Recently, Elon Musk’s Twitter acquisition has been involved in many polemics. Last month, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX announced that he bought Twitter for $44 billion (that happened a few days after he temporarily suspended the deal because of disagreements). Musk’s purchase fomented a big discussion in our society: what could that amount of money do for the world?
David Beasley, director of the World Food Program of the United Nation (UN), said that if Musk donated $6.6 billion (or 2% of his wealth), he could end world hunger. That would be incredible, but would it really work?
For Sandro Prado, economist, master in administration and professor at Universidade de Pernambuco’s Business School, “That isn’t the way it works when we talk about a certain amount of money that could end world hunger. It is actually possible to minimize the hunger issue, but it isn’t that there is not enough food for everyone. We have the technological capacity to produce food for all. The problem is income distribution, where there is an availability of goods in the world, but they are not divided equally”.
The economist completes “while big fortunes like Elon Musk’s exist, there will be world hunger. But it is not something that can be solved in the short term. We are decimating entire populations through a lack of income and resource sharing”.
The whole point of this discussion is if Musk (or any other wealthy person) donated a part of their money, the problem won’t be solved. For a while, there would be food for all. But then, the resources would end and hunger would continue to exist, because the problem lies in the unequal income division, a consequence of capitalism. The system looks like this.
To conclude, Prado stated: “As long as people’s mentality doesn’t change and market capitalism continues to be the dominant form of production and economic system, we won’t be able to eliminate hunger and we will destroy the planet and other human beings”.
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This article was edited by Lethicia Lioi.
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