Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by gustavus 57 days ago
Increased work and fuel means increased costs, increased costs means increased prices, increased prices means less food available for purchase by those on the margins, less food means starvation.
2 comments

So anything that effects food prices, regardless of magnitude, causes mass starvation?
No, not regardless of magnitude. But anything that have a large impact on food prices will decrease the ability of poor people to pay for it. It’s not rocket science.
Then it's a discussion about magnitude and jumping to starvation is unfounded.
Price increases due to disruption of Ukrainian grain shipments from the war substantially threatened African food stability.

Despite their being plenty of capacity elsewhere because the smaller redirects of trucking into the European markets crashed prices enough that it led to protests in Poland and discontent elsewhere (though probably with significant Russian psyops involvement).

People are already starving in the world. With higher prices the amount of people starving would be more. It's gonna be ten thousand more or a million more? That's up for debate.
Anything that causes food prices to rise a lot causes starvation yea, when prices go up people consume less.
We have resources for plenty of nonessential expenditures that could be diverted if avoiding starvation was our collective goal. I’m not always sure it would be, but the constraint isn’t a death sentence on its own.