[vondur]

You are correct, food was exported outside of Ireland during this time period. This time was called the Hungry 40's and crop failures were happening all over Europe. It lead to the Revolutions of 1848. Food was only available at prices that the poor could no longer afford.

[ok_dad]

> Food was only available at prices that the poor could no longer afford.

> It lead to the Revolutions of 1848.

Too bad politicians today don't read the history books they want to burn, they might save their own skins.

[vondur]

Unfortunately the Revolutions of 1848 were violently suppressed. The forces of order were able to exploit the differences between the political reformers and the social reformers.

[m4rtink]

It still resulted in significant reforms in the end, even in Austria-Hungary, removing a lot of religion based persecution there for example.

[reverend_gonzo]

Pretty sure donors line their pockets a lot more than the voting poor.

[I-M-S]

So like housing today. Future will not judge monetization of basic needs kindly.

[MikePlacid]

I lived in a country where housing was provided for free (the Soviet Union), but monetization is so far superior—you wouldn’t believe the difference.

[AstralStorm]

Nice myth. Food wasn't quite provided for free. You did not get quite even basic rations enough to survive even if you were able to get them, further, due to mass exodus from farming to city, buildings were built there, and you had to wait a really long time, sometimes forever, to get a living space by lot. Similar with a car - it all operated under severe scarcity. All countries involved, even East Germany, had these problems.

Workers got either in priority to farmers and further others. Except politicians and connected people got theirs first beyond workers. And some were able to buy it ahead of the queue.

The magical development in the West was driven by really heavy handed subsidies industrial development on already richer area, which USSR just could not afford, and especially not after funding the high military spending. That notwithstanding some completely broken experiments done in large scale like attempts to farm the steppes in the middle of nowhere, a lot of which was funded by export from the few basket countries which would have otherwise had enough food. And after a relatively short while, the industrialization effort stalled, a variety of farming related problems appeared due to both mismanagement, bad weather and plagues, countries involved got indebted on bad terms...

So yeah, it was "free".

[skeletal88]

Why the downvotes? This is correct

[Kon5ole]

I didn't vote but I guess the downvotes are because it calls the parent claim a "myth" and then goes on to agree with it.

The scarcity that made food and housing not free in practice is why monetization (capitalism) ended up being better, which I assume was MikePlacid's point.

Capitalism has problems for sure, but it eliminates scarcity more efficiently than any other system we have tried so far.

Capitalism may share the abundance unevenly, but it still creates it in the first place, which is key.

[epistasis]

The problem is not monetization of basic needs, the problem is putting the controlling interest in the hands of a few who do not care about the lives of the many.

This famine happened from the concentration of power, not because food costs money. Democratic land reform solves it, keeping the monetary impetus in play.

The Holodomor was a very similar genocide where farms were collectivized. That didn't stop millions of people from dying from hunger as their own food was taken at gunpoint and exported to other countries.

We must judge harshly, but on the proper aspect.

[Ray20]

>That didn't stop millions of people from dying from hunger as their own food was taken at gunpoint and exported to other countries.

The problem was not exactly that, there wasn't food export when there was famine. Communists are not that stupid. All they wanted was to overcome the corporate greed of the peasantry, who often sold food to workers at 2, 3, or 5 times the price, so they fought price gouging on food, determining fair prices, that would allow all the country to be well-fed.

But for some unknown reason in response to that beautiful and righteous policy the peasantry reduced food production, which caused the famine.

[epistasis]

I'm not sure if you are mocking the absurdity of the false communist narrative or just repeating it uncritically.

So to be clear: Communists exported food, stolen from the people who grew it, which is very well known, here's one citation from Wikipedia:

> In regard to exports, Michael Ellman states that the 1932–1933 grain exports amounted to 1.8 million tonnes, which would have been enough to feed 5 million people for one year.[16]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_famine_of_1930%E2%80%93...

Further it wasn't "stupidity" of Communists but rather a deliberate genocide of those considered inferior. They sent groups of soldiers around the countryside to steal more grain as children starved in the streets. It is one of the more horrific acts of brutality in the 20th century, all in service of authoritarianism.

[Ray20]

>In regard to exports, Michael Ellman states that the 1932–1933 grain exports amounted to 1.8 million tonnes

That is blatant manipulation. Most of those grain de facto didn't left the country and were used to fight famine. From 1930 there was massive grain import. Moreover, import was considered by Stalin from 1928, but at that time all the statistics showed, that food situation will be fully fixed by fair share from upper parts of peasantry.

>deliberate genocide of those considered inferior

This is literally a conspiracy theory on the level of the Jews starting World War II to exterminate the Europeans.

>They sent groups of soldiers around the countryside to steal more grain as children starved in the streets.

Yeas, and they did that exactly to give that grain to those children.

The fact is, communists with all honesty tried to achieve a fair distribution of necessities to the poorest. But as always leftist's "fair" implies market incentive distortion and as a result hindered production.

The cause of the famine is not the evil communists who took grain from hungry peasants, communists simply tried to take excess food from the rich and give it to the poor. The cause of the famine is the 7-fold drop in food production. And when you have that drop - there inevitable will be mass famine.

[Nasrudith]

Umm... how do you think modern farming works exactly?

[throwaway2037]

With a wild amounts of gov't subsidies. (Note: All highly advanced nations do it in slightly different ways.)

[throwawaymanbot]

Sounds like you are trying to explain away over a million deaths as if it was happening everywhere in Europe and not primarily the British fault.

Fact: in 1847, nearly 4,000 vessels carried food from Ireland to British ports while hundreds of thousands of Irish people died of starvation and related diseases. There was PLENTY of food in Ireland.

FACT: The government refused to intervene in the market to prevent food exports, even as the Irish population faced severe food shortages. Why?

While crop failures were happening across Europe, the impact in Ireland was particularly devastating because of the population's heavy reliance on potatoes. The suggestion that food was only unaffordable for the poor overlooks the fact that the potato blight left many people without any access to their primary food source. WHY was it the only source of food in an abundant growing environment??

Fact: Wages paid on “work programs” for those (un)lucky enough to get on them were too low to purchase food at inflated "famine" prices, leading to widespread starvation.

The export of food from Ireland during this period was a significant factor in the suffering of the Irish people, and it is important to acknowledge the role of British economic policies and the prioritization of profits over humanitarian needs which seems to be a struggle for you.

[verzali]

The way this comment is written reads suspiciously like ChatGPT. And the name of the user has bot in it...

You seem to contradict yourself as well, you say plenty of food, and then it was because of the reliance on potatoes, and then it was the only food source?

Maybe I just dislike comments that insist on saying FACT multiple times.