And yet I note you haven't actually challenged my point: A subsidy is when the government pays for food, then gives it out for free (it costs less to the consumer than it would otherwise.) An investor pays for food, then sells it at a higher price, extracting the value for himself (it costs more to the consumer than it would otherwise.)
That's the only difference; in neither case do the people who wind up actually eating the food, i.e. everyone else, have a choice what to pay.
You're trying to draw this distinction between "voluntary" and "involuntary" payments which doesn't exist in the real world. I guess taxes are supposed to be involuntary, while food purchases are voluntary? Except that in the real world, if you don't buy food you die, and when one group of people who know they will never be hungry have the power to raise food prices across the board... That's a very twisted idea of "voluntary."
> And yet I note you haven't actually challenged my point
That's because, as I pointed out, you didn't actually express a point to challenge. You blathered some vague description and an accusation.
Now that I can see what you were trying to say, the error is clear.
The "food investor" spends his money, not mine. If he's wrong, he loses his money. Moreover, the food investor doesn't stop someone else providing food. Govts do that all the time.
Moreover, govts tend to go all-in on their decisions - so the amount lost when they get it wrong is much larger. Investors aren't monolithic - some get it right, some get it wrong.
Yes, you need food, but unless govt gets involved, you have considerable choice about how to aquire it.
> Except that in the real world, if you don't buy food you die
Speak for yourself. The "square foot" folks have shown that it's possible to grow an amazing amount in a very small area. And yes, poor people have the time.
> when one group of people who know they will never be hungry have the power to raise food prices across the board
Govts are the only group with that power. If I don't like the prices from ADM, I can buy elsewhere. If I don't like the food prices set by govt, there is no "elsewhere".
For some reason I thought I read this article about how between 2005 and 2008 investment into grain futures pushed the price of real grain high enough that hundreds of millions of people across the world starved, while hundreds of millions of bushels of grain sat in silos, resulting in inflated food prices everywhere which still have not returned to what they should be, meaning people at the margins who starve every single day.
But I guess I must have imagined that. It's good to know only governments have that kind of power here in Bizarro World.
> thought I read this article about how between 2005 and 2008 investment into grain futures pushed the price of real grain high enough that hundreds of millions of people across the world starved
Starved? Exaggerate much?
What, exactly, kept them from buying something else instead?
> which still have not returned to what they should be
What is this price "that should be"?
If you think that wheat should be sold at a given price, what is stopping you from providing it at that price?
You're claiming that "investors" are buying grain for less and waiting for the price to go up. What stops you from buying at the same price that they buy and selling at a lower price than they demand?
Exaggerate? Not really, no. For the first time since we started counting, food insecurity increased as a proportion of the population. 250,000,000 more people went hungry in 2008, the worst increase ever-- while the grain harvest itself was one of the most bounteous, filling up silos and going to livestock feed instead of bread. But of course this is all in the article you didn't read.
Never mind that, though. If you are seriously trying to draw some kind of moral distinction between a child "literally" starving and a child who goes to sleep every night not having had enough to eat, having a little bit less every night... I don't say this a lot, but God damn you, sir.
That's the only difference; in neither case do the people who wind up actually eating the food, i.e. everyone else, have a choice what to pay.
You're trying to draw this distinction between "voluntary" and "involuntary" payments which doesn't exist in the real world. I guess taxes are supposed to be involuntary, while food purchases are voluntary? Except that in the real world, if you don't buy food you die, and when one group of people who know they will never be hungry have the power to raise food prices across the board... That's a very twisted idea of "voluntary."