I was 11 years old when the Bangladesh famine occurred. Many of my father's friends were journalists or bureaucrats who returned from trips there and would discuss the situation in my hearing. It was around this time that it was suggested to me that I should study Economics- not something useless like Astrophysics- so as to overcome the problem both India and Bangladesh faced in that year of food availability deficit. Yet, it was ICS officers like B.R Sen at the FAO and agronomists like Swaminathan who were tackling the problem- which was one of food availability and agricultural productivity. What nobody then suspected was that Bengali Mathematical Economists weren't just utterly useless they were also as stupid as shit. This became clear only when Sen published his book on famine which contained the following gem
'The food availability approach
which is the first empirical Econometric relationship- viz the King-Davenant model from 1699 which contained the notion of 'elasticity'. Sen's own ancestors, at that very same time, were doing this sort of 'Political Arithmetic' and estimating demand functions and working out the 'income' and 'substitution' effects of changes in the price of a staple.
offers very little in the way of explanation of the Bangladesh famine of 1974. The total output, as well as availability figures for Bangladesh as a whole, point precisely in the opposite direction, as do the inter-district figures of production as well as availability. Whatever the Bangladesh famine of 1974 might have been, it wasn't a FAD famine.
Sen was from East Bengal. His dad was a senior soil scientist who knew the score. The sub-continent- more especially Bengal- had a net food availability deficit which is why it received a lot of food aid. In 1973-74 there was a global food shortage and, in any case, the US wanted to use a 'food weapon' to neutralize the 'oil weapon'. Bangladesh, which made the mistake of exporting jute to Cuba, was the biggest victim of American wrath. It must be said that, as in 1943, there was a lot of corruption in Bangladesh- the inevitable price of transitioning to Democracy, at least in that part of the world- and so there was entitlement collapse. Food meant for famine relief was diverted to the black market.
In the preface to his crazy book, Sen wrote-
Much about poverty is obvious enough.
It is obvious that if little food is available, the poorest will starve. But Sen believed that famines occur when more food is available. He truly is as stupid as shit.
One does not need elaborate criteria, cunning measurement, or probing analysis, to recognize raw poverty and to understand its antecedents.
Nobody needs Sen-tentious economists. They are shit.
It would be natural to be impatient with long-winded academic studies on 'poor naked wretches' with 'houseless heads and unfed sides' and 'loop'd and windowed raggedness', to use King Lear's graphic description. And furthermore it may also be the case, as Lear told the blind Gloucester, that 'a man may see how this world goes with no eyes'.
Lear was mad. Fuck was wrong with Sen?
There is indeed much that is transparent about poverty and misery. But not everything about poverty is quite so simple.
Poverty is caused by poor people having babies who are bound to be poor. True, 'exogenous shocks'- war, floods, civilizational collapse- may disrupt economic activity and harm smart and productive people as well as the poor. But supply shocks can be quickly overcome. Malthusian poverty requires the transfer of rural girls into big factory dormitories.
Even the identification of the poor and the diagnosis of poverty may be far from obvious when we move away from extreme and raw poverty.
No. It is easy. Raise productivity by raising factor mobility. That is all that matters.
Different approaches can be used (e.g. biological inadequacy, relative deprivation),
by people in the field- sure. But that has nothing to do with the Economic analysis of the problem which is simple- raise availability of food, medicine, shelter, education, law and order, defence and then focus on productivity. In particular get girls out of involuted agriculture so they don't have babies like crazy.
and there are technical issues to be resolved within each approach. Furthermore, to construct an overall picture of poverty, it is necessary to go well beyond identifying the poor.
Why construct such a picture? This is a 'rich people problem'. The fact is, if you have a National Income accounting system, you automatically have a picture of poverty. Any system of public entitlements- e.g. a 'food for work' program- requires administrative action to keep track of likely demand and supply issues. Transfers alleviate poverty but the Government needs to know both the need for transfers and the availability of resources- e.g. food- to make those transfers. The British had been doing this in India for a century before the Bangladesh famine.
To provide an aggregate profile based on the characteristics of those who are identified as poor, problems of aggregation have to be squarely faced.
No they don't. You need demographic and economic information but have to settle for what can gleaned from existing administrative structures. This is because poverty means lack of resources. You can't spend a lot of money figuring out how best to tackle the problem because you don't have a lot of money. It is better to actually tackle it with the tools available.
Finally—and most importantly—the causation of poverty
is ob-fucking-vious. Productivity- which is related to factor mobility and the supply of capital and entrepreneurship and infrastructure.
raises questions that are not easily answered.
Those questions don't matter. If you are starving, you need food. You don't need to raise difficult questions about what, truly speaking, is food, and what is eating, and what starvation or malnourishment actually means.
While the 'immediate' antecedents of poverty may be too obvious to need much analysis, and the 'ultimate' causation too vague and open-ended a question to be settled fully,
a shithead like Sen can virtue-signal and talk bollocks and thus make money and gain a reputation as a fucking Mother Theresa while adding negative value to the debate.
there are various intermediate levels of useful answers that are worth exploring.
Nothing Sen explores isn't shit.
The problem is of particular relevance in the context of recent discussions on the causation of hunger and starvation.
That discussion was shit.
This monograph is concerned with these questions. The main focus of this work is on the causation of starvation in general and of famines in particular. The basic approach, which involves analysing 'entitlement systems', is introduced in general terms in Chapter i.
Sen didn't understand that corruption or lack of resources could cause 'entitlement systems' to crash.
This is done even before the concepts of poverty are examined in any detail, because that is where the thrust of this monograph lies.
The thrust of his monograph was 'there's an entitlement for food for work or food from communal kitchens. That entitlement didn't collapse because the Government was too corrupt or incompetent or lacking in resources to provide the food and set up the relevant programs even though that is exactly what happened. Instead, poorer people starved because some other poor people started eating a lot more food out of spite.' This is crude Communist propaganda of a Bengali type- kulaks are evil as is the industrial proletariat if they vote for some other party. It is also completely untrue.
In Chapters 2 and 3 problems of conceptualization and measurement of poverty are examined. The specific viii Preface problem of starvation is taken up in very general terms in Chapter 4., and the 'entitlement approach' is analysed in Chapter 5. This is followed by case studies offamines from different parts ofthe world: the Great Bengal Famine of 1943 (Chapter 6), the Ethiopian famines of 1973-75 (Chapter 7), famines in the Sahel region of Africa during the early 1970s (Chapter 8), and the Bangladesh famine of 1974 (Chapter 9). In Chapter 10 the entitlement approach is consolidated, taking up general issues of deprivation related to entitlement systems
Famine occurs when food availability decreases. It can happen to animals and it can happen to human beings. Hunter gatherers may starve if there are adverse weather conditions causing there to be less to hunt and less to gather. But so may foxes when there are too few rabbits or rodents for them to eat. Neither hunter gatherers nor foxes nor rabbits (which may starve if there is a drought and there are not enough carrots, or whatever, for them to eat) have a concept of ownership or property or entitlement or 'exchange entitlement'. Yet all die if food is not available. Sen didn't get this.
Entitlement relations accepted in a private ownership market economy typically include the following, among others: ( i ) trade-based entitlement: one is entitled to own what one obtains by trading something one owns with a willing party (or, multilaterally, with a willing set of parties);
This is generally not the case during a famine or food shortage. You are not allowed to buy and hoard food. You may not be allowed to sell or purchase certain sorts of food save to a Government authority. In Michael Palin's 'A Private Function', set in a small town in Northern England in 1947, the citizens endure continuing food rationing. Some local businessmen want to hold a party to celebrate the royal Wedding and illegally decide to raise a pig for that occasion. Meanwhile, the local food inspector is determined to stop activities circumventing the food rationing regulations.
(2) production-based entitlement, one is entitled to own what one gets by arranging production using one's owned resources, or resources hired from willing parties meeting the agreed conditions of trade;
Again, this is not generally the case when there is a serious food shortage.
(3) own-labour entitlement: one is entitled to one's own labour power, and thus to the trade-based and production-based entitlements related to one's labour power;
During the War, there was conscription (in the UK but not India) into the Army and with respect to certain essential activities e.g. coal mining.
(4) inheritance and transfer entitlement: one is entitled to own what is willingly given to one by another who legitimately owns it, possibly to take affect after the latter's death (if so specified by him).
There may be hefty death duties or a gift tax.
These are some entitlement relations of more or less straightforward kind, but there are others, frequently a good deal more complex. For example, one may be entitled to enjoy the fruits of some property without being able to trade it for anything else. Or one may be able to inherit the property of a deceased relation who did not bequeath it to anyone, through some rule of kinship based inheritance accepted in the country in question. Or one may have some entitlements related to unclaimed objects on the basis of discovery. Market entitlements may even be supplemented by rationing or coupon systems, even in private ownership market economies, such as in Britain during the last war.
Sen, being wholly ignorant of economics, was not aware that in Britain- and India- during 'the last war', there were stringent regulations against hoarding as well as severe restrictions on the transactions in various types of food.
The interpretation of entitlement relations here is descriptive rather than prescriptive.
It is irrelevant.
In contrast, Robert Nozick's (1974) well-known exploration of 'the entitlement theory' of justice is prescriptive, discussing private property rights and other rights in normative terms. The two exercises are thus differently motivated, and must not be confused with each other.
Both are irrelevant in the face of a serious food shortage.
