I was at a political debate a while ago with two of my local MPs, and I asked the question - "why isn't food free?" Lib Dem - "Because they gave food away in the roman empire" Labour - "Because they used to make people work for food in the workhouses" Neither of these answered my question at all. I was wondering if anyone here could answer my question. My reasons for asking being: Farmer's are subsidised (by the tax-payer), coincidentally, approximately the value of the food they produce. We then pay twice this value to buy food because of the inflated prices caused by the subsidies. Add on to that the mark-up by the supermarket, and the added cost to the taxpayer of paying out benefits so the unemployed, sick, disabled etc can afford to buy this over-priced food. Wouldn't it just be simpler, to pay the farmers TO produce food, and make food free?
Food isn't free because it's the most obvious natural action of humanity to put a price on. You have to eat, so it's genuis to make people pay for it because that way you'll always get money and be rich and better than Joe Schmoe because that's what life is all about.
Well, we live in a sort of semi capitalist society don't we. Capitalism means, basically, you pay for what you get, but that doesn't apply to education or (in the UK at least) healthcare. It doesn't mean you pay for something three times over. If education is seen as a right so fundamental as to be taken out of the capitalist equation, why can't food? Surely eating is a far more fundamental right than having the ability to write.
M8, they do. Food is very fuckin inportant to my state of mind. I can wash dishes all day, for a job. When you're doing it in a working kitchen with those giant pots and pans and big trays of plates and shit that need pushing into and dragging out of the machine - it's good excersize and it's actually quite relaxing. However, at home, it's a fucking chore. Communal kitchens and free food - imagine what that would do for the world we live in!
And freedom to volunteer in these kitchens or on farms, without having to beg and plead your case and prove that you can and that you're good enough. And freedom to work as much as you want on them, for as long as you want, when you want.
That's what I mean by semi-capitalist. In a fully capo society each individual would pay for these things by how much they used them, not by how much they earnt.
