4 ms·
Capitalism? Did you read the article? > In 1987, .... We reached a simple conclusion: When farmers could bring foodstuffs to points of sale — when the roads we
by dwe3000 10y ago
Capitalism? Did you read the article?
> In 1987, .... We reached a simple conclusion: When farmers could bring foodstuffs to points of sale — when the roads were clear of army checkpoints, when markets were held at night to reduce the risk of being bombed — the local economy worked efficiently enough. With markets in operation, the production of local crops increased, and food prices fell to levels people could afford.
> Ending famine required ending fighting.
Seems capitalism improved things once the government got around to providing basic security.
- doodeoo 10y agomarkets != capitalism
- AnimalMuppet 10y agoCould you explain what you mean here?
- hx87 10y agoA communist society where the government owns all the means of production and everyone gets a $60,000 UBI can still use markets to allocate resources for production.
- snrplfth 10y ago...but if the government owns all 'capital goods', then you can't use markets to allocate those capital goods between different owners.
- AnimalMuppet 10y agoCan, in theory. But in practice, it's much more likely to use politics and bureaucracy. (Source: The last two hundred years of government behavior.)
- pdeuchler 10y agoTo describe Ethiopia's economic system as capitalistic is at best naive... but even if you were correct then given the signs of a burgeoning crisis one could just as easily say that said capitalism is largely failing there. Regardless, the paragraph you quoted merely states that once people were once again free to trade their goods for food without being threatened with death more people got fed. Capitalism has literally nothing to do with that, people have been trading goods for foodstuffs for millennia. When they say "markets" they're not talking about the fever dreams of a U Chicago professor, they mean physical locations where goods are bought and sold which are just as much a condition of feudalism as they are capitalism.