What Happens When A Country Starves?

Change is coming because people will be going hungry

I’ve been seeing a lot noise online about food stamps lately.

So I’m going to throw my voice in the ring, but from a slightly different angle.

Everyone loves to talk about whether or not someone on food stamps “deserves” to be on food stamps. Here’s the thing: nobody on food stamps is there because they love the food stamp program.

People are on food stamps because we’ve created an economy that doesn’t value human time. And now, I’m seeing so many people slamming the idea that people need help.

And it really fucking pisses me off. I’ve been on food stamps twice in my life: once right after I graduated college and couldn’t find a job no matter what I did, and my first son was born. It killed me to go on food stamps because I felt like a failure of father. That’s the first thing I felt at the beginning of parenthood. Not because I wasn’t trying; it took me nine months to find a job that would hire me.

And once after I got fired. I decided I couldn’t put myself in a position again where someone else could dictate my future. I was determined to figure it out, because I wouldn’t go through that again. Food stamps was worth it while I was trying to learn.

But I’m in a position of unique privilege, and I can navigate complexity relatively easily. When I look at the other people who rely on the program, they don’t have the capabilities or support they need in order to be successful.

Every single point of the program is designed to be as painful as possible. When people go through that pain, they expect that they can at least rely on the resources they were promised.

And this administration has shown that we can rely on them for nothing. They don’t care. The cruelty is the point.

We’re about to see what happens when there are a bunch of people who have their food sources cut off. I see a bunch of possible externalities here, and I don’t like them.

First of all, grocery stores get SNAP benefits as revenue coming in. No SNAP, that leads to a drop in revenue.

But, the grocery stores still have the food. What happens when a bunch of hungry people with no money see a spot that has food?

Guess what? Theft is going to go up. At least.

Worst case? They decided to say “Fuck Society” and go full anti-social and just revolt.

Why wouldn’t they? The government has shown them that their time and lives don’t matter. What reason do people have to obey laws?

We’ve created a society where people can’t afford to exist because unless you’ve created a system that leverages your time against everyone else’s, you’re fucked,.

And now, we’re about to find out what happens when you tell people they aren’t valuable enough to eat. A starving population as winter is hitting is a really bad sign for the stability of a country.

The only thing that I think can save us: communities need to step up and take care of their own. If they don’t, bad things are going to end up happening.

We’ve already been in a liquidity crisis because the people with resources have been starving those without, and this is about to be the match that gets tossed in the pool of gas.

I think we end up with a much different country by Christmas, one way or the other.

I simply pray that people step up to fill the gaps the systems leave, and that they do it in time.