In Hunger and Public Behavior, Nobel laureate Amartya Sen incorporated factors such as the ability of government to govern and the lack of civil rights into her analysis. The same famine is more likely to cause mass deaths in authoritarian countries and much less harmful in democracies. In Sen's view, there are many things that are self-evident about poverty. To understand poverty in its original sense and why, we simply do not need well-designed criteria, well-defined poverty measures, and inquisitive analysis. The lengthy and verbose scholastic studies of the poor, the use of pictorial descriptions of King Lear, such as "homeless, ragged, hungry, exhausted," are inevitably annoying. Some, as King Lear told the blind Gloucester, "a man can know how things happened without looking with his eyes." Indeed, there are many things that are self-evident about poverty.
In 1981, the eminent economist Amartya Sen wrote this passage as the first paragraph of the preface to Poverty and Famine.
It wasn't until 1998, when Amartya Sen won the Nobel Prize in Economics, that Chinese world really began to pay attention to him, and a few years later, his major works were largely translated into Chinese. In the face of "Poverty and Famine", the academic circles even sighed that "famine is in China, famine science is in India".
Poverty and Famine, by Amartya Sen (India), Commercial Press, December 2004
"Poverty and Famine" is a very difficult read. In addition to the three extremely professional appendices at the end of the article (the fourth appendix is still readable, and the first three include many proofs of advanced mathematics, a total of 40 pages, accounting for 1/6 of the content of the book), the second chapter, "The Concept of Poverty", repeatedly discusses the definition of poverty, making the layman "unconscious"; As for the third chapter, "Identification and Summarization", it is difficult to understand if Amartya Sen's previous important revision of "Arrow's impossibility theorem" is not understood.
However, it is such a highly professional book, but it has suddenly become popular a few days ago. As of 2 a.m. on April 15, JD.com and Dangdang were out of stock and could only be purchased from third-party bookstores, which had been maintained for nearly a week.
The popularity of "Poverty and Famine" is easily reminiscent of February 2020, when the isolated brother in Wuhan Fangcang Hospital insisted on reading the news of "The Origin of Political Order", and the academic book sold well.
Reading requires context, and when the situation is appropriate, academic books can also sell well. In addition, with the improvement of the overall education level, academic books have long been no longer high. As long as you have a certain foundation and are willing to put in a little effort, academic books are not difficult to read, and the benefits of reading academic books are much greater than leisure reading.
In fact, I prefer Amartya Sen's "Hunger and Public Behavior" and "Development with Freedom", which will also be covered in this article when introducing "Poverty and Famine". I hope this long belated review will be helpful to readers who have purchased Poverty and Famine.
Most famines stem not from food insecurity, but from loss of rights
Who are the poor?
Faced with such a question, many people will not hesitate to answer: the poor are the ones who cannot eat. So how can the poor be reduced? The logical answer is: increase food production so that everyone can eat.
Map of world grain production, 1960-2010 (USDA 2018)
Total global cereal production in 1950 was only about 700 million tons, and by 1985, it had increased to more than 1.8 billion tons, an annual growth rate of about 2.7 per cent. In 2020, world cereal production totaled 2.22 billion tonnes, far outpacing population growth. So why are there so many poor people in the world? Why do famines still occur so often?
The more common explanations are:
The poor, most of whom live in poor countries, are vulnerable to reduced food production.
Poor countries have poor transport capacity and are unable to deliver food to the poor in time when famine occurs.
There are too many poor people for the government to take care of.
If there is too little grain in reserve in normal times, it is good that the government has a mandatory reserve.
The market is underdeveloped and does not play the role of communication logistics.
Amartya Sen found that the vast majority of famines were "poverty in abundance", and that famines did not occur only in disaster years, but also in Bangladesh, even with a 13% increase in rice production; During the 1971-1974 Ethiopian famine, the death rate was higher in areas close to highways and more easily accessible.
This means that famine has more complex and profound causes.
