Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

Starvation is the characteristic of some people not having enough food to eat. It is not the characteristic of there being not enough food to eat.   -- Amartya Sen. Starvation is a problem, then, not of  inevitable scarcities, or earthly infertility, but of defective social and political arrangements.  Sen was born in Bengal (northeastern India and the country now known as Bengla-desh was all once "Bengal") in November 1933.  Of course this means that he was born a subject of King Edward VIII, about a month before that King would abdicate in order to be free to marry Wallis Simpson. It also means that Sen was old enough to have a general sense of what was going on when the Japanese troops were at his country's door, knocking, in 1942-44.  So if we understand anything about the horrific Bengali famine of 1943, we know that he knows of what he speaks when he writes of starvation.   The Bengali famine came about because Bengal had been importing most...

My cheery thought for the day: what is the most likely civilization-ending disaster? Something that one can with some plausibility imagine as taking place over the next, say, 50 years. My own guess (and I eagerly await yours, dear equally-cheerful readership): Something akin to the German hyperinflation of 1923 gone worldwide., Money -- ANY money, becomes useless and the only real way to do business left is through barter. But money is a very useful thing, and without it, the resources of the earth cannot accommodate the human population on face of same. Urbanized people don't have anything much to barter once they run out of the family silver, they can only bargain their labor power. With money and so with payrolls gone this means that most of those who don't starve barter themselves into serfdom for shelter and food.  Scary enough for the day?