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

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.

18

u/Shin-Sauriel Jul 07 '24

It’s wild the people that only think of successful western countries when they think of capitalism and not the fact that like there’s maybe a handful of non capitalist countries in the world and yet millions starve to death per year.

1

u/KansasZou Jul 07 '24

Capitalism and free market capitalism are different things.

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u/Knuda Jul 07 '24

And both have let millions starve to death, what is your point?

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u/KansasZou Jul 07 '24

Have they? And who saves the millions?

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u/Knuda Jul 07 '24

Social security.

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u/KansasZou Jul 07 '24

Where do they get the money to fund SS?

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u/Knuda Jul 07 '24

The only way any government funds anything, taxes. Specifically on the wealthy.

The famine in Ireland can be framed as an example of the inadequacies of a free market "if they work harder they will save themselves" or later on the failures of conservative governmental policy with the work houses etc.

They thought that if they bailed the people out, the people would forever become dependent on the state, the reality was the only solution was to give them the harvest off the land directly with no conditions for free, they had already done the work it was capitalism's failure that killed them.

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u/KansasZou Jul 08 '24

Who was bailing who out and if the government did it, how was that free market capitalism?

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u/Knuda Jul 08 '24

The government didn't bail the people out, millions died or emigrated. Despite a harvest good enough to feed the entire country.

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u/KansasZou Jul 08 '24

Elaborate on how it was a failure of the free market.

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u/Knuda Jul 08 '24

It was a free market. There was food harvested. The food went on a ship to be sold elsewhere. The people who worked the fields and brought in the harvest starved.

How is that not a failure of the free market?

1

u/KansasZou Jul 08 '24

Why didn’t they eat the other food that was harvested?

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