In the vulture’s shadow

I’ve encountered what has to be the world’s most haunting photo. An African child on parched land is hunched over in the very last stages of starvation, unable to stand, and apparently expending his very last calorie of energy trying to keep his face out of the dirt. A few feet behind the child, a vulture is standing, watching, obviously having figured that the kid will be dead in such a short time that it’s worth it to stand and wait. Yikes.

That is, to be sure, not a problem the Commonwealth faces. Our rich Uncle Sam and our hard-working business sector have created caloric abundance to the point of, in some cases, grotesque absurdity. That’s good, I’m all for abundance and I’m wry enough to enjoy absurdity, but it’s too bad that we don’t ever lift our eyes from playing the grubby realities of the patronage system here, and, just once in a while, contemplate things on a higher plane of economic thought.

Starvation isn’t really a biological issue; it’s an economic one. Biology doesn’t innately value people over vultures. But don’t you think that economics should? Famine isn’t usually the result of a spontaneous “food shortage,” it is typically a result of deliberate government actions that interfere with the workings of the free market.

Indeed, any of us could go to the most barren crag of America’s desert, where not even a blade of grass will grow, yet we could still eat a great steak dinner, wash it down with an ice-cold lager, and cap it all off with two scoops of strawberry ice cream. How can this happen? Because the free market system is efficient enough to put food where food can’t grow. That’s what free markets do. They allow people to produce stuff, exchange it, and distribute it, and you usually distribute stuff where that stuff was scarce, since it is more highly valued in such venues.

But the freedom to produce and exchange is opposed by those who would rather enslave others via the chains of socialism. Most economists have joined the scheme. Oddly enough, predatory businessmen join the crusade. And as for the teeming human masses, well, people will always prefer authority to freedom. Socialism, then, is the natural order for humanity; on this point the socialists and I are in complete agreement.

But excuse my choice of words. Socialists dare not call themselves “socialists,” since the hell-on-earth of Stalinism won’t soon be forgotten. It’s bad PR. So they’ve come up with other terms to sugar coat their deadly schemes. “Labor Party.” “Economic democracy.” “Progressive policy.” “Liberal economics.” “Central planning.” Perhaps famine is merely “progressive agriculture,” starving to death with your face in the dirt is “caloric democracy,” and the vulture that picks the skin off your bones and the eyes out of your skull is a case of “wonderful bio-diversity.”

Africa isn’t the only place swimming in the glorious concepts of unfree markets. But now that the USSR is no longer the living spokesman for the socialist utopia, the woes of Africa are the most glaring example of “progressive” thinking. It is the poster child for the fortunes of a few being built upon the bones of many. Such polarization is what gives that sick thrill to the elitists we know as “liberals,” who would lord over us all, as we would have to beg to gather the crumbs from under their tables. Think of the food version of Hillary-care.

As the world’s advanced societies veer ever farther from the ethic of free markets, we can be assured that starvation will someday be a growth industry. Populations have soared on the back of a market system that may not be around to support them.

And as we bask in the abundance of pork, Spam, and Pepsi, wiping the grease stains from our mouths as we waddle to the dessert table, I wonder how many of us thank the free market for producing the bounty. Our generous Uncle Sugar can give us enough gravy to mask our prodigal ways, but most places in the world are not so lucky.

(Ed Stephens, Jr. is an economist and columnist for the Saipan Tribune. Ed4Saipan@yahoo.com)