Could be that vast crop failures in the US end up being a problem some day but the problem seems somewhat remote. Anyway, nobody claimed wealth protects from all possible bad things. That doesn't really do anything to diminish its attractiveness for preventing the things it does prevent.

>Getting rich only works for some time in a world with widespread crop failures

How are crop failures a major problem if an area doesn't have a substantial amount of subsistence farmers and does have reasonably free trade? How could they threaten a developed economy without crop failures everywhere?

> How are crop failures a major problem if an area doesn't have a substantial amount of subsistence farmers and does have reasonably free trade?

Would you be able to rephrase your question to help meet my need for clarity? Maybe you could state your position without it being a question? At the moment it is not clear to me what you are asking.

> How could they threaten a developed economy without crop failures everywhere?

An example is migration. If large areas of land continue to be plundered and made infertile [1] by Global North corporations (or 'developed' countries' as you call them), by imposing harmful industrial agriculture practices then the inhabitants of those countries will have to migrate to other areas.

So we, as inhabitants of the Global North and members of the 1% wealthiest in the world (as everyone on Hackernews is), would do well to integrate Global South perspectives.

"We are currently facing the most severe migration crisis in history. But this is only one dimension of a broader civilizational crisis. Thus, anti-racist movements should not focus solely on issues of human mobility rights, but also build new paths of solidarity with societies in the geopolitical Global South. A new perspective on internationalism is necessary, where people of the North and the South co-operate to overcome the current colonial division of nature and labor, as well as what has been called the imperial mode of living. In this sense, it is important to question the dominant notions of what it means to live a good life, to think global when it comes to social welfare and to link up with movements such as eco-feminism or degrowth. Doing so could open up new possibilities to address fears of social relegation due to immigration, as they exist in the Global North."

— Miriam Lang

Source: https://www.resilience.org/stories/2017-10-17/integrating-so...

This sounds like another way of saying widespread subsistence farming is a problem, which was essentially my point, not that it is strictly only a problem within national borders. If people have jobs, and make money, and buy food instead of growing it, then they don't face starvation because of crop failures and don't have to migrate. You seem to be opposed to "industrial agricultural practices", that I'd assumed were by definition the solution to the problem.