• Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works
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    3 hours ago

    Even the great depression was, itself, an entirely artificial crisis.

    I’m not saying that it occurred artificially; the causes were all real, and happened naturally.

    But if you consider for even a moment the idea that a stock market crash leads to widespread starvation, it doesn’t make the slightest bit of sense.

    Times of hardship used to be caused by things like droughts or harsh winters; stuff that actually impacted our ability to support ourselves in a physical way.

    But how does someone’s investments failing prevent a farm from growing food? Does crop fertility track with the Dow-Jones? Does soil become less tillable because the FTSE is down?

    The idea that people should starve, in a world that has no less ability to produce crops than it did yesterday, just because there is suddenly less money moving around, is absolute lunacy. In a sensible world, we’d think less about money and more about resources. Resources do not depend on the stock market. Resources do not become more scarce because a bunch of people made bad bets on the housing market.

    No one should starve in a world with the capacity to feed everyone. And we have more than the capacity to feed everyone.

    • moonbunny@sh.itjust.works
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      13 minutes ago

      Iirc, there was also a majorly catastrophic weather event ripping through the majority of prime farmland around the start of the Great Depression that caused tons and tons of crops to fail as a result, which would’ve made access to food scarce and likely more expensive.

      I believe it was The great dust bowl that happened around 1934/1935, but I’d have to double check