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People starve, have starved, will continue to starve, because they refuse to take responsibility for feeding themselves, for doing what it takes to make their way in this world.
In the case of pre-pubescent children it isn't really their fault, it is the fault of their parents and the system they are raised under. By creating and continuing to maintain a system of thoughtless charity that encourages people to do nothing and just collect the dole, it has become the government's fault.
Ninety percent of the country's population used to be agricultural, a huge number of whom were otherwise unemployed. Just because they were unemployed does not mean they were not responsible for growing some crops, raising some livestock to keep themselves and their families going. When you had enough left over to sell to the city folk, times were good, when you didn't, not so good. When your crops failed, your livestock died, and frequently you and your family did too.
The westward migration that filled the middle of the country was made up of a lot of the surplus population that weren't otherwise employed, that were looking for farmland where they could make a new start. Those who already had land tended to stay where they were, those who didn't moved where they could get land, or moved to a city and got a job to support themselves and their families.
Anyone who thinks women weren't working at least as hard as the men, you are wrong. The difference was that men, being seen as the providers for the family, were given preference for all jobs. Women pretty much only found employment when they did not have a family or already had skills needed by the employer.
The industrial revolution changed a lot of that, changed the way the world worked, and women became employable as worker drones, mostly in manufacturing jobs.
None of this is universally true. This is a generalization of the way things were.
The recognition of the social problems brought about by crowding more and more people into the cities to work the manufacturing jobs, and the fact that nobody without very good and needed job skills was going to get paid much more than subsistence wages, brought about the need for unionization, the conflict escalated into a near civil war footing and the government stepped in and tried to make things right.
It has been a long hard fight between the needs of the industrialists, and the needs of the people ever since. The problem with the government's end is that in trying to make things right, to make them more fair, it has created a system where you don't need to work unless you want to, unless you have a desire to succeed - especially if you are female, even more so with children.
Politicians, to curry favor with the voters keep identifying the poor population segment of the week and make a new program to feed and shelter them. Many of the programs created are pretty redundant, and exist because the government doesn't teach people how to acquire the benefits they are already entitled to. Creating new programs creates new administration, more government, more unneeded spending of tax dollars, more waste.
By slowly cutting off the free money flow and telling people the free ride is over, get a job or go farm somewhere which is even harder, we could recover from the problem - but it isn't going to happen because the people will vote that lousy bum that turned off the money spigot out of office and elect someone who will install new spigots so they can get even more money, at least in the cities. Farmers tend to appreciate government thrift, well - unless they are subsidized.
This all leads to why Elmarnieh is both right and insane. What he froths regularly about is the extreme version of fixing the problem. Other, more gentle and better thought out processes could fix the problem without killing 100 million people. Unfortunately, because he is also right about the government not being willing to fix itself, he is also probably right about what will eventually happen.
Hopefully cooler heads will keep it from happening in our lifetimes, but I'm losing faith in that future.
My thoughts on the subject, yours will almost certainly vary.
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The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself. B. Franklin
"A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone." -- Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones
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