We’re standing in our own way

“Sihlobo argues that food is plentiful but poverty is inhibiting its flow.” 

This is a quote from today’s Daily Maverick newsletter. It is from an article about land reform, but I think it points to a much darker conundrum. The fact that there is enough food, but people go to bed hungry. “Why does the baby cry, there’s enough food to feed the world,” as Tracy Chapman put it. 

Our “developed” brain tells us that this is a complex problem, one filled with economic theories, distribution hubs and politics. I think we all know that at some more basic level it is very simple. People are hungry, there is food. Others are not letting them eat it. Derrick Jensen puts it very clearly - they cannot get food because a man with a gun will come and stop them (backed up by more men with guns, tanks and bombs). 

I’m reading Charles Eisenstein’s “Sacred Economics”, and while I like the generous well thought out solutions he offers, it is not lost on me that these are all just rules of a game that we’ve made up. It is completely in our power to change them. 

I’m heartened by the renewed interest and push for a universal basic income grant by groups like COPAC and the C-19 coalition in South Africa. It really is an idea who’s time has come, and I hope we can use the Covid-19 crisis as cover to do something remarkable for people. This would be one way we can re-write the rules, quickly, in everyone’s favour.