Ugo Bardi's "Age of Exterminations'' series gives useful perspective on how societies have exterminated members, or classes within a society, for the profit of others, or sometimes because there was not enough food from a bad crop year.
Let me start with the base case of human society killing some members of an extended family/clan a…
Ugo Bardi's "Age of Exterminations'' series gives useful perspective on how societies have exterminated members, or classes within a society, for the profit of others, or sometimes because there was not enough food from a bad crop year.
Let me start with the base case of human society killing some members of an extended family/clan as "witches" when heavy rains or drought have drastically reduced the supply of food. In the area of Tanzania studied, fed by rain-supplied agriculture, there are twice as many witch-killings in years of excessive rainfall, when crops are damaged, as in years of normal rainfall. The victims are typically elderly women, killed by family-members.
Poverty and Witch Killing, Edward Miguel, U. Cal. Berkeley, 2005
I would take the above as mostly a case of famine killing poor people. Western witch killings in Europe and North America did come in hard times, bad winters, the Little Ice Age, but also befell those with some property, and little protection. there was profit to be made.
Killing an elderly great-aunt, when everybody is hungry, seems like a variation on the theme of people starving to death in famine.
The Age of Exterminations VI: "The Great Famine To Come", looks at the Irish Potato Famine as a historical example.
The Irish people were subsisting on potatoes, brought from the new world, and much of the land was owned by others, who produced grain and livestock for export and to feed the troops of the British Empire.
The Irish peasant farmers had been saddled with all of the risk, and they died when potato blight destroyed their food.
The crown was "reluctant" to interfere in the economic markets...
The Irish peasants had "owned nothing and were happy", until they had no food, having unknowingly assumed all of the economic risk of the system by having no other recourse but to eat potatoes they grew, or to die.
The lesson here is that having no options, which is to be poor, and not to "own the means of food production" makes one a ready target for extermination through widespread famine. Universal Basic Income would be a chute into this outcome, as would any form of government handout that became an only-means-of-eating.
So, to kill large numbers of poor people, cut off the food supply. It can look like anything made it happen. It happens periodically.
Professor Bardi looks at The Limits To Growth graphs and the revision to that. We can expect industrialized food production and delivery to have major problems as industrial economy contracts. (Mr. Gates seems to be well invested in farmland.)
One might find ways to assure one's food, water and fuel through a hard spell, but one would not be able to do so in a social vacuum.
Consider helping feed your community, or being a member of a community that largely feeds itself, if that is possible.
Ugo Bardi's "Age of Exterminations'' series gives useful perspective on how societies have exterminated members, or classes within a society, for the profit of others, or sometimes because there was not enough food from a bad crop year.
Let me start with the base case of human society killing some members of an extended family/clan as "witches" when heavy rains or drought have drastically reduced the supply of food. In the area of Tanzania studied, fed by rain-supplied agriculture, there are twice as many witch-killings in years of excessive rainfall, when crops are damaged, as in years of normal rainfall. The victims are typically elderly women, killed by family-members.
Poverty and Witch Killing, Edward Miguel, U. Cal. Berkeley, 2005
https://www.jstor.org/stable/3700704
I would take the above as mostly a case of famine killing poor people. Western witch killings in Europe and North America did come in hard times, bad winters, the Little Ice Age, but also befell those with some property, and little protection. there was profit to be made.
Killing an elderly great-aunt, when everybody is hungry, seems like a variation on the theme of people starving to death in famine.
The Age of Exterminations VI: "The Great Famine To Come", looks at the Irish Potato Famine as a historical example.
The Irish people were subsisting on potatoes, brought from the new world, and much of the land was owned by others, who produced grain and livestock for export and to feed the troops of the British Empire.
The Irish peasant farmers had been saddled with all of the risk, and they died when potato blight destroyed their food.
The crown was "reluctant" to interfere in the economic markets...
The Irish peasants had "owned nothing and were happy", until they had no food, having unknowingly assumed all of the economic risk of the system by having no other recourse but to eat potatoes they grew, or to die.
The lesson here is that having no options, which is to be poor, and not to "own the means of food production" makes one a ready target for extermination through widespread famine. Universal Basic Income would be a chute into this outcome, as would any form of government handout that became an only-means-of-eating.
So, to kill large numbers of poor people, cut off the food supply. It can look like anything made it happen. It happens periodically.
Professor Bardi looks at The Limits To Growth graphs and the revision to that. We can expect industrialized food production and delivery to have major problems as industrial economy contracts. (Mr. Gates seems to be well invested in farmland.)
One might find ways to assure one's food, water and fuel through a hard spell, but one would not be able to do so in a social vacuum.
Consider helping feed your community, or being a member of a community that largely feeds itself, if that is possible.
https://thesenecaeffect.blogspot.com/2021/10/the-age-of-exterminations-vi-great.html