“The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit- and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains. And the smell of rot fills the country. Burn coffee for fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire. Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out. Slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the earth.

There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificate- died of malnutrition- because the food must rot, must be forced to rot. The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quick-lime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.” ― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

I seem to recall food stores paying armed security to guard their trash. They spent money guarding trash with guns rather than letting someone survive that capitalism has deemed "unworthy"

To a capitalist, a forest has no value until it’s cut down.

This was the reason for the Irish potato famine. They were growing wheat but we're forced to sell it or they would lose their farms to landlords.

To prevent starving, establish UBI.

I believe UBI will never come to pass because the rich have too much to lose. Imagine a workforce not beholden to the capitalists?

This is some Facebook quality content right here.

What the image says is true. What the title says is dumb. Strange combo, immune to both upvotes and downvotes (from me, at least).

Yeah, even though governments have sometimes stepped in and prevented free market to do its own thing to keep prices somewhat low or in disasters (for instance, here in my country farmers are subsidized to keep food prices low, and various governments during covid didn't wait for free market to step in to deal with the pandemic and funded the relief effort by themselves), capitalism has been critiqued endlessly, its contradictions pointed out over 200 years and due to what the post refers to and countless other reasons, capitalism should definitely be replaced.

The issue is that the left hasn't really organized themselves and provided an alternative and by that I mean something akin to a step by step solution. What happens now when the left gets into power in a country is some random small tweaks such as making healthcare and worker lives a bit better, adding taxes on cars - nothing that tackles the core problem which is capitalism.

I hate that this image was chosen to attach to this statement.

Dammit Bobby...

Meanwhile most of dumped milk was dumped in US

Op is a fucking retard. It was because they had no storage facilities to take it not to keep demand high.

So do you propose communism or will you step in and tell us what to do to fix this?

This happens because it’s subsidized and they’re required to. They do this with sugar and strawberries too (they keep the sugar for as long as possible).

This also happens with magazines and high-end fashion (mostly accessories, which they damage before disposing).