"To feed people:" If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

 I recently saw a "meme" on an anticapitalist reddit thread that basically summed up as "why do people grow food to make profit instead of you know, feeding people."

Let's get into psychology. I have a degree in this so I know what I'm talking about. There are four ways to motivate people. The punishment/reward axis and the positive/negative axis. Thus, you have positive punishment, negative punishment, positive reward, negative reward. "Positive" means you add something to the mix. So positive reward would be, say, payment. Positive punishment would be, say, the whip. Negative reward would be removing something bad. Say, reducing pain. Negative punishment would be removing something good, say, fining. 

You cannot motivate anyone to do anything without utilizing some form of this system. Any action taken by an individual must be motivated by something--though that "something" can be as different as cold hard cash versus a vague feeling of obligation. Internal or external, motivation must be present for a human to act.

Now here's the rub. Positive reward is, arguably, the most ethical form of motivation. In negative reward, you are removing something bad, which implies that to reliably achieve it you must either add something bad yourself or take advantage of someone's bad situation. Both forms of punishment are obviously not very ethical for general motivation in an adult-functioning society. That would be slavery.

Now that we've concluded that positive reward is the best motivator in an ethical society, let's discuss the two types of positive reward at play in this "meme." Physical and mental. Interior or exterior. Growing food to "feed people" gives the grower that sense of satisfaction that they're helping the world be a better place. Great, right? Growing food for profit is obvious: the farmer is working for money, cold hard cash. 

Now let's take a slice of the population. A random selection of individuals. (Statistics is part of psychology.) You give them a choice. Work a forty-hour, grueling work week, fifty weeks a year, for thirty years. You offer half the population "good feels" and the knowledge that they're feeding the world. You offer the other half an indeterminate profit based on their situation within the supply chain. Which side would have more takers?

Right. Because "good feels" doesn't motivate half as well as cold, hard, cash. While only a select number of altruistic individuals would work hard for the benefit of everyone (I'm not saying they don't exist) ninety-nine percent of people would work for the money.

So what about the exploitation? What about the fact that paying for stuff sucks? Those altruistic people have you covered! Food banks! Food stamps! In a modern society there are safety nets that prevent people from becoming absolutely destitute. And any country that isn't a "modern society" gets a ton of stuff from the societies that are "modern" in the form of food aid. The truth is that there are almost no people starving from a pure lack of food. They're starving because of corruption and bad actors. In other words, the food generation system isn't the problem.

And even without any government assistance, you can get your nutrients from a relatively tiny sum. Take a look at this! Unless you're getting your Starbucks coffee and avocado toast, you can afford to eat on a small amount of money. Being morally outraged about someone's else's profits without adequate evidence that they are defrauding you is technically called envy. For a society to work, there must be the "cherry of wealth" hanging from the tree. This is what motivates people the most! (I mean, how many people play the lottery?) In a properly structured society making money off of a business venture should result in everyone becoming better off. When people are actually taking your money, that's called white collar crime and people go to jail for that.

Positive reward is what we should aim to motivate our workers by. And no positive reward works better than a) payment and b) a chance at big money. 

In conclusion, "feeding the world" just won't cut it as a sole motivator for production of food. An internal, conditional feeling of moral superiority only motivates a small number of people relative to the motivating power of cold, hard cash. If one tries to motivate an economy using just internal "feelings" you get a system that doesn't work on those feelings alone and must utilize other forms of motivation to fill the gaps. This is the genesis of all the horrific abuses of workers under communism; the motivators are forced to use other, less ethical forms of motivation, in the form of negative reward and both forms of punishment. Thus, the horrors of the gulag are born.