The Irish Famine was 100% caused by capitalism. The Bengal Famine is the same. All famines today in the capitalist world are the fault of capitalist logic. When people die of hunger in Ethiopia or Eritrea, it’s capitalism killing them.
The Irish Famine was caused by the British government using thugs with guns to steal food from Irish farmers. It had absolutely nothing in it to resemble a free market situation. The Irish Famine was caused when the government stepped in to disrupt the action of the free market.
Capitalism is defined by free markets. When the government comes in and confiscates all the food to export overseas, that is the opposite of a free market,
You’re ignoring the problem of exploitation by landlords (capitalism) which made it difficult to farm land as a tenant, and the dominance of a single breed of potato due to economic pressure (capitalism), which made Ireland vulnerable to potato blight. Export of crops was largely motivated by desperation of Irish farmers to pay the rent to landlords (capitalism). Historical criticism of Britain’s actions during the famine mostly attacks the government for not doing enough, not for doing too much.
It’s a mystery to me why these absentee landlords didnt consolidate their plots in order to capture more income from the non-failing crops. I guess maybe things were just too chaotic during the famine for them to switch plots around or rearrange business arrangements?
However the lack of other food sources in Ireland was a predictable result of the British government putting import bans, and providing heavy export subsidies, to cereal crops.
A natural market contains diversity because rare goods pull a higher price. People are naturally incentivized to seek out un-filled needs. But the Corn Laws of 1815 distorted that natural system of incentives — natural in the sense of emerging from the desires of people connected to the market, and balanced according to their own priorities — by placing a heavy new layer of incentives on top of it.
Like if you put a ball bearing in a bowl it rolls to the center. Here the “center” represents a match between what people need and what people are producing. But if you put a magnet beside the bowl that ball bearing finds a new equilibrium point that’s not in the center any more.
In the case of the Irish Famine, it introduced a gap between the need of people to eat — what capitalists like me call “demand” — and the tendency of others to produce food and keep it in country — what capitalists like me call “supply”.
It’s a signal distortion. It’s like putting an ice cube next to the thermostat, and then your heat runs like crazy and there’s now a gap between what you want — 72 F — and what’s being produced — 102 F
What are you talking about? The Irish famine was caused by two factors:
The potato blight, and potato mono-culture. Potato mono-culture being caused by capitalism, by industrialisation, privatisation of Irish land at the hands of British landlords, and profit maximisation in a laissez faire market.
During the famine, it was more profitable for the British landlords to export agricultural produce to England and other parts of Europe than to sell it in Ireland. So laws of the market dictated pretty much everything was exported.
The famine was literally caused by the government NOT stepping in, doubling down on laissez faire liberalism and using racist Malthusian excuses like “helping the Irish would just make things worse cause they would procreate like rabbits and need even MORE food”…
Oh, I get it now… You just read your first Ayn Rand book lol
You’re gonna vmbe amazed at what a brick wall the imaginary “free market” solutions are gonna run into.
You have all the free market capitalism you can stand right now and the problems got WORSE, not better. Corrporations literally control the US government and have created food deserts and starvation and utterly empty calories. #FAIL. Capitalism cause famines.
It’s also about famines tho…
The Irish Famine was 100% caused by capitalism. The Bengal Famine is the same. All famines today in the capitalist world are the fault of capitalist logic. When people die of hunger in Ethiopia or Eritrea, it’s capitalism killing them.
This is a lie.
The Irish Famine was caused by the British government using thugs with guns to steal food from Irish farmers. It had absolutely nothing in it to resemble a free market situation. The Irish Famine was caused when the government stepped in to disrupt the action of the free market.
Capitalism is defined by free markets. When the government comes in and confiscates all the food to export overseas, that is the opposite of a free market,
You’re ignoring the problem of exploitation by landlords (capitalism) which made it difficult to farm land as a tenant, and the dominance of a single breed of potato due to economic pressure (capitalism), which made Ireland vulnerable to potato blight. Export of crops was largely motivated by desperation of Irish farmers to pay the rent to landlords (capitalism). Historical criticism of Britain’s actions during the famine mostly attacks the government for not doing enough, not for doing too much.
It’s a mystery to me why these absentee landlords didnt consolidate their plots in order to capture more income from the non-failing crops. I guess maybe things were just too chaotic during the famine for them to switch plots around or rearrange business arrangements?
However the lack of other food sources in Ireland was a predictable result of the British government putting import bans, and providing heavy export subsidies, to cereal crops.
A natural market contains diversity because rare goods pull a higher price. People are naturally incentivized to seek out un-filled needs. But the Corn Laws of 1815 distorted that natural system of incentives — natural in the sense of emerging from the desires of people connected to the market, and balanced according to their own priorities — by placing a heavy new layer of incentives on top of it.
Like if you put a ball bearing in a bowl it rolls to the center. Here the “center” represents a match between what people need and what people are producing. But if you put a magnet beside the bowl that ball bearing finds a new equilibrium point that’s not in the center any more.
In the case of the Irish Famine, it introduced a gap between the need of people to eat — what capitalists like me call “demand” — and the tendency of others to produce food and keep it in country — what capitalists like me call “supply”.
It’s a signal distortion. It’s like putting an ice cube next to the thermostat, and then your heat runs like crazy and there’s now a gap between what you want — 72 F — and what’s being produced — 102 F
What are you talking about? The Irish famine was caused by two factors:
The famine was literally caused by the government NOT stepping in, doubling down on laissez faire liberalism and using racist Malthusian excuses like “helping the Irish would just make things worse cause they would procreate like rabbits and need even MORE food”…
Oh, I get it now… You just read your first Ayn Rand book lol
You’re gonna vmbe amazed at what a brick wall the imaginary “free market” solutions are gonna run into.
You have all the free market capitalism you can stand right now and the problems got WORSE, not better. Corrporations literally control the US government and have created food deserts and starvation and utterly empty calories. #FAIL. Capitalism cause famines.