This may or may not be combined with price 'control', and that in its turn may or may not be combined with a flourishing 'black market'; see Dasgupta (1950) for an illuminating analysis of black market prices.
If there is a black market, no legal 'entitlement' exists. Goods acquired through the black market can be confiscated just as goods acquired through theft can be confiscated. It is likely that some further legal penalty will be imposed.
1.2 EXCHANGE ENTITLEMENT In a market economy, a person can exchange what he owns for another collection of commodities. He can do this exchange either through trading, or through production, or through a combination of the two. The set of all the alternative bundles of commodities that he can acquire in exchange for what he owns may be called the 'exchange entitlement' of what he owns. The 'exchange entitlement mapping' is the relation that specifies the set of exchange entitlements for each ownership bundle.
There is no such set. Firstly, 'what we own' is not well-defined. We don't know the extension which is why there are law suits about who owns what and letters from lawyers informing you that you have gained property of various sorts by way of inheritance. We also don't know what we can produce and what we can purchase. Thus 'exchange entitlement mapping' is not a relation nor is there a set of exchange entitlements. Sen is committing the intensional fallacy. He is naming something whose 'extension' is unknowable.
This relation—E-mapping for brevity—defines the possibilities that would be open to him corresponding to each ownership situation.
This is unknowable. One may say 'the possibilities known to a person at a particular time'. But Sen isn't saying that.
A person will be exposed to starvation if, for the ownership that he actually has, the exchange entitlement set does not contain any feasible bundle including enough food.
No. Don't be silly. Throughout history, humans- like other animals- have eaten food they don't own. In bad times, people may pick berries or dig up tubers or kill and eat pigeons etc.
Given the E-mapping, it is in this way possible to identify those ownership bundles—call them collectively the starvation set— that must, thus, lead to starvation in the absence of nonentitlement transfers (e.g. charity).
There is no 'starvation set' because its extension is unknowable. A set has to be well defined.
Among the influences that determine a person's exchange entitlement, given his ownership bundle (including labour power), are the following: ( i ) whether he can find an employment, and if so for how long and at what wage rate;
we don't know this. All we can say is that after x amount of search, y found such and such employment at wage z.
(2) what he can earn by selling his non-labour assets,
again we don't know this. All we can say is that x sold y at price z.
and how much it costs him to buy whatever he may wish to buy;
only knowable after the fact. Starvation may be the result of failed 'search' or 'discouragement' just like unemployment.
(3) what he can produce with his own labour power and resources (or resource services) he can buy and manage;
It may be that I can produce a masterpiece like J.K Rowling's Harry Potter and thus become a billionaire. But I won't know till I try. Nobody knows their capabilities.
(4) the cost of purchasing resources (or resource services) and the value of the products he can sell; (5) the social security benefits he is entitled to and the taxes, etc., he must pay.
Social Security benefits may disappear as the country goes off a fiscal cliff or the administration collapses. The same is true of entitlements under various sorts of contract.
A person's ability to avoid starvation will depend both on his ownership and on the exchange entitlement mapping that he faces.
No. It depends on the availability of food. We may own a lot and do a lot trade but if there is no food we will starve. Imagine a bunch of billionaires whose plane crashes in the Andes. They end up drawing lots to see who gets to eat whom.
A general decline in food supply may indeed cause him to be exposed to hunger through a rise in food prices with an unfavourable impact on his exchange entitlement. Even when his starvation is caused by food shortage in this way, his immediate reason for starvation will be the decline in his exchange entitlement.
No. It will be the reduced availability of food. There may be price controls on food or there may simply be no food stock available on the market. Sen is talking bollocks.
More importantly, his exchange entitlement may worsen for reasons other than a general decline of food supply. For example, given the same total food supply, other groups' becoming richer and buying more food can lead to a rise in food prices, causing a worsening of exchange entitlement.
But 'staple' items- rice, potatoes, bread etc- are 'inferior' or 'Giffen'. If some groups get richer they buy less of the 'inferior' item and more of the 'normal' good- e.g. meat, fish etc. Sen does not know this. He is a cretin. Ceteris paribus, if one group gets richer with unchanged food supply, that group consumes more high quality food but also buys more non-food items. There is a substitution effect away from food if there is upward pressure on food prices. The poor may have to be content with coarser fare but, because food availability has not changed, there is no f.a.d and thus no famine.
Or some economic change may affect his employment possibilities, leading also to worse exchange entitlement. Similarly, his wages can fall behind prices. Or the price of necessary resources for the production he engages in can go up relatively. These diverse influences on exchange entitlements are as relevant as the overall volume of food supply vis-à-vis population.
They are irrelevant. Sen forgets that 'staple' foods are Income inelastic. If there is upward pressure on them then there is a substitution effect such that non-food expenditure rises. Only a food availability deficit- i.e. a supply shock causing less food to obtain- can cause famine.
Why did Sen's ancestral East Bengal have two big famines during his lifetime? One answer is Democracy which in turn meant changes in the law supposedly favourable to the share-cropper. This meant that the capital value of land fell. Less could be raised by mortgaging it. Landowners had less incentive to borrow and procure food to tide their workers over till the next harvest. Indeed, the landowners may have fled- fearing invasion or because of prior insurrection. Land reform can be a good thing- it can boost agricultural productivity- but it can also be disastrous for the less efficient or smaller farmer- not to mention the landless laborer.
what economic prospects are open (to a person) will depend on the modes of production and his position in terms of production relations.
No. They depend on whether he can emigrate or change occupation. Mobility matters. The 'mode of production' is meaningless Marxist jargon.
For example, while a peasant differs from a landless labourer in terms of ownership (since he owns land, which the labourer does not), the landless share-cropper differs from the landless labourer not in their respective ownerships, but in the way they can use the only resource they own, viz. labour power.
No. People working on the land differ only in terms of what they own. The peasant can sell up and fuck off to the City. The share-cropper can't sell up but can fuck off to the city just like the landless laborer. Sadly, the peasant may be indebted and so may end up with little cash after selling up. Thus, in the City, both will be on an equal footing or will soon become so.
The landless labourer will be employed in exchange for a wage, while the share-cropper will do the cultivation and own a part of the product. This difference can lead not merely to contrasts of the levels of typical remuneration of the two, which may or may not be very divergent, but also to sharp differences in exchange entitlements in distress situations.
No. If there is a flood or a drought both are fucked unless they had the foresight to fuck off to the City. This is because the landless dude won't be employed to harvest a ruined crop while the sharecropper will end up with half of nothing- because a ruined crop is worth nothing.
For example, a cyclone reducing the labour requirement for cultivation by destroying a part of the crop in each farm may cause some casual agricultural labourers to be simply fired, leading to a collapse of their exchange entitlements,
i.e. unemployment. But the casual labourer understands this and fucks off to where employers are hiring.
while others are retained. In contrast, in this case the sharecroppers may all operate with a lower labour input and lower entitlement, but no one may become fully jobless and thus incomeless.
They may become incomeless. The question is whether they can borrow to tide themselves over. Share-cropping may be preferable if landlords provide other services- e.g. protection from bandits or wild animals- but what matters is productivity. If your productivity is low in the agricultural sector, quit it and fuck off to the City.
Similarly, if the output is food, e.g. rice or wheat, the sharecropper gets his return in a form such that he can directly eat it without going through the vagaries of the market.
Landless labourers may be paid in kind. Sen is wholly ignorant of the country in which he was born. Some labourers employed by Sriniketan- which is next to Shantiniketan where he went to school- received some cash and some grain, oil, etc as remuneration. True, Sriniketan, being Quaker funded, was a more generous paymaster but low productivity meant wages could not be very high.
In contrast, the agricultural labourer paid in money terms will have to depend on the exchange entitlement of his money wage.
This is irrelevant if there is no food on the open market. When there is rationing or 'market failure' for any reason, people who grow at least some of their own food are better off than even well paid professionals. When I was a kid in Delhi, we could see the difference in size and weight between the rustic cousins visiting the City and their puny relatives. Then, the supply of milk in Delhi improved- I recall standing in line to get milk from a booth- and this difference was much reduced. Still, I recall an Uncle of mine who bought a cow to provide milk for his growing kids and kept it in his backyard though he lived in a Tier 2 City.
When famines are accompanied by sharp changes in relative prices— and in particular a sharp rise in food prices—there is much comparative merit in being a share-cropper rather than an agricultural labourer, especially when the capital market is highly imperfect.
There may be, but there may not. What matters is whether the share-cropper can borrow. In Bengal, after the tenancy act of 1885, sharecropping was preferable to creating legal tenancy. The activities of the 'jotedar' middle-man made the shift to sharecropping viable however the result, more especially when prices were depressed or there was a supply shock, was that the jotedars ended up owning more and more of the land. Both the smaller landlord and the tenant (which is what the share-cropper actually was) lost out. It seems 'pro-peasant' legislation can hurt both traditional landlords as well as those who work the land. With sharecropping, there was actually an increase in 'feudal' obligations- e.g. 'begar' (corvee labour)- as well as various 'adwabs' (cesses).
The greater production risk of the sharecropper compared with the security ofa fixed wage on the part of the agricultural labourer has been well analysed (see, for example, Stiglitz, 1974); but a fixed money wage may offer no security at all in a situation ofsharply varying food prices (even when employment is guaranteed). In contrast, a share ofthe food output does have some security advantage in terms of exchange entitlement.