Amartya Sen changed her perspective: I can legally own a piece of bread because it was bought with money; And this money was exchanged for selling the bamboo umbrella I made; And the bamboo of the bamboo umbrella is grown in my own land; And I use this land because I inherited it from my father ...
Obviously, behind the bread, there is a long chain of rights, and each chain is legal and works successfully before I can get that piece of bread. Once the rights are taken away, I may not be able to eat it.
For this slice of bread, four rights must be guaranteed:
Trade-based rights
Production-based rights
The right to work oneself
Rights of Inheritance and Assignment
When famine occurred, the price of bread rose sharply, which hurt my "trade-based rights", and I could not exchange other goods I owned for more food; difficulty finding work, which hurts my "production-based rights"; In the social arrangement, if I only work long hours, work for the landlord, and take the wages of death, instead of sharing grain like the sharecroppers, then this arrangement will harm my "right to work for oneself", which can understand why the service industry and handicrafts are the most affected in the famine, "if a person has nothing to exchange ... , he will lose the competition to those who have stronger needs and stronger rights."
Amartya Sen, born in 1933 in the Bay of Bengal, India, has taught in India, Britain and the United States, was the dean of Trinity College at Cambridge University in the United Kingdom, and served as an economic adviser to former United Nations Secretary-General Gurry. He was awarded the 1998 Nobel Prize in Economics for his contributions to welfare economics.
It is worth noting that when famine occurs, social security has a particularly strong impact on "trade-based rights" and "production-based rights". There are also many unemployed people in countries such as Britain and the United States, but there is no famine, not because the average income is higher, but because the social security system is better, ensuring a minimum of "trade-based rights" and "production-based rights", ensuring that people can earn enough wages to avoid hunger.
Thus, Amartya Sen pointed out that famine was an objective result of the denial of rights. As he said: "Famine is, by its true nature, a social phenomenon. "Different social classes have different ability to control food, and the total shortage only makes the differences in the ability of different classes to control food obviously."
Hunger and Public Behaviour by Amartya Sen (India), Social Science Literature Press, February 2006.
Looking at famine from a rights perspective, it has a threefold meaning:
First, it broke through the previous tendency of economics to increasingly favor the "reasonable customer" and recovered the conscience of economics - only a very small number of famines are natural disasters, and the vast majority are man-made disasters. Amartya Sen found that famine often involves only 10 percent of a society, and that "in fact, there is no conclusive evidence that all segments of a country suffer from hunger in a given famine". Famine will not stop without changing the basis on which the poor are disenfranchised.
Second, it provides the possibility to solve the dilemma of "the more relief the poorer". Because of unsuccessful relief practices, economists have invented various theories, from how to define the poor, to accurate disaster relief, to the calculation of minimum caloric consumption, etc., all of which only see food scarcity, do not see the lack of rights of the poor, Amartya Sen is simple and crude: the root cause of famine lies in the rich, not the poor, rather than indulge in noun games, it is better to think based on "simple facts".
Third, emphasize legal rights. As Amartya Sen puts it: "Think of market forces, etc., as acting through legal systems (ownership, contractual obligations, legal exchanges, etc.)." The law stands between the availability of food and the right to food, as death from hunger is often the result of excessive compliance with the law. ”
"What we need to do is not to guarantee 'food supply', but to protect the 'right to food'." Amartya Sen's statement is deafening.
▌ Four great famines, no shortage of food each time
Amartya Sen's "famine theory" is indeed innovative, but does it match practice? Poverty and Famine contains four case studies.
The first case of Poverty and Famine was the Bengal famine of 1943.
According to statistics at the time, the famine killed "about 1.5 million" people, but it may actually be between 3 million and 4 million. Investigators at the time believed that the famine was caused by "storms and floods that reduced rice production in Bangladesh by about one-third in 1942-1943." But Amartya Sen found that local grain production in 1943 was only 5% lower than the average of the previous five years, and even 13% higher than in 1941.
