[nostrademons]

> it is monstrous that food exports are happening in the context of local starvation

This is only absurd if you consider the nation-state to be the fundamental unit of mutual aid.

If you consider a different division of population - the corporation, or the city-state, or the tribe, or the individual, for example - it makes perfect sense. Even before "monstrous" capitalism, you'd get plenty of situations where one tribe would actively pillage the farms of a neighboring tribe - food "exports" and local starvation.

You might argue that this is monstrous as well, and I'd even agree with you, but that's an argument against being shitty to your fellow human beings, and not specifically against capitalism. Capitalism is just yet another definition of "tribe", where the corporation that employs you is the tribe that you owe allegiance to, damn all the other tribes.

[_8ca6]

Yes, before capitalism, which is bad, things were even worse. I can critique both capitalism and what came before it. And it's not just an argument"against being shitty."

Capitalism really doesn't have anything to do with tribalism though. Workers don't have any allegiance whatsoever to their employer beyond that dictated by the imperative of not starving to death. The structural constraint under critique is the one where capital seeks to maximize profits regardless of the human cost. So, when a grower exports food for money instead of giving it to starving people for free, that's what I'm talking about.

[RobertoG]

It seems to me that the problem is that open markets (capitalism is too general for this I think) is sold like the perfect panacea that will solve all the problems, even if the evidence is against it.

The path followed for development by the developed nations have nothing to do with the path they (we?) recommend to underdeveloped nations.