Sharman Apt Russell Quotes

“In famine, a focus on women and children highlights biology: here is a mother who cannot feed her child, a breakdown in the natural order of life. This focus obscures who and what is to blame for the famine, politically and economically, and can lead to the belief that a biological response, more food, will solve the problem.”

“As UC Berkeley economics professor Brad DeLong put it to me:You get famine if the price of food spikes far beyond that of some people's means. This can be because food is short, objectively. This can be because the rich have bid the resources normally used to produce food away to other uses. You also get famine when the price of food is moderate if the incomes of large groups collapse.... In all of this, the lesson is that a properly functioning market does not seek to advance human happiness but rather to advance human wealth. What speaks in the market is money: purchasing power. If you have no money, you have no voice in the market. The market acts as if it does not know you exist and does not care whether you live or die.DeLong describes a marketplace that leaves people to die - not out of malice , but out of indifference.”

“That comes to about one hundred million people in India alone from 1947 to 1980. But we don’t call that a crime of democratic capitalism. If we were to carry out that calculation throughout the world… I wont even talk about it. But Sen is correct; they’re not intended, just like the Chinese famine wasn’t intended. But they are ideological and institutional crimes, and capitalist democracy and its advocates are responsible for them, in whatever sense supporters of so-called Communism are responsible for the Chinese famine. We don’t have the entire responsibility, but certainly a large part of it”

“People are dying of starvation and famine.And you have a MASSERATTI!”

“Every one knew he could foretell wars and famines, though that was not so hard, for there was always a war, and generally a famine somewhere.”

“You erased my famine, unpicked my angerYour energy charges my voice, it radiates my heart;Now I am alive with the ore of words pouringFrom my lips like molten lava glittering with joy.”

“Famine sometimes increases the number of people who are overweight.”

“Man can and must prevent the tragedy of famine in the future instead of merely trying with pious regret to salvage the human wreckage of the famine, as he has so often done in the past.”

“It is straightforward—and never mind, for now, about plagues and famines: if God existed, and if he cared for humankind, he would never have given us religion.”

“Jehovah-Jireh is a Great provider. Even in times of famine, we have enough to eat.”