The Bengal famine of 1943 brought great disaster to the local people, waiting for relief people lined up, but British Prime Minister Winston Churchill attributed the famine to the fact that the locals "breed like rabbits" and refused to rescue, resulting in the death of a large number of civilians.
Earlier, in response to the Japanese attack, the British colonial government in India provided income subsidies to millions of people living in cities in Bengal to serve the war, which were paid by "printing more money", thereby triggering inflation, and the wages of long-term workers in the countryside rose by 30%, but food prices rose by 285%, and their "trade-based rights" were denied. Later, barbers earned only 20% of their pre-famine income. Of all refugees, 41 per cent are agricultural workers.
In Bangladesh, there is a unique indicator of famine – looking at the state of the "rice peeling" industry. During the famine, there was a net increase in employment of more than 66 per cent. "Rice peeling" is a "low-paid occupation that is almost exclusively performed by women", but the low threshold and the increase in the number of workers indicate a rapid increase in rural labour unemployment.
Obviously, this was an "expansive famine" caused by the expansion of public finances, but the public sector has refused to classify it as a famine, because under the Famine Law, famine is rescued, and the colonial government could not provide enough food at that time. In fact, the so-called "enough food" is simply an imaginary concept, "like looking for a non-existent black cat in a dark maniac" - everyone closed the door and made up a food shortage figure - this number is too large, so they have to not bail out at all.
In fact, disaster relief only needed to ensure a minimum of "trade-based rights" and "production-based rights", and Bangladesh was not really short of food at that time.
The second case of Poverty and Famine is the Ethiopian famine of 1972-1974.
The famine is thought to have been caused by drought, but food production in the affected areas was only 7 per cent lower than in normal years, prices were stable, and prices in the worst areas did not rise by more than 15 per cent.
Children dying during the 1972-1974 Ethiopian famine.
"After seven years of drought, the poorer sharecroppers have exhausted their already meagre resources and either leave the place, fall deep into debt and become attached to their creditors, or starve to death," the investigator said. ”
In fact, it is the pastoralists who have been hit harder. During the dry season, the number of livestock decreases, while livestock prices fall. On the one hand, raising livestock consumes more food, and it is more expensive for herders to maintain production; On the other hand, meat from livestock is a luxury item, considered a savings, and when famine occurs, few people buy it, and it depreciates rapidly.
In Ethiopia's "normal" year, the cost of passing calories, meat production is equivalent to twice the cost of food production, so herders' "trade-based rights" and "production-based rights" are taken away.
The third case of Poverty and Famine is the 1968-1973 famine in the Sahel region of Africa.
There are six countries in the Sahel region, namely Mauritania, Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Chad. They are on the edge of sub-Saharan Africa, where precipitation is less than 100 mm a year. It is believed that this great famine was also caused by drought.
On May 17, 1973, hungry cattle wandered the Sahel region of Senegal, where, like neighboring countries, large numbers of people died of starvation.
However, statistically, "the rainfall in 1968-1969 was basically normal, but slightly smaller than the heavier rainfall in the 60s", resulting in a total livestock loss of 40-60%. In 1973 alone, about 100,000 people died. Surprisingly, all this happened after the international community actively bailed out. According to the FAO survey: "Even in the worst years of drought, each Sahelian country, with the exception of mineral-rich Mauritania, actually produces enough food to feed its entire population." ”
During the famine, Senegal's per capita food supply did not decline, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Burkina Faso fell by less than 15%, and the largest decline was in Chad, reaching 27%, but Chad had the mildest famine.
Similar to the Great Famine in Ethiopia, the biggest losses in this famine were also herders, whose "trade-based rights" and "production-based rights" suffered a double whammy – falling livestock prices, high food prices, and money to the government.
