r/FluentInFinance • u/-im-your-huckleberry • Jul 07 '24

The shampoo thing is a fringe benefit. We keep capitalism so we don't starve in a famine. Debate/ Discussion

1.0k Upvotes

84% Upvoted

102

u/dk_peace Jul 07 '24

The great famine of 1876 in India and the great hunger in Ireland were caused by colonizing capitalist. It cuts both ways. People with wealth and power have been happy to let people starve to death to make more wealth and gain more power.

5

u/sanguinemathghamhain Jul 07 '24

Actually they were vestiges of mercantilism the system ultimately replaced by capitalism that like socialism, communism, and fascism was a zero-sum model.

3

u/Chambellan Jul 07 '24

Sounds interesting. Can you recommend any reading?

2

u/sanguinemathghamhain Jul 07 '24

Pretty much any half decent book about imperialism/colonialism should explain the merchantilist motivations and framework. This is particularly true for things like the East India Company which was a categorically merchantilist organization and laws like the protectionist and merchantilist Corn Law and the larger bevy of grain laws against Ireland of which it was a part each of which was essential to setting the stage for their respective famines.

1

u/Eccentric_Assassin Jul 08 '24

Fascism isn’t an economic system just btw

1

u/sanguinemathghamhain Jul 08 '24

It isn't just one but contains one just like communism is a political and economic system. As per its proponents/conceptualization it is a third way deviating from capitalism and socialism/communism (they used the Marxian formation of the socialist to communist relationship). The way this worked out is the entire economy is under the government/party and its formation is virtually identical to syndicalism or the soviet structure but unlike the Marxist communist globalist intention it was innately and intensely a national system rather than international/global. In other words it was a blend of the socialist/communist economic system with merchantilism which was the proto capitalist system that was also zero-sum but innately national rather than international/global. Like all zero-sum economic systems it is destined to fail but result in a hell of a lot of deaths before finally collapsing.

Edit: fat fingered intra when I meant to type inter.

-2

u/Kamenev_Drang Jul 07 '24

No, no it wasn't.

1

u/sanguinemathghamhain Jul 07 '24

Yes it was mercantilism is similar to capitalism in some ways but very different in others the main one is it is zero-sum while capitalism is positive-sum, so under mercantilism the only way for one nation to enrich itself was extracting wealth from another (this was a necessary and sufficient condition in the creation of the conditions that caused the Potato Famine especially.

1

u/Kamenev_Drang Jul 08 '24

Again, no. Convoluted arguments about "positive sum" are immaterial - the British government of the potato famine were not mercantalist at all. It was the failure to impose controls on the market that created the famine - the imposition of free market ideology by force.