It may do but it may not. In Bengal, the share-cropper had 'control rights' and better political representations. This meant they were better placed to avail themselves of famine relief programs. But this was a socio-political advantage, not an economic one. Ceteris paribus, wage labour is more mobile and thus less vulnerable. Thus, the landless labourer in North Bihar may be better off than the higher case peasant cultivator because she migrates to Punjab or Kerala or wherever wages are higher during harvest season.
Similarly, those who sell services (e.g. barbers or rickshawpullers) or handicraft products (e.g. weavers or shoemakers) are—like wage labourers—more exposed, in this respect, to famines involving unexpected rises of food prices than are peasants or share-croppers producing food crops.
No. Only if food availability falls will non-food producers suffer as the terms of trade move against them. Even then, those who provide vital services or those who can switch to serving a different set of clients may suffer only a small 'income effect' though they too may substitute non-food consumption for food- e.g. ostentatious expenditure on food falls but rises on something else- e.g. fine tailoring.
This is the case even when the typical standard of living of the latter is no higher than that of the former. In understanding general poverty, or regular starvation, or outbursts of famines, it is necessary to look at
factor mobility and productivity- nothing else.
both ownership patterns
which don't matter because of Coase's theorem or because control rights are appropriable. The landlord may have legal title but may not be able to collect a share of the harvest or money rent.
and exchange entitlements
which can crash if remedies are not incentive compatible. I can promise to build you a mansion in return for ten quid but it is not in my interest to actually do so. A Government can act in the same way as Bernie Madoff- i.e. promise to give you lots of money and then renege on that promise.
, and at the forces that lie behind them. This requires careful consideration of the nature of modes of production and the structure of economic classes as well as their interrelations.
No. People who went in for that sort of shite turned out to be a complete fucking waste of time. Poverty is about factor mobility and productivity. Nothing more, nothing less. You may say 'drug addicted homosexuals of colour are poor because of widespread bigotry'. But this isn't true. Drugs are expensive. If you take a lot of them you are likely to become poor more particularly because your productivity may fall.
Later in the monograph, when actual famines are analysed, these issues will emerge more concretely.
Sen will babble ignorant or mendacious shite.
I.4 SOCIAL SECURITY AND EMPLOYMENT ENTITLEMENTS The exchange entitlements depend not merely on market exchanges but also on those exchanges, if any, that the state provides as a part of its social security programme.
This depends on availability of resources. If there is big enough food availability deficit, Government 'food for work' programs and the public distribution system may collapse. Corrupt politicians may divert food stocks from the PDS to the black market.
Given a social security system, an unemployed person may get 'relief, an old person a pension, and the poor some specified 'benefits'. These affect the commodity bundles over which a person can have command.
Sen means that if they are given money, they can buy different baskets of goods with that money.
They are parts of a person's exchange entitlements, and are conditional on the absence of other exchanges that a person might undertake. For example, a person is not entitled to unemployment benefit if he exchanges his labour power for a wage, i.e. becomes employed.
Sen is too stupid to understand that Unemployment Benefit is part of an Insurance scheme. You pay into it to guard against specific adverse contingencies. Sen thinks people are paid for not working or for burning down their own houses. This is because Insurance schemes are run by Santa Claus and his elves. People don't pay insurance premiums. The fairies provide the money from the magical money tree.
Similarly, exchanges that make a person go above the specified poverty norm will make him ineligible for receiving the appropriate relief. These social security provisions are essentially supplementations of the processes of market exchange and production, and the two types of opportunities together determine a person's exchange entitlements in a private ownership market economy with social security provisions. The social security arrangements are particularly important in the context of starvation.
No. In that case- at least in Bengal- the Government assumed the responsibility of feeding those with nothing. Sadly, a food availability deficit, accompanied by the sort of chronic corruption Bengali democracy produces, led to excess mortality in '43 and '74.
The reason why there are no famines in the rich developed countries
absent war-time conditions- e.g. famine in Nazi occupied Holland
is not because people are generally rich on the average. Rich they certainly are when they have jobs and earn a proper wage; but for large numbers of people this condition fails to hold for long periods of time, and the exchange entitlements of their endowments in the absence of social security arrangements could provide very meagre commodity bundles indeed. With the proportion of unemployment as high as it is, say, in Britain or America today, but for the social security arrangements there would be widespread starvation and possibly a famine.
This stupid cunt doesn't get that if Americans and Britishers weren't comparatively rich, the Government would not have enough tax revenue to pay Social Security.
What prevents that is not the high average income or wealth of the British or the general opulence of the Americans, but the guaranteed minimum values of exchange entitlements owing to the social security system.
This is because Santa Claus finances the social security system- right?
Similarly, the elimination of starvation in socialist economies —for example in China
which had a big famine thanks to Mao, though back in 1981, Sen wasn't willing to admit this.
—seems to have taken place even without a dramatic rise in food availability per head, and indeed, typically the former has preceded the latter.
Hilarious!
The end of starvation reflects a shift in the entitlement system, both in the form of social security
Mao gave unemployment benefit to young Chinese people so they could stay at home watching TV and smoking pot.
and—more importantly—through systems of guaranteed employment at wages that provide exchange entitlement adequate to avoid starvation.
Mao's famine is considered the largest in history. Sen thinks that 'entitlements' can be financed by nice Maoist magic.
1.5 FOOD SUPPLY AND STARVATION There has been a good deal of discussion recently
Club of Rome shite towards the end of the Sixties. Then, the Green Revolution happened. People realized that economists had shit for brains. Agronomists could solve the underlying problem and make the country richer doing so.
about the prospect of food supply falling significantly behind the world population. There is, however, little empirical support for such a diagnosis of recent trends. Indeed, for most areas in the world— with the exception of parts of Africa—the increase in food supply has been comparable to, or faster than, the expansion of population. But this does not indicate that starvation is being systematically eliminated, since starvation—as discussed—is a function of entitlements and not of food availability as such.
No. Entitlements don't matter. Mao's people were entitled to food. But they would get killed if they tried to claim those entitlements.
Indeed, some of the worst famines have taken place with no significant decline in food availability per head (see Chapters 6, 7, and 9).
Sen is lying. He discusses the Ethiopian famine of the early Seventies and admits there was a drought which led to food availability decline. But he says people did not starve because not enough food was available. This is because according to some made-up figures provided by useless Government agencies, food output had actually increased. Furthermore, many Ethiopian pigs had flown to the moon. Thus, even though people died because food was not available they didn't die because of food availability deficit. They died because of entitlement exchange failure even if some of the people involved had a way of life without any concept of entitlement or exchange. People can die for the same reason cattle do. There is not enough to eat because of drought. Sen, no doubt, thinks elephants and foxes suffer exchange entitlement collapse due to Jungle model of production and lack of adequate social security arrangements provided by giraffes.
To say that starvation depends 'not merely' on food supply but also on its 'distribution' would be correct enough, though not remarkably helpful.
Whereas babbling about exchange entitlement and commodity bundles is very useful to giraffes tasked with providing adequate social security provision for elephants and antelopes.
The important question then would be: what determines distribution of food between different sections of the community?
The same thing which determines the distribution of other goods and services. Stuff like location, income, insurance coverage, and whether or not they are sucking off rich dudes as opposed to being beaten and cornholed by hobos.
Food availability deficit by reason of exogenous shocks is a type of risk which human beings alleviated in three different ways
1) migration- though weaker members might die during the course of such movements
2) maintaining alternative 'inferior' food sources which might be fed to animals in bad times
3) collective insurance through maintaining buffer stocks and a public distribution system in case of market break-down. Like any insurance scheme this involves paying in more than is taken out over the course of time. It is a costly 'hedge' and can collapse if few pay in and many treat the thing as a 'transfer'.
Sen doesn't get this. He has got it into his head that under Capitalism lots of people would starve due to Capitalism is very evil. But poor people can pay into insurance schemes of various sorts. There may be an element of 'cross-subsidization' or 'transfer' more particularly if the scheme is compulsory. But the rich can always find ways to disintermediate such schemes and gravitate to a 'separating' rather than 'pooling' equilibrium. Thus collective insurance only works if the median contributor is getting value for money from the 'hedge'.
Absolute poverty does matter in that if the vast majority are at the subsistence level then collective insurance will be insufficient. But relative poverty doesn't matter at all. Sen's next two chapters on Poverty are ignorant shit. I've dealt with them elsewhere.
Starvation, on the other hand, does imply poverty,
Billionaires can starve if they are in a place where no food is available.
since the absolute dispossession that characterizes starvation is more than sufficient to be diagnosed as poverty,
Nope. See above.
no matter what story emerges from the view of relative deprivation. Starvation is a normal feature in many parts of the world, but this phenomenon of 'regular' starvation has to be distinguished from violent outbursts of famines. It isn't just regular starvation that one sees in 436 bc, when thousands of starving Romans 'threw themselves into theTiber'; or in Kashmir in ad 918, when 'one could scarcely see the water of Vitasta [Jhelum] entirely covered as the river was with corpses'; or in 1333-7 in China, when—we are told—four million people died in one region only; or in 1770 in India, when the best estimates point to ten million deaths; or in 1845-51 in Ireland, when the potato famine killed about one-fifth of the total Irish population and led to the emigration of a comparable number.
Sen doesn't mention Mao's famine where 30 million died.
While there is quite a literature on how to 'define' famines, one can very often diagnose it—like a flood or a fire—even without being armed with a precise definition.