Overgrazing also exists in the Sahel. Because there are few people who consume meat, herders raise livestock not as production, but as savings, so quality is not important, and maintaining the number of herds is more important, so "when the herder was asked how the recent drought affected him, he said he had 100 animals and lost 50." The herdsman continued: 'Next time there will be 200 animals. ’”
It can be seen that the problems in the Sahel are problems affecting the design of institutions affecting the right to food, and there are high inequities in production and exchange. Public institutions are supposed to guarantee fairness, but they are not taking responsibility.
The fourth case of Poverty and Famine is the Bengal famine of 1974.
In 1974, Bangladesh flooded "to a maximum depth of at least 6 feet (1.83 meters) for at least three months," triggering a famine that killed 26,000 people.
However, rice production increased in the areas most affected by famine, while the three regions with the lowest declines together accounted for only 12.7 per cent of the number of refugees.
Children starving during the 1974 Bangladesh famine
The victims of the famine were mainly agricultural workers, 45 per cent, and 39 per cent were farmers. This is related to the peculiarities of Bangladeshi peasants - they own less land, 32% of households have less than half an acre (equivalent to 3 acres of land), can only work part-time, and about one-quarter of the rural population earns income from part-time work (suspected of mistranslation here, another version says that 32% of people have no land at all). Perhaps more importantly, 81% own less than half an acre if they own any land).
Households with less than half an acre are 165 times more dependent on Bangladesh than households with five acres of rice, which produce three crops a year, with winter rice yielding 70 percent of the year, and their "production-based rights" are so fragile that any fluctuation could be doomed.
Before the floods, Bangladesh had grown rapidly in prices due to fears of declining rice production, undermining the "trade-based rights" of rural workers.
The 1974 Bengal famine demonstrated the difficulty of modernizing traditional agrarian countries: the increase in agricultural workers, which was historically progressive, increased the risk of famine. Before the Great Famine, Bangladesh's wage system had shifted from wages in kind to monetary wages, but workers who sold their land were deprived of their "trade-based rights" and could die of starvation even in relatively bumper years.
Corresponding to Chinese history, every so-called "budding capitalism" could not achieve sustained growth in the true sense, and famine was a hurdle that never passed.
From these four cases, disasters and reduced food production are only one insignificant cause of famine, and the fundamental problem lies in the way it is governed. Amartya Sen's theories stand up to empirical testing.
▌Improving "feasible capacity" is the responsibility of the government
In Hunger and Public Behavior and Development with Freedom, Amartya Sen discusses the situation in China and India.
Amartya Sen argues that China in 1949 and India in 1947 were in a similar situation, and the two embarked on completely different development paths. In many ways, China is ahead, and the gap between the two sides did not appear after the reform and opening up, but in the 50s of the last century. In terms of agricultural production, China's performance is remarkable: 1.59 million tons in 1957, 2.7 million tons in 1958, and 4.2 million tons in 1959.
In Poverty and Famine, Amartya Sen argues that after 1949, the average food per Chinese did not increase significantly, but famine was greatly reduced, showing that the key to avoiding famine was to improve the rights system.
However, India has not experienced any widespread famine since independence in 1947, and Amartya Sen believes that India's advantage lies in "substantial freedom", that is, "viable ability". The so-called feasible ability is "the combination of possible functional activities that the person is likely to achieve." Among these "substantial freedoms," Amartya Sen argues that India has done a particularly good job of "mediation guarantees" and "aid-oriented safeguards." He criticized Brazil's development as a model of "wealth without purpose". In contrast, Indian public opinion is more developed and information communication is smoother.
Amartya Sen argues that freedom is not freedom in the traditional political sense, but freedom in the economic sense, that is, "the feasible ability to enjoy the kind of life that is reasonably cherished." It includes, inter alia, freedom from hardship — such as hunger, malnutrition, avoidable diseases, premature death — basic and feasible abilities, as well as freedom to be literate and numerate, to enjoy political participation, etc."
This freedom, which includes freedom of exchange, freedom of finding work, freedom of self-labor, etc., brings about efficiency gains, and they maximize human dignity. Amartya Sen argues that poverty is the deprivation of "substantial freedoms," not just low incomes, so modern governments should aim to guarantee "substantial freedoms."
