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There was no real free market for the Irish though. The Irish weren't allowed to fish or hunt or eat other crops which were slotted for English consumption. Nor
by gnarbarian 9y ago
There was no real free market for the Irish though. The Irish weren't allowed to fish or hunt or eat other crops which were slotted for English consumption. Nor were the Catholic Irish allowed to own land. They were essentially only allowed to eat potatoes... The famine was a genocide justified as divine retribution against the Catholics of Ireland.
- vkou 9y agoThat's not the whole picture - Ireland exported food throughout the famine - more then enough food then it needed to feed itself. The problem was that exporting food to England was more profitable then selling food domestically. The reason that the Irish poor ate potatoes was not because they were forbidden from other food, but because that was all they could afford. The invisible hand of the market, and the very visible hand of Parliament was content to see a million people starve to death. Note that one of the causes of the Holodomor was the Soviet Union exporting food during the famine. History repeats itself.
- IntronExon 9y agoNot just content to see them die, eager I think. Maybe not as explicitly eager as Stalin or Hitler, but more than Mao in his incompetence and arrogance.
- gnarbarian 9y agoI agree with the caveat that had their land not been taken from them and given to protestants in the first place, they could have done a much better job of feeding themselves.
- vkou 9y agoNearly all land has been taken away from someone or other, at sword or gunpoint, at some point in time or another. Do markets only work when land is distributed fairly as a starting condition?