Supposedly, the state doesn’t want it to be there fault, thus, they deny their people are starving to death. The story about the little girl who can’t sleep is sad. Instead of giving her the food she needs, the mother gives her vitamins. If the little girl was sick, this is the proper thing to do. Since she’s not sick, then it isn’t. Clearly, the vitamins are not going to help the girl.
What also amazes me is something Robbins wrote about earlier in the chapter. He mentions that when more food is being produced more people become starved. How ironic is that? The reason for this is because when more food is being produced competition prices cause the food price to lower, which also lowers salaries for the workers. In the end, the workers become poorer. Sadly, a lot of that produced food will go to waste since the poor people cannot afford it. Hopefully one day all this food can feed the malnourished people instead of going to waste.
The biggest thing that stood out to me in reading this chapter was that we actually have enough food and resources to feed/care for every single person on the earth!!!! Its so sad and crazy to me that we could actually keep everyone fed and healthy if we all just decided to share what we have. The rich countries have all the food, and if they dont have immediately at their disposal, they'll find it else where. And like it is the case in many poorer countries, the rich countries pay them to use the land and harvest resources, but they dont actually ever benefit from that land. It actually creates a lower pay for the poor farmers just so we (the rich) can pay less here.
I love my country, but I think we are one of the greediest. We want and take and hoard, but never help out those countries that provide us with so much.
Robbins mentions in Chapter 6 the fact about malnourished children and the cause of death that is at a rise. The unfortunate part about it is that there are multibillionaires in the world that aren't giving a dime of their money to help out the people that need it. The worst part is that we think the way to fix it is to keep producing food, but in the end it causes more problems as Robbins proves. I think that if we utilize other countries for their land and cheap labor then we should have to pay them in whatever that country is lacking. In most cases it is food or health care. Therefore, we aren't giving away money per-say but we are helping out the people that in the end make our economy work. Without the rich countries outsourcing their products we wouldn't have products because the poor countries that are dying of malnutrition are making them for us. It is just mind boggling that there is enough food to feed everyone on the planet but the main cause of death in poor countries is malnutrition.
In addition to the millions of civilians who have been killed in U.S. wars overseas, there is an even larger genocide taking place; and the same people are responsible. The figures Robbins cites are grim: 250,000 children per week being murdered, 1500 per hour (p. 156) -- they're being starved to death. There is plenty of food to go around (p. 156), but people starve to death because they can't afford it. We live in a world where people's right to profit off of food they didn't produce is valued more highly than people's right to feed their children (p. 163).
Killing millions of people through starvation is just as murderous as choking someone to death at a CIA black site, or napalming a Vietnamese village. Capitalist nations, through their economic policies alone, have slaughtered far more civilians than all of the fascist governments of Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, and Mao combined; in India alone, more die that in China's 1958-1961 famine every 8 years (p. 166); and that's before you even start to count the millions slaughtered by military violence in Vietnam, Cambodia, Afghanistan, Iraq and all of our puppet dictatorships.
In chapter six Robbins talks about the, "optimistic projections have been replaced by hopelessness and resignation as 1.2 billion people are estimated to still live on less than one dollar per day, and almost 3 billion on less than two dollars per day. Estimates of the number of people with insufficient food range from 800 million to well over a billion, virtually one-sixth of the world's population"(Robbins156). It amazing me that so many people are this poor and hungry. Robbins also talks about how that there are,"250,000 children per week, and about 1500 per hour, die from inadequate diets and diseases that thrive on malnourished bodies"(Robbins156)
In chapter 8, the fact that I find scary is that even if we found a cure for a certain amount of various diseases, as it goes in nature, the survival of the fittest takes its part and these diseases morph into super-bugs and it makes them more deadly. However, this can be somewhat prevented by not using as many antibiotics and taking better care of ourselves by maintaining a healthy lifestyle. I agree with Danielle about ch. 6 as well, that fact of having enough food and resources and just not using it due to a corrupt society of only doing things for people who can pay was really disturbing.
I found it very shocking that we have the power and the resources to feed everyone on earth here in the US, yet we still continue not to and to worry about ourselves only. And when Robbins tells us that we are just producing more and more food, the problem seems to be getting bigger, because here we are with all the resources to keep people alive and fed, and yet we still continue to over consume.
