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> The article notes that famine also predicts authoritarianism, which is predominantly caused by things outside human control Amartya Sen's work showed that fa

by twic 7y ago

> The article notes that famine also predicts authoritarianism, which is predominantly caused by things outside human control Amartya Sen's work showed that famine is caused by failures of government, not agriculture. There are plenty of cases of people dying of famine when their countries were producing surplus food. Frustratingly, i can't find a good accessible writeup of Sen's work online, but here's his original book: https://www.prismaweb.org/nl/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Poverty-and-famines%E2%94%82Amartya-Sen%E2%94%821981.pdf https://www.prismaweb.org/nl/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Pove... Wikipedia has some detail about the Ethiopian famine in the '80s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983%E2%80%931985_famine_in_Ethiopia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983%E2%80%931985_famine_in_Et...

boomboomsubban 7y ago
In the modern age of efficient transit, the deaths caused by famine are becoming more and more a result of bad state/world governance. The famines still usually have a nonhuman cause that originally caused that assistance to be necessary. There are exceptions of course, like Yemen.
- watwut 7y ago
  Famines can he and were caused by goverment (whether local or occupying) taking away resources (for war or other place) or mishandling storage of resources.
  - boomboomsubban 7y ago
    As I said, there is usually a nonhuman cause and exceptions exist.
    - watwut 7y ago
      All the massive famines I recall from history were in the exception category. Plus, keeping enough supplies is one of government functions - through those prior French revolution the famines I recall were not in this category.
      - boomboomsubban 7y ago
        >All the massive famines I recall from history were in the exception category I'll provide another example. The cause of Ireland's Great Famine was the potato blight, and no one thinks that the British intentionally imported the blight to Ireland. The million deaths were the fault of the British, who chose to export food for more money rather than feed the starving people.

by twic 7y ago

boomboomsubban 7y ago

In the modern age of efficient transit, the deaths caused by famine are becoming more and more a result of bad state/world governance. The famines still usually have a nonhuman cause that originally caused that assistance to be necessary. There are exceptions of course, like Yemen.

watwut 7y ago
Famines can he and were caused by goverment (whether local or occupying) taking away resources (for war or other place) or mishandling storage of resources.
- boomboomsubban 7y ago
  As I said, there is usually a nonhuman cause and exceptions exist.
  - watwut 7y ago
    All the massive famines I recall from history were in the exception category. Plus, keeping enough supplies is one of government functions - through those prior French revolution the famines I recall were not in this category.
    - boomboomsubban 7y ago
      >All the massive famines I recall from history were in the exception category I'll provide another example. The cause of Ireland's Great Famine was the potato blight, and no one thinks that the British intentionally imported the blight to Ireland. The million deaths were the fault of the British, who chose to export food for more money rather than feed the starving people.