One can predict it on the basis of a supply shock which reduces food availability
In distinguishing between starvation and famine, it is not my intention here to attribute a sense of deliberate harming to the first absent in the second, as intended by the Irish American Malone in Bernard Shaw's Man and Superman: Malone: Me father died of starvation in the black . Maybe you've heard of it? Violet: The Famine? Malone: No, the starvation. When a country is full of food and exporting it, there can be no famine. Me father was starved dead; and I was starved out to America in me mother's arms.
Shaw knew well enough that middle class Catholics bought land vacated by such people. He had the sense not to say so. Scotland too had a potato famine but there were far fewer deaths. However, there was assisted emigration. The big Finnish famine of the late 1860s was particularly interesting. One could say that a country determined to become independent and prosperous chose not to borrow to keep alive about 8.5 per cent of the population. If you get rid of people with a lower productivity habitus then they can't perpetuate poverty by having babies who are themselves brought up to be poor.
In analysing starvation in general, it is important to make clear distinctions
whenever Sen makes a distinction, it will turn out to be stupid and useless
between three different issues. ( 1 ) lowness of the typical level of food consumption;
which is irrelevant. City folk in sedentary occupations need to eat a lot less than agricultural labourers
(2) declining trend of food consumption;
which is irrelevant if it is because of urbanization and a shift into sedentary work
(3) sudden starvation
due to a supply shock leading to food availability deficit. The solution is to get in lots of food and arrange for it to reach deficit areas quickly
. Indeed, there are good reasons to think that the trend of food availability per head in recent years has been a rising one in most parts of the world,
No shit Sherlock! Look at the rising trend of agricultural production.
but nevertheless acute starvation has occurred quite often,
in corrupt turd world shitholes or Commie dictatorships
While famines involve fairly widespread acute starvation, there is no reason to think that it will affect all groups in the famine affected nation.
When there is a shortage of something, some will get it by force or by purchase while others go without.
Indeed, it is by no means clear that there has ever occurred a famine in which all groups in a country have suffered from starvation,
How else explain the fact that so many ancient populations have left no contribution to DNA found today? Exogenous shocks can wipe out whole populations though some may die sooner than others.
The entitlement approach to starvation and famines concentrates on the ability of people to command food through the legal means available in the society, including the use of production possibilities, trade opportunities, entitlements vis-àvis the state, and other methods of acquiring food.
Thus it is utterly worthless. You may have a legal entitlement to lots of money you handed over to Bernie Madoff. You aren't going to get it. A legal claim may be very costly to enforce if it can be enforced at all. Mathematical economists may assume that the law works frictionlessly and costly as the market is supposed to do but such is not the case. The plain fact is, if State Capacity exists then nobody can starve because all they have to is to commit an offense to get arrested and fed three times a day in a comfy jail cell.
A person starves either because he does not have the ability to command enough food, or because he does not use this ability to avoid starvation. The entitlement approach concentrates on the former, ignoring the latter possibility.
Thus it is useless. It is only when there is a food availability deficit that the police won't arrest you because they can't feed you in jail. They just beat you or kill you depending on the severity of the offence.
Furthermore, it concentrates on those means of commanding food that are legitimized by the legal system in operation in that society.
But the legal system operates differently when there is a food availability deficit. Contracts for food delivery can't be enforced. Ration shops have to close down because their stocks are exhausted. Schools may be closed down so children can go and forage for berries and edible roots.
While it is an approach of some generality, it makes no attempt to include all possible influences that can in principle cause starvation, for example illegal transfers (e.g. looting), and choice failures (e.g. owing to inflexible food habits). Ownership of food is one of the most primitive property rights,
No. Food has been requisitioned since the earliest times.
and in each society there are rules governing this right.
Rules change under exigent circumstances
The entitlement approach concentrates on each person's entitlements to commodity bundles including food, and views starvation as resulting from a failure to be entitled to a bundle with enough food.
This is mad! I am entitled to electricity and Netflix because I pay my standing orders to the Electricity company and Netflix. However, if the electricity generation plant blows up, I won't get my entitlement. I may be entitled to damages but I still won't have any electricity and because I have no electricity I won't be able to watch Netflix either. My 'consumption basket' still has Electricity and Netflix in terms of 'entitlement' even though that entitlement is not fulfilled.
In a fully directed economy, each person i may simply get a particular commodity bundle which is assigned to him.
He may be assigned lots of wonderful things. Will he actually get them? Fuck off!
To a limited extent this happens in most economies, e.g. to residents of old people's homes or of mental hospitals.
Who are supposed to be very tenderly looked after but are actually left to soak in their own urine.
Typically, however, there is a menu—possibly wide—to choose from. E, is the entitlement set of person 1 in a given society, in a given situation, and it consists of a set of alternative commodity bundles, any one of which the person can decide to have. In an economy with private ownership and exchange in the form of trade (exchange with others) and production (exchange with nature), E, can be characterized as depending on two parameters, viz. the endowment of the person (the ownership bundle) and the exchange entitlement mapping (the function that specifies the set of alternative commodity bundles that the person can command respectively for each endowment bundle).
This is just a description of the standard mathematical economic model of consumer choice.
For example, a peasant has his land, labour power, and a few other resources, which together make up his endowment. Starting from that endowment he can produce a bundle of food that will be his.
Ceteris paribus- sure. But if some vital input- e.g. water- ceases to be available he might not be able to produce shit
Or, by selling his labour power, he can get a wage and with that buy commodities, including food. Or he can grow some cash crops and sell them to buy food and other commodities. There are many other possibilities. The set of all such available commodity bundles in a given economic situation is the exchange entitlement of his endowment.
It is unknowable and 'impredicative'.
The exchange entitlement mapping specifies the exchange entitlement set of alternative commodity bundles respectively for each endowment bundle. The formal relations are analysed in Appendix A. The exchange entitlement mapping, or E-mapping for short, will depend on the legal, political, economic and social characteristics of the society in question and the person's position in it. Perhaps the simplest case in terms oftraditional economic theory is one in which the endowment bundle can be exchanged in the market at fixed relative prices for any bundle costing no more, and here the exchange entitlement will be a traditional 'budget set'. Bringing in production will make the E-mapping depend on production opportunities as well as trade possibilities ofresources and products. It will also involve legal rights to apportioning the product, e.g. the capitalist rule of the 'entrepreneur' owning the produce.
That is not the capitalist rule. The entrepreneur does not own the produce unless he is a sole proprietor and used his own capital. Otherwise his creditors or shareholders have a legal claim.
Sometimes the social conventions governing these rights can be very complex indeed—for example those governing the rights of migrant members of peasant families to a share of the peasant output (see Sen, 1975).
Those aren't rights. It is some shit inside Sen's shitty head.
Social security provisions are also reflected in the E-mapping, such as the right to unemployment benefit if one fails to find a job,
there is no such right. It is a different matter that a person who paid into this collective insurance scheme or would be assumed to do so (in the case of a school or college leaver) does have a right provided she is earnestly seeking gainful employment and she had not left her previous job voluntarily.
or the right to income supplementation if one's income would fall otherwise below a certain specified level.
Again, that is not an unqualified right though it is a justiciable matter.
And so are employment guarantees when they exist—as they do in some socialist economies—giving one the option to sell one's labour power to the government at a minimum price.
Sen lived in a fantasy land. He probably believed the story about 'refuseniks'- lazy 'dissidents' who refused to work preferring to remain idle parasites sucking the blood of the righteous proletariat who, I may tell you, don't have long hair and never bum each other.
Person i can be plunged into starvation if his endowment collapses into the starvation set S, either through a fall in the endowment bundle, or through an unfavourable shift in the exchange entitlement mapping.
Neither matter. Anyone at all can 'be plunged into starvation' if enough food is not available to them. As for 'endowment bundles'- nobody knows what their own is while 'exchange entitlement mappings' being 'impredicative' can only be arbitrarily and approximately evaluated, that too in a very limited manner. Sen's mathematical apparatus is not just useless it is also bad mathematics.
On the other hand, most recent famines seem to have taken place in societies with 'law and order', without anything 'illegal' about the processes leading to starvation.
Sen is wrong. It was illegal for Bengali politicians to enrich themselves by diverting food to the black market or simply stealing money that was supposed to go towards buying food for the poor.
In fact, in guarding ownership rights against the demands of the hungry, the legal forces uphold entitlements; for example, in the Bengal famine of 1943 the people who died in front of well-stocked food shops protected by the state were denied food because of lack of legal entitlement, and not because their entitlements were violated.
Why didn't they get themselves arrested? The answer is that Bengal was now ruled by Bengalis, not Britishers. The police might beat them a little but wouldn't put them in jail. It is better to starve quietly without suffering the additional distress of being kicked or having a bumboo shoved up your arse. When food is not available, demanding it won't get you very far.
Consider occupation group j, characterized as having only commodity j to sell or directly consume.
There can be no such occupation group. This is because an occupation involves labour. Labour can always have more than one type of occupation. Moreover leisure too can provide utility.
Let qj be the amount of commodity j each member of group j can sell or consume, and let the price of commodity j be pj.
there is an intensional fallacy here. Neither the amount nor the price are knowable. All we can do is make an arbitrary stipulation in this respect which may be good enough for a particular purpose.
the price of food per unit is pf. The maximum food entitlement of group j is Fj,
which is unknowable
given by qjpj/pj, or qjaj, where aj, is occupation j's food exchange rate (pj/jpf)
So Sen is assuming food is homogenous. That is foolish. Where there is a food availability deficit people eat things they normally consider animal fodder not human food.