I also find it pretty interesting that the definitions of the same word can mean so many different things depending on your status. For example being sick and miserable to us is nothing compared to people living in poorer countries where they are so sick that they are malnourished due to dirty living conditions and not enough food to survive. These people are unable to privide for their families which causes death in young children/babies. If that were to happen in the US everyday many of us would not be here, and i just find it crazy that this problem is still ongoing in the world of 2010.
I thought it was very interesting that the spread of AIDS is largly contributed to by tourism. This never occured to me, it seemed like it would be more of an isolated incident type of situation. But this is clearly not the case. I mean everybody knew that there is a good majority of AIDS in Africa, but to find that some of it was coming from Thailand? And his point that the larger cities that travel frequently to each other contracting it more frequently also makes total sense. Never occured to me.
Chapter 6 showed some incredible facts on the amount of food production and the amount of starvation. You would think more companies would take it into their own hands to dispose of their maybe not best products in a more giving manner. I'm sure there are hundreds of pounds of food that are just disposed of since they are less then perfect, when they are still edible. Really a tough situation.
It is an appalling fact to find out we have enough food in the world to feed everyone but yet there are people dying in the world due to lack of nourishment. There is disconnect between those who can afford to eat nutritious, healthy, expensive foods and people who only eat overly processed starchy and sugary foods (or no food at all). I did a small research paper a couple of years ago in which some pundits would argue poor people in the U.S. could not possibly be going hungry because many of them were obese. Poor people have less money and processed foods are much cheaper. If you were a single parent at the grocery store are you going to pay $3 for a jug of apple juice or 20 cents for a packet of koolaid to mix with half a bag of cheap sugar? In this case these poor people may be obese but they are malnourished. Meghan Elder
In chapter 6, Robbins talks about world hunger and makes very engrossing points involving food production, famine, and overpopulation. I found it very interesting how world hunger is not the result of inadequate food supply and there is more than enough food to supply the country or the means to produce it. Robbins also explains how famine is not the most commons reason for hunger but rather daily insufficiency in food supply. Apparently, famines receive more press coverage and so we think that they are the reason for hunger while endemic hunger is actually far more common. Furthermore, famine itself is rarely caused by actual food shortages. Most of the time there is more than enough food to supply a country but it is unattainable due to unemployment and high food prices. This was demonstrated in Bangladesh in 1974 when thousands of people starved to death due to massive unemployment brought on by flooded farmland and an increase in food prices.
Chapter 6 talks about hunger and poverty in the world. At the end of World War II, scientists thought with modern advances, world hunger, poverty, and famine would be nonexistent. They were wrong as one-fifth of the world’s population live in poverty. People without a lot of food are 600 million to over a billion. Children are the most prone to famine. Estimates show that 250,000 children per week die from starving and having malnourished bodies. This is not due to not enough food being produced. There is enough food to feed 120 percent of the world’s population, but some people are too poor to afford it.
250,000 children die each week from malnutrition when there is enough resources so that no one in the world should go hungry. It's outrageous to me that the most vulnerable groups (women and children) are the ones to suffer the most. But in this world of corporations first and people second, it's unfortunately not surprising that the people who need help the most don't receive it because these marginalized groups are not in the corporations' target groups of consumers from which they can profit from. Same for the drug companies who could provide a solution for malaria and other diseases prevalent in the third world. There's just no profit there, and obviously little compassion.
The way society has evolved from hunting and gathering to the Green revolution and trade of goods seems to be the main reason why I doubt world famine will be eradicated. The average farmer is no longer looking to feed just himself, he wants to make a profit, just like everyone else. We have been molded into this new way of agriculture slowly but efficiently, unless the genetically engineered crops that can grow healthy without having to spend as much energy, starvation and famine will not be eradicated. Until this is true, I predict that we are bound to rely heavily on petroleum and most of the profits will be geared towards that.
Name: Lauryn Gallagher
ReplyDeleteDate: 18 October 2010
Class: Anth 366
In chapter six Robbins discussed the relation of world hunger and poverty to capitalism. “Each year in the world some five million children die of hunger, and each day from 600,000 to over one billion people--one in every five--go hungry.” However, overpopulation doesn’t seem to be the only problem because there is more than enough food to feed everyone in the world.
In the 1960s the World Health Organization set as its goal the complete eradication of disease. As explained in chapter 8, they have got rid of many of them. Smallpox, polio and plague once took millions of lives. Although today we have found cures and treatments for these diseases there are many still out there. New diseases such as AIDS and others that are appearing keep threatening lives. Malaria, as mentioned in this chapter a lot has claimed to take more lives each year world-wide than any other disease. After reading chapter six and eight the main topic that was stretched to make you think of the world-wide diseases was how does the way one lives have such an impact on the spread of disease and how does increase of diseases relate to the globalization of capitalist culture?
