Why Capitalism is Bad for Food

"People are starving in Africa so that American politicians can court votes in farm states."

It makes you think about what kind of world we really live in. Food, like water, is a necessity for life. But both resources have turned into profit-driven corporate machines. Why should people all over the world be starving, without access to water? The world couldn't always have been this way. People just don't live where they can't get water. It's that simple.

Water should be free, with unlimited access for everyone, everywhere, all the time. At the risk of being too political, only a hard-hearted hard-core capitalist could disagree with that.

But food is a tougher question. People have been trading in food for millenia, but somehow these days entire countries are full of starving populations. Why is this? Oh, the people we could blame. Colonists and colonialists, the industrial revolution, subsidies... the list goes on. Yes, these are sources of the problem but the real problem here is not what happened back then but why it isn't working now. And why isn't it working? Like Krugman says, it's because of the cost of raw materials and basic foodstuffs. And who's to blame? The American system, oil, biofuel, and the Chinese.