Commodity j may or may not be a. produced commodity. The commodity that a labourer has to sell is labour power.
in which case leisure too is a commodity. We may speak of trading wages for the chance to rest. The amount of work you do is related to the amount of food you need. Sen's model is useless for his purpose.
It is his means of survival,
Only if he actually survives only by selling it. Sen confuses the word 'livelihood' with 'means of survival'.
just as commodities in the shape of baskets and jute are the means of survival of the basket-maker and the jute grower, respectively.
No. Basket making or jute growing are occupational choices.
A special case arises when the occupation consists of being a producer of food, say rice, which is also what members of that occupation live on.
Nobody lives on rice alone.
In this case pj=pj, and aj= i. Thus (the maximum food entitlement is equal to food produced)
Sen thinks people can eat just rice. They don't need salt, cooking oil, firewood, sources of protein etc, etc.
It is worth emphasizing that this drastically simple modelling of reality makes sense only in helping us to focus on some important parameters of famine analysis;
No. It obscures everything that is important. In particular, there are 'income' and 'substitution' effects when there is a shortage of a staple- e.g. rice or potatoes- or other such 'inferior' or 'Giffen goods' (i.e. ones where the negative income effect swamps the positive substitution effect such that, perversely, consumption rises as price rise). However the solution is to bring in food of a different type and prepare it in a manner which makes it palatable in communal kitchens. Interestingly, at Belsen after it was liberated, paprika had to be added to 'Bengal Famine mixture' to make it palatable to Europeans.
it does not compete with the more general structure outlined earlier (and more formally in Appendix A).
worthless shite.
Furthermore, these simplifications will be grossly misleading in some contexts, for example in analysing entitlements in an industrialized economy, because of the importance of raw materials, intermediate products, asset holdings, etc.
They are equally important in agriculture. You have to factor in things like fertilizer, seed corn, depreciation of tools, need for draught animals etc.
Even in applying this type of structure to analyse rural famines in developing countries, care is needed that the distortions are not too great. For any group j to start starving because of an entitlement failure, Fj must decline, since it represents the maximum food entitlement.
So, Sen admits there has to be food availability deficit!
Fj can fall either because one has produced less food for own consumption, or because one can obtain less food through trade by exchanging one's commodity for food. The former will be called a 'direct entitlement failure',
because of an exogenous supply shock causing food availability decline
and the latter a 'trade entitlement failure'.
because less food reaches the market because of food availability decline. Sen is a deeply silly man. He doesn't get that farmers sell their produce and then buy such food as they need. This is even true of rice. You sell it at one go rather than incur the expense of maintaining your own storage and processing facility.
It is, in fact, possible for a group to suffer both direct entitlement failure and trade entitlement failure, since the group may produce a commodity that is both directly consumed and exchanged for some other food. For example, the Ethiopian pastoral nomad both eats the animal products directly and also sells animals to buy foodgrains (thereby making a net gain in calories), on which he is habitually dependent.
Drought killed livestock while also shriveling up crops. Sen doesn't seem to understand this.
Similarly, a Bengali fisherman does consume some fish, though for his survival he is dependent on grain-calories which he obtains at a favourable calorie exchange rate by selling fish—a luxury food for most Bengalis
The negative income effect of the rise in rice price would reduce fish demand (fish being income elastic) and this swamps the substitution effect which would otherwise have raised the price of fish. Since there was no refrigeration back then and rowing boats and catching fish is labour intensive- i.e. uses up a lot of calories- it follows that the rice availability deficit would also harm fishermen. Indeed, productivity would fall if the population was less well fed.
Let us now look at Sen's silly
Illustrative Models of Exchange Entitlement
B.I INTRODUCTORY REMARKS
The determination of exchange entitlements in any real economy
does not really occur. There are exchanges which, at the margin, are a little different than they were in the previous period. It is not the case that there is some sort of Walrasian market clearing process. In any case, Sen's Arrow Debreu type model has no Knightian Uncertainty.
is a complex process, since a variety of influences—economic, social, and political—operate on the parameters in/(.), Q,(.), etc., for each group.
There are no functional relations here because both domain and range are unknowable.
The process, as discussed in the text, will also vary substantially according to the precise institutional structure of the economy. While there is clearly little point in trying to develop a general theory of exchange entitlement determination there is perhaps some merit in illustrating the nature of the problem by considering some simple models. Two such
models are presented in this Note, one based on Malthus's analysis in An Investigation of the Cause of the Present High Price of Provisions (1800),
which is irrelevant because the Brits had introduced a Famine Code though after 1937, elected Bengalis were too corrupt and incompetent to implement it properly .
and the other trying to capture an important aspect of the causation of the Bengal famine in 1943.
the Japanese invasion of Burma? That was the main causation factor.
There is little doubt that Malthus's analysis of food shortage in 1800 was a supplement to his theory of population presented two years earlier:
The message of both was clear- don't subsidize the production of babies by people who can't earn enough to feed themselves, let alone their kids.
Malthus said ' I am most strongly inclined to suspect, that the attempt in most parts of the kingdom to increase the parish allowances (under the Poor Law) in proportion to the price of corn, combined with the riches of the country, which have enabled it to proceed as far as it has done in this attempt, is, comparatively speaking, the sole cause, which has occasioned the price of provisions in this country to rise so much higher than the degree of scarcity would seem to warrant, so much higher than it would do in any other country where this cause did not operate'
In other words, money taken from the rate-payer (local property tax) was artificially inflating prices. Sen ignores this passage preferring to quote another-
To what then can we attribute the present inability in the country to support its inhabitants, but to the increase of population? I own that I cannot but consider the late severe pressures of distress on every deficiency in our crops, as a very strong exemplification ofa principle which I endeavoured to explain in an essay published4* about two years ago, entitled, An Essay on the Principle of Population, as it affects the future Improvement of Society. It was considered by many who read it, merely as a specious argument, inapplicable to the present state of society; because it contradicted some preconceived opinions on these subjects. Two
years' reflection have, however, served strongly to convince me of the truth of the principle there advanced, and of its being the real cause of the continued depression and poverty of the lower classes of society, of the total inadequacy of all the present establishments in their favour to relieve them, and of the periodical returns of such seasons of distress as we have of late experienced.'
Malthus had just returned from Sweden which, being poorer, could not afford as much in the way of Poor-relief and thus had lower prices. He was arguing against subsidizing the runaway growth of a sub-section of the population whose productivity was lower than that needed to generate a subsistence for themselves.
But over and above claiming confirmation for his theory of food shortage arising from population expansion, Malthus also presented a theory linking food shortage to the behaviour of prices and distribution, and that theory was not essentially dependent on the genesis of the food shortage. It is that theory with which I am concerned in this Note, and not with Malthus's theory of population.
That theory had to do with the English Poor Law which placed the tax burden of feeding the Poor on the property owners of the parish. This meant that large farmers and even some industrialists could get middle class people like Malthus to subsidize their own wage bill. This system was untenable and led to the reform of the Poor Law and the opening of 'Work Houses' which featured sex segregation, bad food, and boring or menial work.
Malthus's analysis of adjustments of food prices had two notable features. First, prices had to rise to eliminate a sufficient number of demanders from the market to make the current supply last. The price rise was caused not by speculative activities but simply by the role of prices to adjust demand to supply.
Only because demand was artificially inflated by taxing middle-class property owners.
'It seems now to be universally agreed, that the stock of old corn remaining on hand at the beginning of the harvest this year was unusually small, notwithstanding that the harvest came on nearly a month sooner than could have been expected in the beginning ofJune. This is a clear, decided, and unanswerable proof that there had been no speculations in corn that were prejudicial to the country. All that the larger farmers and cornfactors had done, was to raise the corn to that price which excluded a sufficient number from their usual consumption, to enable the supply to last throughout the year.'
But the price would have been lower but for the Poor Law. In other words 'rent' was extracted from one section of the population and handed over to another. The big farmer gained. The middle class property owning parishioner lost.
In England, the farmer was an entrepreneur who hired land from the gentry and labourers as and when he required them. The Poor Law made the gentry and middle class worse off because their property was taxed so the farmer could get cheap, subsidized, labour. True, the gentry gained by higher land prices which is why they supported the Corn Laws but Malthus said this was cool because the gentry spent a lot of money to keep up their social status. (This was the argument Keynes liked because it was about 'effective aggregate demand'). Ricardo turned the tables on Malthus by showing that, under diminishing returns, the returns to property would tend to rise thus hobbling the industrial entrepreneurial class. Henry George took up this argument and ran with it. Sen, being as ignorant as shit, knows nothing about all this.
The second feature was the role attributed to the operation of the system of parish allowances in making it difficult to eliminate the demand for food by the poor, thereby leading to a much larger increase in prices.
'This price, however, has been most essentially and powerfully affected by the ability that has been given to the labouring poor, by means of parish allowances, of continuing to purchase wheat notwithstanding its extraordinary rise.'
Sen mentions the 'parish allowance' but makes no mention of how it was financed. He assumes there must have been a nice magical money tree.
Malthus did not, of course, condemn the parish allowances for this reason, but regarded it as absurd that the poor should complain of the price rise.
The 'income effect' of the price rise had been compensated for by a transfer. But there would still have been a 'substitution effect'.
