There’s an incident in The Grapes of Wrath where fruit growers, faced with a harvest they can’t sell, burn the excess rather than give it away to the hungry poor. The book portrays this as sheer heartless greedy capitalism: saying in effect (not a direct quote) ‘I’ll be damned if I give my fruit away for nothing’. Is it that simple, or did the fruit growers have a rational reason to do this? It would hardly be the case that they’d be driving down the already low wholesale prices by letting people who couldn’t afford the fruit at all have the excess. Nowadays giving away excess food is considered good public relations.
Are people entitled to what you own by virtue of being poor?
Nowadays is no different. Nothing is free. The rationale for burning the food is “fuck you, it’s mine and I’ll do what I want with it” and doesn’t necessarily have to go any deeper than that.
And then why shouldn’t the poor simply rob you or someone else to get what they want ? After all, if ethics and compassion don’t matter, and all you’re supposed to do is look out for number one, why not ?
Or is this supposed to be a one way version of sociopathy ? The better off should have no problem with letting the less fortunate starve, and the poor should just respect their property rights, because they are more important than human life ?
So don’t work for it, just take it. :rolleyes:
If ethics or compassion doesn’t matter, why not ?
Nowadays IS different. From the Great Depression. People were destitute and starving and desperate just for food to feed their families. There are times, when times are so bad that even rich have to break down and feign compassion. :rolleyes: Simply because it’s the right thing to do.
EDIT: Jesus Christ! I can’t believe the callousness of today’s generation!
Is there any evidence that this actually happened, with this rationale, outside of a novel?
Anyway, while I suppose the farmers could’ve just stood on a corner in a poor town and given the stuff away, I imagine that back in the era the novel was set in, distribution methods weren’t very good by today’s standards. Could it have reached the people who needed it by the time the stuff became inedible? After all, if they couldn’t sell it, it must’ve been harvested for quite a while, and thus probably on its way to perishing, anyway.
NO, by virtue of being human beings in need. Nothing more is needed.
Burning the crop would return nutrients to the soil. Giving it away would not.
I’ll tell you a reason why this may happen. When Heinz (in the UK at least) produce a faulty product (i.e. a dented tin, a tin labels won’t stick to etc.) they throw it away in a skip, which is required by their insurance company, as they can reclaim a small amount of money back from them for each faulty item.
The problem isn’t with Heinz, it’s with their insurance.
The poor aren’t entitled to anything just because they’re poor. Giving away food to the poor is good, but not giving away food is not bad.
I can’t say whether it was done or not, but I have a hard time seeing how someone would burn something like apples, oranges, or strawberries nevermind why. A granary can be lit up like a roman candle without problem but fruits generally have a whole lot of moisture in them. Try burning a big pile of apples and come back here to let us know how it went. I’m sure it could be done, but the energy and effort required to do so would be tremendous, especially during an era when money was scarce.
As to why the farmers burned the fruit I think there’s basically one reason. The Californians hated and resented the Okies for invading their state. It might sound odd, but Okies, a term that applied to any migrant worker, were viewed in a way that isn’t far off from how many people view illegal Mexican workers today. California even passed a law making it a misdemeanor to help bring a poor person into the state. I think one guy got convicted for helping a poor relative come to the state and it eventually went to the Supreme Court where the law was overturned.
Where was I? Oh yes. Some of this hostility can be easily understood. California was certainly suffering from the depression and all of the sudden the labor pool has gone way up. What happens next? Your wages go down because the labor supply is artificially high. That’s going to piss a lot of people off right there. Burning the fruit was basically their way of saying, “fuck you, now get the hell out of California.”
Marc
PS: I really hope I remember this correctly and they burners were in California.
There is the issue of breaking laws, and breaking ehtics at play here.
You’re suggesting breaking the law to get even. Where as the destroyer of goods has a right to do with what he pleases. I don’t agree with it and it makes said person an ass of course, but it doesn’t make it justified to steal or damage said persons property because of it.
Sure it would. Eventually.
No, not giving the food away is definately bad. I see little difference between that and trying to shoot the hungry people, except it’s less honest. It’s an attempt to hurt or kill them without getting your hands personally bloody.
No, I’m suggeting that the people who say that the growers had a perfect right to burn that food are trying to have it both ways. If there’s nothing wrong in not deliberately starving people, then there’s nothing wrong in those those starving people storming your farm, killing you, and stealing everything, food and all. If compassion doesn’t matter, if ethics doesn’t matter, then the laws don’t matter either; why would they ? If we owe others no compassion, then we live in a dog eat dog society, then everyone is the enemy of everyone else. And if we are in the war of all against all, then the law is without ethical force. If ethics and compassion don’t matter, then society is a dead issue and you might as well grab what you can.
People who push this idea that the better off have a right to screw the less fortunate always want such rights to go only one way. It doesn’t work like that. If the strong have the right to screw the weak, then the weak have the right to gang up on the strong and rip them apart. In a dog eat dog society, everyone gets eaten, which why you don’t want this “I’ve got mine and screw everyone else !” attitude; sooner or later, someone else will apply that same attitude to you.
Without diving into ethics, it’s a fairly straightforward economic decision.
Let’s say I have a hundred apples. I try to sell them at $1 each. Let’s say I manage to sell fifty of them. That’s $50 in my pocket and 50 apples left over. I can do one of two things with the leftovers, throw them away or feed the poor.
Fast forward to the next week and I have 100 more apples to sell. If I threw away those apples last week, I can probably sell 50 more apples this week. OTOH, if I gave all my spare apples away, then poor, but not destitue folk might easily turn around and refuse to pay $1 for their apple.
In this case, either I sell fewer apples, or drop the price. Since the really poor folks have no money at all to spend on apples, I lose money either way.
Nowadays isn’t the same as the Great Depression. If a mega agri-business donates 1% of excess food to good causes, then the goodwill generated by that action could well have a higher $ value than the actual cost of the food.
There are poor and starving people right now. You agree that it’s okay for them to storm your home and take what’s needed for them to survive?
There can be a very sound economic reason for doing exactly this. Say you produce 100 apples every day and you sell them for $1 a pop. On Monday, you sell 90 apples for $1 and reluctantly sell the other 10 for 50c. On Tuesday, you sell 90 for $1 and 10 for 50c. On Wednesday, you sell 80 apples for $1 and 20 for 50c. On Thursday, you sell 50 for $1 and 50 for 50c and you notice that the people who were buying $1 apples on Monday are hanging around till the end of the day and snatching them up for 50c. On Friday, you sell 30 for $1 and burn the rest in front of everyone. On Saturday, you’re back to selling 90 for $1 and burn the other 10. On Sunday, you rest.
Yes it is. It’s bad humanitarian form. You don’t have to help the poor, but you will be considered a selfish jerk if you don’t.
If I had a big pile of what they needed to survive and I torched it out of sheer spite, why not ? I’d deserve it.