I strive to keep my critique mostly out of the psychological realm, but here it’s worth citing Anselm Kizza-Besigye, who argues that Western horror, even on the political left, at the idea that our access to particular consumer items might decline in a better-planned world is a reflection of geopolitical castration anxiety. Taking up the Western addiction to what he (as a Ugandan) sees as our “sad bananas,” he writes, “They can envision no good substitute for their sad bananas because the desire Westerners feel for them is not for the fruits themselves—even at their best bananas are a mid-tier tropical fruit—but for the relations of unequal exchange that enable Americans to take a disproportionate share of the world’s agricultural surplus and, with perverse glee, waste almost half of it.” I wouldn’t know how to test such a claim, but I find it quite believable. Anselm Kizza-Besigye, “Banana Republics,” Africa Is a Country, September 11, 2023.