'I do not, however, by any means, intend to infer, from what I have said, that the parish allowances have been prejudicial to the state;
because there had been a fucking Revolution in France and a lot of Aristos and Clergymen had had their head chopped off. Indeed this fate had overtaken Condorcet, against whom Malthus's first pamphlet had been written.
or that, as far as the system has been hitherto pursued, or is likely to be pursued, in this country, that it is not one of the best modes of relief that the circumstances oft he case will admit. The system of the poor laws, in general, I certainly do most heartily condemn,
Malthus's class needed the Parish allowances but didn't like paying for it through the Poor Law. How very strange!
as I have expressed in another place, but I am inclined to think that their operation in the present scarcity has been advantageous to the country. The principal benefit which they have produced, is exactly that which is most bitterly complained of—the high price of all the necessaries of life. The poor cry out loudly at this price; but, in so doing, they are very little aware of what they are about; for it has undoubtedly been owing to this price that a much greater number of them has not been starved.'
The poor- as is generally the case- were smarter than the 'economists' who wrote about them. They wanted the end of the Corn Law as did merchants like Ricardo.
Indeed, in the system of parish allowances, Malthus saw a mechanism that would magnify the price rise owing to the food shortage in an almost unending price explosion.
'The poor complained to the justices that their wages would not enable them to
supply their families in the single article of bread. The justices very humanely,
and I am far from saying improperly, listened to their complaints, inquired
what was the smallest sum on which they could support their families, at the
then price of wheat, and gave an order of relief on the parish accordingly.
This was the 'Speenhamland system'- a direct response to the danger of French style insurrection
The poor were now enabled for a short time, to purchase nearly their usual quantity
of flour; but the stock in the country was not sufficient, even with the prospect of
importation, to allow of the usual distribution to all its members. The crop was
consuming too fast. Every market day the demand exceeded the supply; and
those whose business it was to judge on these subjects, felt convinced, that in a
month or two the scarcity would be greater than it was at that time. Those who
were able, therefore, kept back their corn. . . . The corn, therefore, naturally
rose. The poor were again distressed. Fresh complaints were made to the
justices, and a further relief granted; but, like the water from the mouth of
Tantalus, the corn still slipped from the grasp of the poor; and rose again so as to
disable them from purchasing a sufficiency to keep their families in health. The
alarm now became still greater, and more general. . . . With further relief and
additional command of money in the lower classes, and the consequent
increased consumption, the number of purchasers at the then price would
naturally exceed the supply. The corn would in consequence continue rising.
This could be done in wealthy parishes with 'humane' JPs. In poorer parishes, harsher measures were used. The plain fact is that if the relatively rich could band together and get in troops, then they could slaughter the rabble. Still, it wasn't Speenhamland but the rise in demand for child labour which permitted population growth. Agricultural productivity did rise in response to higher prices and thus no Malthusian disaster unfolded.
Malthus was most critical of the proposal to insulate the poor against price rises by making the wages paid to the poor proportional to food prices. He saw in this the possibility of dragging the middle classes down to starvation also.
'It has often been proposed, and more than once I believe, in the House of Commons, to proportion the price of labour exactly to the price of provisions.
William Pitt had some idea of giving legislative sanction to the Speenhamland system.
'This, though it would be always a bad plan, might pass tolerably in years of moderate plenty, or in a country that was in the habit of considerable exportation of grain. But let us see what would be its operation in a real scarcity.
The good news is that in a 'real scarcity' the better off would band together to kill insurrectionists. Any supporters of the French Revolution, no matter how rich, would either recant or be hunted down and strung up. Speenhamland was a political expedient to deal with the risk of France exporting its Revolution to English shores.
'We suppose, for the sake of the argument, that by law every kind of labour is to be paid accurately in proportion to the price of corn, and that the rich are to be assessed to the utmost to support those in the same manner who are thrown out of employment, and fall upon the parish. We allow the scarcity to be an irremediable deficiency of one-fourth of all the provisions of the country. . . . The middle classes of society would very soon be blended with the poor; and the largest fortunes could not long stand against the accumulated pressure of the extraordinary price of provisions, on the one hand, and the still more extraordinary assessments for allowances to those who had no other means of support, on the other. The corn-factors and farmers would undoubtedly be the last that suffered, but, at the expiration of the three quarters of a year, what they received with one hand, they must give away with the other; and a most complete levelling of all property, would take place. All would have the same quantity of money. All the provisions of the country would be consumed; and all the people would starve together.'
This is silly. Everybody loses a bit of weight or eats more squirrels and berries and stuff normally fed to horses. There would be a wealth redistribution to food suppliers and owners of agricultural land.
Malthus hastened to reassure his readers, most of whom had—I take it—little to gain from 'a most complete levelling of all property' and from the food shortage being shared by all starving 'together', that 'there is no kind of fear, that any such tragic event should ever happen in any country' (p. 18).
Because the poor and weak would be killed.
Malthus's analysis can be captured in terms of a simple model, dealing both with the influence of poor laws on prices,
no it can't. It is underspecified because one or more predictors are missing. Still, since Malthus was engaging in polemics the thing was deliberately 'biased'.
and consequently on the exchange entitlement of the different classes, and with the 'tragic' possibility so feared by Malthus. Let the money incomes of the rich and poor be l and j per head respectively, and their respective numbers be n and n2 . The income of the poor consists of their money earning w and receipt of transfer t from the rich arranged by the Poor Laws, while the income of the rich consists of their money earning u minus what they have to pay for the Poor Law transfers. The transfers are aimed at giving the poor the ability to buy a decent ration r of food grains at the prevailing price p, if that is possible. The 'tragic event' considered by Malthus refers to the hypothetical possibility that there are no limits to transfers as long as the rich are richer than the poor.
Sen is assuming there is a market clearing price for corn. This is not the case if there is a negative supply shock in a closed economy. What happens is that as price goes up, more and more qualify for the subsidy which means that transfers have to rise which means that fewer can pay it. There is no equilibrium because of 'impredicativity'.
Under the Speenhamland system, it was local property owners who paid the rates which financed the subsidy. But the rateable value would fall or else people would downsize. Either way, there is no equilibrium.
Sen, bizarrely.speaks of the price needing to be 'high enough' to meet money demand even though money demand is a function of that very price! It goes up (thanks to transfers) when the price goes up but can never catch up. This is a spiral which is bound to crash. In practice, there is rationing- i.e. some get Speenhamland assistance while the rest are told to fuck off and die. The market does not clear.
Sen's mistake is to think that the proportion of income spent on corn for the rich is constant. This can't be the case. As its price goes up 'c' goes up. There is no equilibrium.
nothing that might actually obtain. Malthus's readers knew that Speenhamland rationed benefits. It was obvious that the thing was merely a short term political expedient.
The plain fact is the 'exchange entitlement' can't be evaluated because of 'impredicativity'. 'c' depends on other things in the equation.
Sen thinks that the proportion of income spent on income on corn can go to 1. Obviously, it can be higher than one because of borrowing or transfers.
But if even the wealthy are spending only on corn, that means that corn is the 'numeraire'. Money ceases to be currency. Corn is the only thing anyone will accept in settlement of a transaction. But this means there will be an 'asset' demand for food. This means there is no equilibrium. A one good economy is not an economy. It is what a herd of cattle have when they graze in a meadow.
It is the recognition of this relationship that prompts Malthus to express his ire that the poor, in crying out 'loudly at this high price', are 'very little aware of what they are about; for it has undoubtedly been owing to this price that a much greater number of them has not been starved'.
There was more incentive to grow corn rather than keep the land for sheep or as a hunting preserve.
A MODEL OF INTER-CLASS DISTRIBUTION AND EXCHANGE ENTITLEMENT
Malthus's model is one of short-run price determination with supply of food grains being given.
No Malthus is responding to something new- viz. the Speenhamland system which was merely a political expedient under exigent circumstances.
This feature of it is not inappropriate for analysing a famine situation developing when the food grains output has already been fixed by the preceding crop for quite a few months. In providing a simple model of interdependence to capture one aspect of the Bengal famine of 1943, I shall retain this feature. But the classification of the population has to be different from that of Malthus
because Bengal had been self-governing since 1937. They scoff at the notion that the rich should pay taxes to help the poor. Anyway, everything is the fault of the British. Why must they be so fucking White? Couldn't they at least have black stripes like zebras?
to bring in different classes with different economic roles. And the 'circularity' of exchange has to be studied.
In what follows, a five-class economy will be considered, denoted by the indices 1, . . ., 5 respectively as:
1 agricultural capitalists and landlords;
those who had run away as the Japs approached couldn't extract shit
2 peasants;
share-croppers who might have enough political pull with the ruling party to get food for work if their own stock had been destroyed by the floods or the fungus
3 urban and semi-urban workers (urban industrial labour force, military construction workers, urban casual labourers, etc.);
Some were covered by their employers. Again, there was a political element.
4 rural workers (agricultural labourers)
They were fucked unless they worked directly for big landlords who had an interest in keeping a captive labour force in place.
5 rural household producers (rural service providers, craftsmen, etc.)
Truly fucked unless they were mobile.
This is, of course, quite a drastic simplification, but it is adequate for the purpose of bringing out some of the more important contrasting movements of exchange entitlement.
Why bother? The thing was glaringly obvious. In Malthus's England, it made sense to say that some property owners and food producers gained relative to others. In Bengal in 1943, this was not the case. A pro-tenant Premier had changed the law such that there was less security for money lending in rural areas. Furthermore, the Japanese invasion scare meant that the market for agricultural land was affected. Finally there was rationing of almost all manufactured goods. So 'repressed inflation' prevailed. Markets did not clear. The economy was far from equilibrium. Sen doesn't understand this. He trusts official statistics though everybody knew they were meaningless.
