Discussion
While most of us in the industrialized world are spared the sight of actually witnessing a fellow human starve to death, occasionally the realization that 15-20 million souls suffer that fate every year intrudes on our consciousness, usually at the instigation of some holier-than-thou type who seeks to make us feel guilty about our lifestyle, which the preachy pedagogue invariably labels "gluttonous", "self-gratifying", "unsustainable", or the like. This intrusion can place an unhealthy burden on our conscience, despite the flexibility displayed by that divine instrument in absolving us of responsibility for other instances of man's inhumanity to man, such as genocide practiced on an ethnic minority (we being removed from the event in time and/or space); for the present discomfiture involves not a 50-year-old holocaust but an event in the here and now and one inflicted on even more victims than suffered through that other unspeakable horror. So, in the interest of relieving us of our collective guilt, and incidentally improving the lot of the hapless starving, I offer the following modest proposal.
As starvation appears to be a function of our economic system, I propose that we replace our current faulty system with the one system ever devised by man which virtually assures that no one will starve. I speak, of course, of slavery. What more ingenious institution could be devised to guarantee to all their basic human right to sustenance than to place the well-being of the poor and downtrodden in the hands of enlightened owners? A man would no more allow his human property to starve to death than he would his pet cockatoo! This being especially true as, unlike other pets, the human slave can actually produce the means of his own sustenance, as well as that of his master.
Objections to this proposal will be raised because of certain lingering stigmas associated with an earlier implementation of the slave concept. To avoid any such criticism, the proposed resurrection of the "peculiar" institution must eschew the compulsion factor which figured so prominently in the previous incarnation. Participation will be completely voluntary. Everyone will have the choice to freely enslave himself to one who can provide for him or to starve to death. Some, no doubt, will prefer to retain their amorphous freedoms despite the misery of their existence, but this faction should, almost by definition, be a dwindling minority. Within a generation, it is estimated, all those in need will either have become enslaved or have died off. Starvation as we know it will have come to an end.
A fringe benefit that can be expected to result from adoption of the slavery solution to the starvation dilemma is an end to the nagging problem of overpopulation, to which many attribute the starvation phenomenon in the first place. Slave owners can simply prohibit the commingling of slaves of the opposite sex. The economic incentive which in the past led masters to encourage breeding amongst their chattel can be nullified by declaring slave offspring to be wards of the parents' owner, who will be responsible for the children's well-being until they reach their maturity, at which time they can choose to remain under slavery or take their chances in the free world. Moreover, the threat to demographic stability represented by non-slave-to-slave reproduction - so graphically illustrated by the multi-hued aspect of America's "black" population - could be met by exacting stiff penalties on any master who strayed from his conjugal bed to dally with his comely property.
The proposed solution could go well beyond the simple salving of our consciences. To the extent that slave and master differ in religious orientation, the conversion of the slave to the religion of his master through moral suasion, or other means, will bestow upon the master the satisfaction of knowing he has not only filled a belly but saved a soul, without in all likelihood doing any harm to the slave. This will be of special consolation to the distaff side of the slave-owning family, as will the opportunity slavery affords them to practice the self-ennobling act of charity by bestowing their old clothes and scraps from the table on the less fortunate members of the household.
And so, let us all join together to work for that brave new world where slavery will have wiped the scourge of starvation from the land, so that we may once again, with conscience cleared, feel good about ourselves, and eat heartily.