It is interesting how people convince themselves they are sick instead of malnourished. Robbins says how having malnourished people in a country is a threat to the state; meanwhile, having sick people instead holds no one accountable for the problem. Supposedly, the state doesn’t want it to be there fault, thus, they deny their people are starving to death. The story about the little girl who can’t sleep is sad. Instead of giving her the food she needs, the mother gives her vitamins. If the little girl was sick, this is the proper thing to do. Since she’s not sick, then it isn’t. Clearly, the vitamins are not going to help the girl.
ReplyDeleteWhat also amazes me is something Robbins wrote about earlier in the chapter. He mentions that when more food is being produced more people become starved. How ironic is that? The reason for this is because when more food is being produced competition prices cause the food price to lower, which also lowers salaries for the workers. In the end, the workers become poorer. Sadly, a lot of that produced food will go to waste since the poor people cannot afford it. Hopefully one day all this food can feed the malnourished people instead of going to waste.
The biggest thing that stood out to me in reading this chapter was that we actually have enough food and resources to feed/care for every single person on the earth!!!! Its so sad and crazy to me that we could actually keep everyone fed and healthy if we all just decided to share what we have. The rich countries have all the food, and if they dont have immediately at their disposal, they'll find it else where. And like it is the case in many poorer countries, the rich countries pay them to use the land and harvest resources, but they dont actually ever benefit from that land. It actually creates a lower pay for the poor farmers just so we (the rich) can pay less here.
ReplyDeleteI love my country, but I think we are one of the greediest. We want and take and hoard, but never help out those countries that provide us with so much.
Robbins mentions in Chapter 6 the fact about malnourished children and the cause of death that is at a rise. The unfortunate part about it is that there are multibillionaires in the world that aren't giving a dime of their money to help out the people that need it. The worst part is that we think the way to fix it is to keep producing food, but in the end it causes more problems as Robbins proves. I think that if we utilize other countries for their land and cheap labor then we should have to pay them in whatever that country is lacking. In most cases it is food or health care. Therefore, we aren't giving away money per-say but we are helping out the people that in the end make our economy work. Without the rich countries outsourcing their products we wouldn't have products because the poor countries that are dying of malnutrition are making them for us. It is just mind boggling that there is enough food to feed everyone on the planet but the main cause of death in poor countries is malnutrition.
ReplyDeleteIn addition to the millions of civilians who have been killed in U.S. wars overseas, there is an even larger genocide taking place; and the same people are responsible. The figures Robbins cites are grim: 250,000 children per week being murdered, 1500 per hour (p. 156) -- they're being starved to death. There is plenty of food to go around (p. 156), but people starve to death because they can't afford it. We live in a world where people's right to profit off of food they didn't produce is valued more highly than people's right to feed their children (p. 163).
ReplyDeleteKilling millions of people through starvation is just as murderous as choking someone to death at a CIA black site, or napalming a Vietnamese village. Capitalist nations, through their economic policies alone, have slaughtered far more civilians than all of the fascist governments of Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, and Mao combined; in India alone, more die that in China's 1958-1961 famine every 8 years (p. 166); and that's before you even start to count the millions slaughtered by military violence in Vietnam, Cambodia, Afghanistan, Iraq and all of our puppet dictatorships.
In chapter six Robbins talks about the, "optimistic projections have been replaced by hopelessness and resignation as 1.2 billion people are estimated to still live on less than one dollar per day, and almost 3 billion on less than two dollars per day. Estimates of the number of people with insufficient food range from 800 million to well over a billion, virtually one-sixth of the world's population"(Robbins156). It amazing me that so many people are this poor and hungry. Robbins also talks about how that there are,"250,000 children per week, and about 1500 per hour, die from inadequate diets and diseases that thrive on malnourished bodies"(Robbins156)
ReplyDeleteIn chapter 8, the fact that I find scary is that even if we found a cure for a certain amount of various diseases, as it goes in nature, the survival of the fittest takes its part and these diseases morph into super-bugs and it makes them more deadly. However, this can be somewhat prevented by not using as many antibiotics and taking better care of ourselves by maintaining a healthy lifestyle.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Danielle about ch. 6 as well, that fact of having enough food and resources and just not using it due to a corrupt society of only doing things for people who can pay was really disturbing.
