this post was submitted on 16 Jan 2024
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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.
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 the Soviets shipped 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.
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.
Yeah ok, I didn't consider that.
Hard to argue with that.
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.