• Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    Now we have a few famines in history to show us how gaining favor in a political system is not the best way to manage the land.

    Doesn’t that also mean The Irish famine shows private land ownership isn’t the best way to manage land?

    • Jax@sh.itjust.works
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      10 months ago

      The potato famine was caused by a new type of blight being brought from the Americas back to Europe.

      I don’t see how being beaten by a novel disease has anything to do with private land ownership.

      • Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        The blight affected all of Europe, yet only Ireland had severe famine because while the French government bought food for their citizens, the English government publicly declared the invisible hand of the free market would fix the famine.

        Similarly the Ukraine famine was crop failure due to bad weather conditions that affected all of Eastern Europe. The crop failure wasn’t caused by the Soviets. Yet only Ukrainians died because of Soviets shipping Ukrainian food to Moscow in the same way Irish died because of free markets shipping Irish food to London. (Yes, Ireland was still a net exporter of food during the famine.)

        When natural disasters occured it’s, “Millions died because of communism.” Yet when millions die under the free market it’s only the natural disaster and not capitalism.

      • meyotch@slrpnk.net
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        10 months ago

        They grew enough potatoes to feed the population in spite of the blight losses. However said taters fetched a higher price abroad. So fuck the poor, I guess.

          • Exocrinous@lemm.ee
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            10 months ago

            Also they would have had a higher diversity of crops if not for landlords. Landlords were extorting farmers and the only way the farmers could pay the bills was with the vegetable that had the highest margin. Farmers were forced to switch from other crops to growing potatoes by their landlords.