Cool! It's not like they haven't been working on this for decades; they've got a huge network of NGOs, non-profits, and local orgs already established. Of course, that's $6B per year. Not just a one-time deal. But I'm pretty sure Elon never bothered to read anything about the WFP, or he wouldn't have had such a glib reply.
> WFP operations are funded by voluntary donations principally from governments of the world, and also from corporations and private donors.[15] In 2019, funding was a record US$8 billion, of which the largest donors were the United States ($3.4 billion) and Germany ($886.6 million). Contributions were insufficient to cover identified needs of food-insecure populations, with a funding gap of US$4.1 billion.
According to Wikipedia, world governments spent over $35 trillion last year and world hunger hasn't been solved. I don't think $35.006 trillion would make the difference.
Is the fix to crossover packaged extended shelf life meals-ready-to-eat with fastfood outlet logistics skipping on the luxury of cold storage? What would the descendants of the survivors of the potato famine have done using modern technology? Exchange a healthy intake of calorie requirements for gainful work bootstrapping a failing economy? Baseline the cost profile on the 9 months it takes to ship an empty cardboard box by a corrupt bureaucracy paying millions to the CEO and management at the top of any so-called charity?
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 25.6 ms ] thread1. There are ~800 million people suffering from hunger.
2. One meal is ~$0.25.
3. -> almost two meals per day assuming WFPs already existing fixed infrastructure can just scale.
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It's still peanuts in the global scale. Equal to $600B capital giving 1% of annual capital gains.
> WFP operations are funded by voluntary donations principally from governments of the world, and also from corporations and private donors.[15] In 2019, funding was a record US$8 billion, of which the largest donors were the United States ($3.4 billion) and Germany ($886.6 million). Contributions were insufficient to cover identified needs of food-insecure populations, with a funding gap of US$4.1 billion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Food_Programme#Funding
If the WFP can't solve the problem with $8B and the need continues to be so dire, it seems unlikely that another $6B will be enough.
It's almost as if there are factors beyond lack of food at work here.