First, in so far as the 1943 output (including the December 1942 harvest) was somewhat—though not severely—lower than average, the position of the peasants too would have been worse in 1943 compared with that in a typical year.
It wasn't till June 1944, when the Japs were beaten at Imphal, that Bengalis could be sure they wouldn't be invaded and subjected to the same fate as the Malays or the Burmese.
The analysis presented above assumes everything else the same, and while it does capture the fact that the famine affected most the agricultural labour force and the providers of rural services and crafts, it does not bring out that other groups also suffered a certain amount.
Sen doesn't get that there was a war on. Posh white people in Calcutta found that their air conditioners- sometimes even their own accommodation- was being requisitioned by the army. There was scarcely anything nice to buy in the market. Refugees were flooding in. There was also considerable conflict between the Hindu dominated Congress and Muslims from the League.
In the case of the peasants, there is also the further fact, which has been noted, that some peasants sold of ftheir grains supply too early, egged on by traders dangling before them higher prices than usual, and then had to buy back grains later for their own consumption at a much higher price.
Arbitrage was worse than normal. Why? Increased uncertainty because the Japs were literally at the door,
This type of dynamic process must be an important feature of a more complete model, especially of Phase II. Second, the distress oft he rural labour force has been captured in the model presented here only in terms of a declining command over food given by the wages, but another feature was a reduction of employment, on which there are few firm data but much informal evidence.
It is obvious that a supply shock will lower employment all along the distribution chain.
This, of course, would have led to a dramatic decline of exchange entitlement for those thrown out of employment.
No shit, Sherlock!
Third, while the urban labour force is characterized here as being fully cushioned against food price rise,
it wasn't. There was a war on. A bad time was had by all.
this was not so for the whole period or for all the urban labour force. Again, the model has exaggerated a true feature into an over-simplified generalization. Perhaps it is also worth remarking that the protection enjoyed by the urban labour force in the Bengal famine of 1943 was also rather unusual,
though the Brits had given up power over the Provinces, the Armed Forces remained under British command. Also there were still a fair number of Europeans in Calcutta. Thus, things couldn't turn completely to shit.
and in considering the relevance of the model presented here for other famines, the economic operations of the different classes will have to be differently delineated.
If enough Whites are around- provided they are Capitalist Whites- things don't get too bad.
Fourth, the model presented here is one of single-period interdependence.
so, no hoarding or credit market
It is possible to investigate the same interdependences in a multiperiod context; and even to consider a cumulative build up of these effects.
Bengal needed to boost agricultural productivity instead of relying on Whitey to feed it and wipe its bum.
Finally, in the model presented above the decline of the rural household producers is traceable ultimately to the distress of others, viz. the rural labourers.
But 'rural households' didn't decline in Bengal. There was no increased urbanization on the basis of industrialization. There was ethnic cleansing and declining per capita food availability presided over by corrupt, incompetent, lefty blathershites. Bangladesh did learn the lesson of the '74 famine by quadrupling food output and, from the Eighties onward, doing privatization and getting rural girls into big urban factory dormitories.
This interdependence could be heightened by incorporating the fact that destitution of rural labourers would also lead to their incomes being largely spent all on foodgrains, involving a dramatically lower h—the proportion of income spent on non-food household products—and thus even greater distress for rural household producers.
Starving landless labourers have to fire their butlers. The fired butlers have to cut back on tennis lessons. Underemployed tennis instructors start bumming each other. This angers the Imams. Next thing you know, Hindus are having to run away.
The characterization of this interdependence presented in the model is, of course, an over-simplification; but—as discussed in Chapters 5-1 o—the general phenomenon of' derived destitution' is one of the features of famines that requires a good deal more attention than it tends to get.
Because it is stupid shit. If there is a food availability deficit, almost everybody eats less and there may be structural unemployment in food processing and distribution. But there is a substitution effect towards non-food goods and services. True, there is a negative income effect which means that 'inferior' goods and services gain bigger market share. On the other hand, if factors are mobile, there could be dynamic benefits- e.g. a transfer of population from agriculture to export oriented manufacturing which can grow rapidly- or plain and simple emigration.
Entitlements and Deprivation 10.1 FOOD AND ENTITLEMENTS The view that famines are caused by food availability decline— the FAD view—was questioned on grounds of cogency in the first chapter of this monograph.
Sen doesn't get that if less food is available, less food can be eaten.
Empirical studies of some of the larger recent famines confirmed that famines could thrive even without a general decline in food availability (see Chapter 6, 7, and 9).
Those empirical studies were shit. Sen would take statistics known to be wholly bogus and pretend that food availability had increased in places suffering severe drought or flooding or civil war.
Even in those cases in which a famine is accompanied by a reduction in the amount of food available per head, the causal mechanism precipitating starvation has to bring in many variables other than the general availability of food (see Chapter 8).
Nope. Only food availability mattered. If it declined, poorer and weaker people either starved or had to flee.
The FAD approach gives little clue to the causal mechanism of starvation,
less food means less can be eaten- that's a causal mechanism right there
since it does not go into the relationship of people to food.
The relationship is simple- you can't eat food if none is available
Whatever may be the oracular power of the FAD view, it is certainly Delphic in its reticence.
Nope. It is straight forward. You can't eat what isn't available.
A food-centred view tells us rather little about starvation.
Which is why it is foolish to give food to hungry people. You should analyze their capabilities and entitlements- though they may beat you to death to grab your lunch.
It does not tell us how starvation can develop even without a decline in food availability.
Nor does it explain how people can suffocate though there is plenty of fresh air for them to breathe. Did you know that millions of people are floating off into outer space due to collapse of their gravitational entitlements?
Nor does it tell us—even when starvation is accompanied by a fall in food supply—why some groups had to starve while others could feed themselves.
Because they could get control of food.
The over-all food picture is too remote an economic variable to tell us much about starvation.
Nope. If there is plenty of food, nobody starves. This is because people like giving food to the hungry. Indeed, they even feed pigeons.
On the other hand, if we look at the food going to particular groups, then of course we can say a good deal about starvation. But, then, one is not far from just describing the starvation itself, rather than explaining what happened.
The explanation is food availability deficit.
If some people had to starve, then clearly, they didn't have enough food, but the question is: why didn't they have food?
Because the food available had declined because of an 'exogenous shock'- e.g. war, drought, floods, crop blight, global food shortage etc.
What allows one group rather than another to get hold of the food that is there?
Power and wealth.
These questions lead to the entitlement approach, which has been explored in this monograph,
entitlements can collapse. Those with no entitlement may be able to grab what they like.
going from economic phenomena into social, political, and legal issues. A person's ability to command food—indeed, to command any commodity he wishes to acquire or retain—depends on the entitlement relations that govern possession and use in that society.
No. Laws are costly to enforce. Where there is food availability deficit, the police won't arrest people and ensure they get three square meals in jail.
It depends on what he owns, what exchange possibilities are offered to him, what is given to him free, and what is taken away from him. For example, a barber owns his labour power and some specialized skill, neither of which he can eat, and he has to sell his hairdressing service to earn an income to buy food. His entitlement to food may collapse even without any change in food availability if for any reason the demand for hairdressing collapses and if he fails to find another job or any social security benefit.
If there's plenty of food, he will still be fed by relatives or by the 'kindness of strangers'.
Similarly, a craftsman producing, say, sandals may have his food entitlement squashed if the demand for sandals falls sharply, or if the supply of leather becomes scarce, and starvation can occur with food availability in the economy unchanged.
No. The sandal-maker gets another job or gets arrested or relies on charity. Sadly, if there is food availability deficit, he may have to run away or starve.
A general labourer has to earn his income by selling his labour power (or through social security benefit) before he can establish his command over food in a free-market economy; unemployment without public support will make him starve.
This will happen only if there is food availability deficit.
A sharp change in the relative prices of sandals, or haircuts, or labour power (i.e. wages) vis-à-vis food can make the food entitlements of the respective group fall below the starvation level.
People change jobs all the time. If there is plenty of food there will be no starvation. People can get arrested and eat three square meals a day in jail.
It is the totality of entitlement relations that governs whether a person will have the ability to acquire enough food to avoid starvation, and food supply is only one influence among many affecting his entitlement relations.
No. Only food supply matters. Similarly, only electricity supply matters when it comes to having access to electricity.
It is sometimes said that starvation may be caused not by food shortage but by the shortage of income and purchasing power. This can be seen as a rudimentary way of trying to catch the essence of the entitlement approach, since income does give one entitlement to food in a market economy. While income may not always provide command in a fully planned economy, or in a 'shortage economy', in which a different system of entitlement might hold, the income-centred view will be relevant in most circumstances in which famines have occurred.
No. Only food supply matters just as only electricity supply matters when it comes to access to electricity. True, both food supply and electricity supply may collapse if we say everybody should have both for free even if this means the suppliers make a loss. |
But the inadequacy of the income-centred view arises from the fact that, even in those circumstances in which income does provide command, it offers only a partial picture of the entitlement pattern, and starting the story with the shortage of income is to leave the tale half-told.
Income and Wealth don't matter. Only food availability does.
People died because they didn't have the income to buy food,
because there was a food shortage
but how come they didn't have the income?