GDP trends in China and India from 1990 to 2016
The concept of "substantial freedom" is a good explanation of why China has achieved rapid growth after the reform and opening up. Amartya Sen believes that from the 50s to the 70s of the last century, China established a more complete universal education and universal medical system, and family planning reduced the harm to women to a certain extent, which brought about the improvement of "feasible ability" (that is, substantive freedom), making the development basis between China and India different.
Amartya Sen also noted that in the rapid economic development, China has also experienced a decline in "feasible ability", such as the widening gap between the rich and the poor, the imbalance in education, and the decline in women's social status, so he is more optimistic about India's future development. (When Amartya Sen did the study, China's GDP was less than 1.5 times higher than India's, and in 2020, the gap was as much as 5 times, which Amartya Sen did not foresee.) ）
So, how can a country's "viable capacity" be enhanced? Amartya Sen has a more specific analysis, focusing on five areas.
First, protect the rights of citizens. Implementing the powers of citizens granted to citizens by the Constitution would also minimize famine, which has historically been associated with weak government aids, and when policymakers hear less dissent, they tend to ignore information about famine, or ignore deprivations such as "trade-based rights."
Second, economic freedom. Individuals enjoy the opportunity to use economic resources, human endowments are different, labor, land, knowledge, etc., and perfect market mechanisms will provide the most and best opportunities for all parties to combine.
Third, social opportunities: including gender equality, personality equality, etc., including equal access to education, health care, etc., which help people dispel their enchantment, and the expansion of individual space, the country will also benefit.
Fourth, ensure transparency: the more open the information and the more convenient the transaction, the lower the cost of the transaction.
Fifth, government welfare: There will be losers in any economy, and through unemployment benefits, income subsidies for the poor, etc., it is conducive to reproduction and social stability.
Development through Freedom, by Amartya Sen (India), published by Chinese Minmin University Press, July 2002.
Amartya Sen attaches great importance to government welfare as a basis for guaranteeing "trade-based rights", among others. Some scholars question whether relying on big government on the one hand and advocating "substantive freedom" on the other is not contradictory.
Amartya Sen responds in the case study of the Bengal famine of 1943: it was the British government's delay in providing relief that worsened the famine situation. For Amartya Sen, welfare has become one of the foundations of legitimacy for modern government. Reading the third chapter of this book from this perspective can enlighten you.
There have always been two controversies about government benefits.
First, can the government solve what a more efficient market can't solve?
Second, the government gives too many benefits, will it raise lazy people?
To the first question, Amartya Sen's response is to clarify the difference between "need" and "need". During the Bengal famine of 1943, the British colonial government once hoped to solve the problem by market methods, and even introduced some booster policies, but the result was to aggravate the disaster. It is true that the victims are short of food and clothing, and have more "needs", but that is not "demand" - it is "demand" that can pay, and the victims have no ability to pay at all. This is already a standard "market failure" and the government must step in.
As for the second question, there has been controversy, the most representative of which is the "Arrow's impossible law", which was rigorously justified and was long regarded as unpublished, until Amartya Sen made a wonderful extension, which was his major contribution to economic theory in his early years.
▌Get rid of the confusion of "optimal efficiency"
The so-called "Arrow's law of impossibilities" was first proved by Kenneth Arrow, the first American economist to win the Nobel Prize in economics, and economist Xue Zhaofeng once used a popular metaphor to describe it:
A unit of three people is ready to choose a place to meet, with Hawaii, Chicago and Washington, D.C.
Hawaii is preferred, followed by Chicago and Washington.
B preferred Washington, followed by Hawaii, and third was Chicago.
C prefers Chicago, followed by Washington, and third is Hawaii.
If voted on, it depends on the rules:
Choose between Hawaii and Chicago and Hawaii will win.
Choose between Chicago and Washington, and Chicago will win.
Choose between Washington and Hawaii, and Washington will win.
