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by DoreenMichele 2287 days ago
You might want to read up on The Irish Potato Famine.

Some landlords were letting people stay rent free out of compassion because no one had money and it was tough all over and no one else was going to rent it. Then the government decided to bleed the landlords and insist it get paid if the unit was occupied, even if no rent was being paid.

Landlords had no choice but to begin evicting people. Things got ugly fast.
1 comments
wyattpeak 2287 days ago
That was a fairly unusual scenario though, where the government actively disliked their citizens, many politicians explicitly happy to see the Irish suffer, others viewing it as the will of God, and none of them dependent on Irish votes.

It's an indication of how things can go wrong with the government working against you, but I don't know that it maps well to the current pandemic.

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DoreenMichele 2287 days ago
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. The Irish example is a real world example of the government tampering in some way with landlords and it having unintended consequences that were disastrous.
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wyattpeak 2287 days ago
I don't think that's a reasonable reading of the event. Ascribing good intentions to Westminster with regard to the famine is unjustified. Some wanted to help, others distinctly didn't. It would be beyond charitable to suggest that all their actions were designed to minimise Irish suffering.
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DoreenMichele 2286 days ago
I don't think that's a reasonable reading of my comment. (Trying to be light-hearted here, not mocking.)

I wasn't ascribing good intentions to Westminster. I was saying that their intentions, good or bad, and the intentions of the current American government are irrelevant. What's relevant here is they did a thing and it got x result. So we should use that example to wonder what will really happen should we do a similar thing now.

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markdown 2286 days ago
> So we should use that example to wonder what will really happen should we do a similar thing now.

Except nobody is suggesting a similar thing. I started this thread by suggesting that the government do x, and you replied with the assumption that the government would do x+y.

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