Income didn't matter. They could have gotten arrested and eaten their fill in jail- but there was a food shortage and so the police were just beating or killing criminals- not arresting them.
What they can earn depends on what they can sell and at what price, and starting off with incomes leaves out that part of the entitlement picture. Futhermore, sometimes the income may be just 'notional', e.g. a peasant's possession ofthe foodgrains he has grown,
which get requisitioned. Sen is as ignorant as shit.
and then the income-and-purchasing-power story is a bit oblique. To talk about his entitlement to the food he has grown is, ofcourse, more direct.
If there is a food shortage, there will be requisitioning.
But the main advantage of the entitlement approach rests not in simplicity as such, but—as explained above—in providing a more comprehensive account of a person's ability to command commodities in general and food in particular.
We don't know what entitlements we have. Will our Pension fund collapse because of embezzlement?
10.2 THE POOR: A LEGITIMATE CATEGORY? The entitlement approach requires the use of categories based on certain types of discrimination. A small peasant and a landless labourer may both be poor, but their fortunes are not tied together.
Yes they are, if they produce food. The labourer may be better off because he can bring in the harvest somewhere where he is better paid.
In understanding the proneness to starvation of either we have to view them not as members of the huge army of 'the poor', but as members of particular classes, belonging to particular occupational groups, having different ownership endowments, and being governed by rather different entitlement relations.
This approach was and is useless because members of the same family may have different occupations. Focus on productivity and let factors be mobile. Don't bother with sociological, pseudo-Marxist, jargon.
Classifying the population into the rich and the poor may serve some purpose in some context,
it is vital for fiscal policy. You can't tax those who have no fucking money.
but it is far too undiscriminating to be helpful in analysing starvation, famines, or even poverty. The grossest category is, of course, the category of the entire population. It is on this that FAD concentrates, in checking food availability per head, and comes to grief (Chapters 6-9).
It didn't come to grief. People like B.R Sen and Swaminathan were right. Only the supply side matters. Mathematical economics is just masturbation.
The entitlement approach not merely rejects such grossness;
It eats its own shit- which aint gross at all.
it demands much greater refinement of categories to be able to characterize entitlements of different groups,
while masturbating vigorously
with each group putting together different people who have similar endowments and entitlements.
Nobody knows what their endowments and entitlements actually are.
As a category for causal analysis, 'the poor' isn't a very helpful one,
It is useful to know how many fall below an absolute poverty line
since different groups sharing the same predicament of poverty get there in widely different ways.
That is irrelevant.
The contrast between the performances of different occupation groups in famine situations, even between groups that are all typically poor, indicates the need for avoiding gross categories such as the poor and the rich.
Focus on how much food is available to people in different areas.
So much for causal analysis. But it might be thought that, while the category of the poor isn't very helpful in such causal analysis, it is useful in the evaluation of the extent of poverty in the nation. Indeed, the poor are usually huddled together for a head count in quantifying poverty. There is clearly some legitimacy in the category of the poor in this evaluative context in so far as there is a clear break in our concern about people at the 'poverty line'. In Chapter 2 it was argued that the problem of poverty assessment is quite distinct from the issue of assessment of inequality and requires paying particular attention to the category of the poor. On the other hand, even for evaluative purposes there is need for discrimination among the poor according to the severity of deprivation. In the head-count measure, the starving wreck counts no more than the barely poor, and it is easy to construct examples in which in an obvious sense there is an intensification of poverty while the head-count measures is unchanged or records a diminution (see Chapter 3 and Appendix C).
You can have a poverty line and an extreme poverty line. But all that matters is supply which in turn depends on productivity.
It is true that food may be requisitioned or exported from an area such that some starve. But, in such cases, those who are vulnerable to food deprivation have a bigger problem- viz. they may be butchered or enslaved.
In China, British refusal to ban rice exports from famine affected Hunan was one of the causes of an uprising in 1906,
The British did not rule Hunan. The Ping-Liu-Li Uprising of 1906 was not caused by the famine. It is considered to be part and parcel of the wider struggle by secret societies to end the Manchu dynasty.
and latter a similar issue was involved in the famous Changsha rice riot of 1910.
Again this was part and parcel of revolutionary activity which ended the Dynasty.
Viewed from the entitlement angle, there is nothing extraordinary in the market mechanism taking food away from famine-stricken areas to elsewhere.
No. The market mechanism wasn't bringing in food in sufficient quantities save where wealthy merchants originating from the area, or Christian missionaries, purchased and brought in supplies.
Market demands are not reflections of biological needs or psychological desires, but choices based on exchange entitlement relations.
No. 'Exchange entitlement relations' collapse when there is a supply shock. Market demands are met by the market if backed by money. If wealthy merchants originating from the area buy and transport and distribute food, the famine is alleviated. The same is true if Missionaries or philanthropists spend money towards that end.
Food movement from Bangladesh into India during the Bangladesh famine was also a politically explosive issue.
Whereas vast population movements into India were perfectly fine with Sen and his ilk.
This is one of the reasons why it is misleading to characterize a famine arising from a crop failure as being due to a fall in food availability.
Though food availability had in fact declined because of floods and a reduction in US aid.
With crop failure people's incomes also collapse—and their ability to attract food from elsewhere—and the situation is best seen as a failure of entitlement and not as just a drop in food availability.
Not having money is not a failure of entitlement. It is a failure to earn money or to get someone to give it to you.
FAMINES AS FAILURES OF ENTITLEMENT The entitlement approach views famines as economic disasters, not as just food crises.
Which is why it is useless. To say 'this is a disaster!' is not helpful. To go and get food and bring it in and distribute it is helpful.
The empirical studies brought out several distinct ways in which famines can develop—defying the stereotyped uniformity of food availability decline (FAD). While famine victims share a common predicament, the economic forces leading to that predicament can be most diverse.
No. The economic force is one and the same- viz. a 'supply shock'. It doesn't matter if this was caused by a blight, a flood, a drought or a war. The result is less food is available and some may starve.
it is of interest that famines can arise in over-all boom conditions (as in Bengal in 1943)
This nutter doesn't get that the Bengalis were trembling with fear because the Japs were at the gate. Had they won the battle of Imphal they would have come into Bengal and requisitioned all the rice and fish and fed their army on Sushi.
as well as in slump conditions (as in Ethiopia in 1974).
A drought is not a 'slump'. Ethiopia wasn't a country with a big stock exchange. It was medieval.
it is important to distinguish between decline of food availability and that of direct entitlement to food.
You may be entitled to food but if no food is available you are shit out of luck. Availability matters. Entitlement does not.
The former is concerned with how much food there is in the economy in question, while the latter deals with each food-grower's output of food which he is entitled to consume directly.
Sen thinks people consume wheat directly. He does not understand that the thing has to be processed before it becomes palatable.
In a peasant economy a crop failure would reduce both availability and the direct entitlement to food of the peasants. But in so far as the peasant typically lives on his own-grown food and has little ability to sell and buy additional food from the market anyway,
he has to buy salt, oil, meat etc.
the immediate reason for his starvation would be his direct entitlement failure rather than a decline in food availability in the market.
No. If food is available, he can borrow and buy what he needs. If food isn't available, he can't.
Indeed, if his own crop fails while those of others do not, the total supply may be large while he starves.
No. He borrows or sells his land and fucks off to the City.
Similarly, if his crop is large while that of others go down, he may still be able to do quite well despite the fall in total supply.
He will get rich selling his surplus. But he might eat less because of the 'substitution effect'.
The analytical contrast is important even though the two phenomena may happen simultaneously in a general crop failure. While such a crop failure may superficially look like just a crisis of food availability, something more than availability is involved.
Nope. Only availability matters. If arbitrageurs bring in food supplies, there is scarcely any price rise. True, farmers may incur debt or sell up and enter some other occupation.
This is important to recognize also from the policy point of view, since just moving food into such an area will not help the affected population when what is required is the generation of food entitlement.
You can say 'Government will distribute free food to all owning less than x acres of land'. This is a legal entitlement. But if some nice Bengali politicians steal all the food from the public distribution system, the entitlement will be meaningless.
Finally, the focus on entitlement has the effect of emphasizing legal rights.
People have the legal right not to be raped or murdered. Yet if not enough police officers are available, they may get raped and murdered.
Other relevant factors, for example market forces, can be seen as operating through a system of legal relations (ownership rights, contractual obligations, legal exchanges, etc.).
Markets may be illegal. Sen must have heard of the 'black market'.
The law stands between food availability and food entitlement.
Not in Bengal in 1943 and 1974. There was a legal obligation to feed the hungry. Corrupt politicians stood between what food was available and those entitled to receive it through the public distribution system.
Starvation deaths can reflect legality with a vengeance
The biggest famines of the Twentieth Century were created by Marxist nutters. Sen, back in 1981, was still toeing the Party line as a 'useful idiot' or fellow traveller. That is why he pretended that 'class relations', rather than food availability, was the real problem. The Bengali Commies were pretending that not till all class enemies were liquidated and 'bourgeois' legality was overthrown would starvation cease to be a problem. Then they came to power and saw that by making things easier for the tenant, food production could rise and they themselves could secure a vote bank. Sadly, this meant they could then concentrate on fucking up the industrial proletariat by chasing Industry away from the State. Sen's argument- viz. that urban factory workers eat five times as much rice so as to have the pleasure of seeing their rural cousins starve- may have appealed to Marxists though they had sense enough not to say so openly.
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