Capitalism can never provide for everyone’s needs because it, by definition, must create scarcity to give “value” to the things we need. Only by threatening to withhold basic human needs from us can it create the conditions it requires to profit from their sale.

While Trump and his apologists in Congress are cutting food stamps and school lunches for children America is throwing out as much as 40% of the food it produces. That food has already been “paid for” in the cost of production and transport, so the only purpose behind such cruelty is to establish scarcity and set prices. Our nation is willing to “create” hungry children to serve as a warning to others that their basic needs must be “earned” via fealty to capitalists.

Those same capitalists have never seen a farm subsidy they didn’t like that makes it profitable to grow 40% more food than there is a market for, but that is different because it “stabilizes” the market that was only made unstable by failures of capitalism. Our government has never been shy to use a large portion of those subsidies to weaponize farm production in the form of “aid” to other countries. By shipping “free” food to compete with farmers in other countries, rice to Haiti, corn to Mexico, etc, we create the slave labor capitalism needs to control domestic labor to be profitable here.

No nation willing to starve its own children, not to mention those in other countries, to protect its profits can be called “successful” or even sane. We have at our disposal enough resources and the advantage of an endless supply of fiat currency needed to solve most of the problems in the world, but it is those same problems that perpetuate markets, and the fear that is our number one export and domestic product. A nation without fear of losing access to the basic needs to sustain life is not going to allow capitalism to even take root beyond the trade of trinkets and entertainment.