Amy Hart
ReplyDelete10:00 am
I found it very shocking that we have the power and the resources to feed everyone on earth here in the US, yet we still continue not to and to worry about ourselves only. And when Robbins tells us that we are just producing more and more food, the problem seems to be getting bigger, because here we are with all the resources to keep people alive and fed, and yet we still continue to over consume.
I also find it pretty interesting that the definitions of the same word can mean so many different things depending on your status. For example being sick and miserable to us is nothing compared to people living in poorer countries where they are so sick that they are malnourished due to dirty living conditions and not enough food to survive. These people are unable to privide for their families which causes death in young children/babies. If that were to happen in the US everyday many of us would not be here, and i just find it crazy that this problem is still ongoing in the world of 2010.
Chandra Millbauer
ReplyDeleteClass at 10 am
I thought it was very interesting that the spread of AIDS is largly contributed to by tourism. This never occured to me, it seemed like it would be more of an isolated incident type of situation. But this is clearly not the case. I mean everybody knew that there is a good majority of AIDS in Africa, but to find that some of it was coming from Thailand? And his point that the larger cities that travel frequently to each other contracting it more frequently also makes total sense. Never occured to me.
Chapter 6 showed some incredible facts on the amount of food production and the amount of starvation. You would think more companies would take it into their own hands to dispose of their maybe not best products in a more giving manner. I'm sure there are hundreds of pounds of food that are just disposed of since they are less then perfect, when they are still edible. Really a tough situation.
It is an appalling fact to find out we have enough food in the world to feed everyone but yet there are people dying in the world due to lack of nourishment. There is disconnect between those who can afford to eat nutritious, healthy, expensive foods and people who only eat overly processed starchy and sugary foods (or no food at all). I did a small research paper a couple of years ago in which some pundits would argue poor people in the U.S. could not possibly be going hungry because many of them were obese. Poor people have less money and processed foods are much cheaper. If you were a single parent at the grocery store are you going to pay $3 for a jug of apple juice or 20 cents for a packet of koolaid to mix with half a bag of cheap sugar? In this case these poor people may be obese but they are malnourished.
ReplyDeleteMeghan Elder
In chapter 6, Robbins talks about world hunger and makes very engrossing points involving food production, famine, and overpopulation. I found it very interesting how world hunger is not the result of inadequate food supply and there is more than enough food to supply the country or the means to produce it. Robbins also explains how famine is not the most commons reason for hunger but rather daily insufficiency in food supply. Apparently, famines receive more press coverage and so we think that they are the reason for hunger while endemic hunger is actually far more common. Furthermore, famine itself is rarely caused by actual food shortages. Most of the time there is more than enough food to supply a country but it is unattainable due to unemployment and high food prices. This was demonstrated in Bangladesh in 1974 when thousands of people starved to death due to massive unemployment brought on by flooded farmland and an increase in food prices.
ReplyDeleteJosh Murphy
ReplyDeleteChapter 6 talks about hunger and poverty in the world. At the end of World War II, scientists thought with modern advances, world hunger, poverty, and famine would be nonexistent. They were wrong as one-fifth of the world’s population live in poverty. People without a lot of food are 600 million to over a billion. Children are the most prone to famine. Estimates show that 250,000 children per week die from starving and having malnourished bodies. This is not due to not enough food being produced. There is enough food to feed 120 percent of the world’s population, but some people are too poor to afford it.
250,000 children die each week from malnutrition when there is enough resources so that no one in the world should go hungry. It's outrageous to me that the most vulnerable groups (women and children) are the ones to suffer the most. But in this world of corporations first and people second, it's unfortunately not surprising that the people who need help the most don't receive it because these marginalized groups are not in the corporations' target groups of consumers from which they can profit from. Same for the drug companies who could provide a solution for malaria and other diseases prevalent in the third world. There's just no profit there, and obviously little compassion.
ReplyDeleteChapter six Robbins
ReplyDeleteThe way society has evolved from hunting and gathering to the Green revolution and trade of goods seems to be the main reason why I doubt world famine will be eradicated. The average farmer is no longer looking to feed just himself, he wants to make a profit, just like everyone else. We have been molded into this new way of agriculture slowly but efficiently, unless the genetically engineered crops that can grow healthy without having to spend as much energy, starvation and famine will not be eradicated. Until this is true, I predict that we are bound to rely heavily on petroleum and most of the profits will be geared towards that.
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Jose L. Garcia