andrel wrote:
> John VanSickle wrote:
>> Mueen Nawaz wrote:
>>> John VanSickle wrote:
>>>> The only genuinely human-induced famines (and the only famines to 
>>>> strike
>>>> industrialized nations) occurred in communist nations, whether due to
>>>> the sheer incompetence of the communist system (China's Great Leap
>>>> Forward starved millions) or malice of communist leaders (Lenin
>>>> purposefully starved millions of people).
>>>
>>>     Saying "only" is a stretch.
>>>
>>>     Recently there was a "famine" in Niger. There was no real 
>>> shortage of
>>> food. Plenty of food was available, but it was unaffordable:
>>>
>>> http://www.guardian.co.uk/famine/story/0,12128,1540214,00.html
>>>
>>> Niger is anything but a communist country.
>>
>> Well, I stand corrected; the only cases of human-induced *mass 
>> starvation* occurred in nations claiming to follow some form of Marxism.
>>
> The Great Hunger in 19th century Ireland?
> Although the importance of the human factor there is a point of debate.

Indeed.  The Irish had become heavily dependent on potatoes, which were 
wiped out by a blight.  This led to both a shortage of food and a 
shortage of money to buy food (since they would have gotten any money 
they would have had by selling potatoes).  A lot of Irish starved, and a 
lot went to the United States.

I do recall reading that the English took steps to withhold grain from 
the Irish in order to make the problem worse, but I'd want to 
investigate that further before arriving at any conclusions.  In any 
event, the chief cause of the starvation was a major crop failure.

An economist named Henry Hazlitt wrote an interesting book on poverty, 
and in it he observed that we have become so accustomed to our own 
prosperity that we look on the poor nations as being exceptional, when 
in fact it is Western prosperity that, from the historical perspective, 
is the exceptional situation.

The Irish of the Potato Famine were poor for the exact same reason that 
countless societies, for the overwhelming majority of human history, 
have been poor; the inability of the populace to reliably produce 
sufficient wealth to live at a higher standard.

Regards,
John

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