This means that when multiple people dispute multiple preferences, it is impossible to reach a consensus, and through the setting of issues, you can influence the outcome - what kind of topics are set, what kind of results can be obtained, so as to unconsciously control public opinion. On the surface, the process is fair, but in fact, public opinion is still being manipulated.
American economist Arkens Arrow won the Nobel Prize in Economics in Stockholm in 1972.
By extension, most public issues are worthless, only to meet the needs of some people, shield others, and see who has more control over the technology. Then, the government provides welfare is meaningless, it has become spending everyone's money to pay for a few, seemingly collective consent, but in fact using issues to hijack public wealth.
The "Arrow's impossibility theorem" states that if individual preferences are added to social preferences, there is no ideal rule. That is why, in the third chapter of Poverty and Famine, Amartya Sen pays special attention to the problem of "summation."
Amartya Sen's extension of the "Arrow's impossibility theorem" is:
First, there is no rigid definition of "collective rationality." "Collective rationality" is not complete rationality, it is a collection of preferences, and sanctifying "collective reason" can only create a closed society with the excuse of truth and science, and truth and science are not closed concepts.
Secondly, the "value limitation principle" is proposed. In the aforementioned case, as long as everyone agrees that one of the solutions is not "optimal", one solution is not "suboptimal", and one solution is not "worst", there will be no voting paradox, in short, adding more information and relaxing restrictions on personal preferences can avoid the "Arrow's impossibility theorem". On this basis, Amartya Sen proposed the "Pareto freedom impossibility theorem".
Pareto is an Italian economist who first proposed the "Pareto rule", that is, the "80/20 rule", which believes that 80% of the resources in a system are wasted and only 20% are effective, so he proposed the "Pareto optimality" to push the efficiency center to the extreme.
Amartya Sen proved that the principle of libertarian supremacy and the Pareto principle are necessarily in conflict, giving an interesting example:
A and B disagree with Lady Chatterley's Lover, resulting in three states.
State 1: A reads B does not read.
Status 2: B reads A without reading.
State three: AB does not read.
A thinks that this is a bad novel, it is best not to read anyone, if someone must read it, it is better to read it yourself, because their willpower is stronger. Then A's choices are three> one> two; B is more avant-garde, his choices are one> two> three.
According to the Pareto principle, two opinions are balanced in one > two, which is the optimal state.
However, the best state of libertarian supremacy is three.
Thus, the Pareto principle undermines the principle of libertarianism.
Through this wonderful testimony, Amartya Sen expressed her criticism of the development firstness and one-sided pursuit of efficiency. Man is an end, not a means, and everything that does not serve the development of human happiness will inevitably lead people into a dead end where rules are supreme, and people instead become slaves to rules, "inevitably" living or dying.
"A barber has his own labor and expertise, but none of that is edible... Without government help, unemployment would starve him. Barber services or a sharp drop in the relative price of food by the labour force can also reduce their right to food to the level of hunger. It is the whole power relationship that determines a person's ability to get enough food to avoid famine. Amartya Sen shows in the clearest and most direct logic that modern governments must shoulder the responsibility for welfare or famine will come.
In Poverty and Famine, similar brilliant discourses abound. Amartya Sen's clear logic, conscientious thinking, and solid thinking make people shoot the case. This is not only a professional work of "famine science", but also the elevation of thought and the baptism of the soul, which should become a common intellectual wealth and be well known by more readers.
Resources
"Amartya Sen's "The Politics of Famine," by Wu Ruicai, Reading, July 2013, pp. 52-60.
A Review of Amartya Sen's Social Choice Theory, by Deng Xiang, Economic Dynamics, December 1998, pp. 67-69.
"Amartya Sen's Poverty Theory Research", by Liu Yunliang, Capital University of Economics and Business, 2013 master's thesis, major in social security
"Xue Zhaofeng's Lecture Notes on Economics", author: Xue Zhaofeng, published by CITIC Publishing House in July 2018.