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by cess11
7 days ago
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How is it better? It's kind of weird to attribute those famines, or e.g. the Kazakh famine contemporary with the holodomor which was arguably worse but is less well known, to communism. Quick industrialisation would be a much better, though partial, explanation. If it was a property of communist or socialist projects, why'd you need to reach almost a century back to find examples? We're massively overproducing food now, and still have famines. Egalitarian distributive policies are key to ending hunger. |
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The Potato Famine is a good example because the UK government at that time considered Ireland to be "domestic" and was fully in charge of both the location and all responses, not only economic support but also with the capacity to change the laws, to raise taxes to perform emergency redirection of food from elsewhere, etc., and did not because laissez-faire capitalism (which specifically opposed food aid for famines occurring within the British Empire) was highly influential in the UK government at the time.
Your example wasn't such a strong one, because the current risk of famine in West Asia that the US can be blamed for, is not only extremely indirect (via starting a war which reduces fertiliser supply which screws over crop production but only if the conflict remains active for long enough) but also one of the few things about this conflict that is clear is that Trump did it despite plenty of advisors saying "don't do this, it is bad for the interests of the USA", for reasons including but not limited to the US dependence on oil which in turn is because president Trump also seems to think alternatives to oil are a conspiracy and keeps doing executive orders to make them go away.
The UK screwed up back then in a way that supported the rich. The US is screwing up right now in a way that doesn't. I don't think the victims care(d) in either case, but the former case can be blamed on capitalism more strongly than the latter case.
> We're massively overproducing food now, and still have famines.
Not within the capitalist nations. Or indeed the heavily industrialised nations, because your alternative hypothesis is perfectly sound as industrialisation is necessary (though not sufficient) for overproduction of food.
> Egalitarian distributive policies are key to ending hunger.
Only if they were global, though even then overproduction would still be necessary; sadly this is the exact opposite of what the USA voted for. Would you blame that more on capitalism or on democracy?