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Tangentially related but this is one of the most fascinating thing about China. The last famine they had ended around 1961. That means that people who are in th
by syntaxing 3y ago
Tangentially related but this is one of the most fascinating thing about China. The last famine they had ended around 1961. That means that people who are in their sixties probably knew someone that starved to death. Imagine being born to a country where people were starving to death to a prosperous country within your lifetime.
- moelf 3y agobut the great famine was very much man(Mao)-made... of course the economic boom was a great achievement, but it's different from what you're suggesting I think.
- balder1991 3y agoAlso loosely related, the Homo Deus book has a chapter about how humans conquered technically what it classifies as the major challenges that we attributed to gods, including hunger, plagues, and war. It mentions that nowadays, if any of these things cause human destruction it is a political thing and someone somewhere wants that to happen.
- onlyrealcuzzo 3y agoTechnologically, what do we have that stops famines from happening? Like, are we really immune from some mega drought occuring somewhere that mostly depends on rainfall? Or is that just extremely unlikely to happen, especially at a large scale?
- MattGaiser 3y agoA lot of this probably depends on who "we" refers to. I would imagine that many regions are not immune to a mega drought. For the West specifically, wealthier nations can kind of just export the shortage by paying more for supplies that would go elsewhere. The West also feeds most of its crops to animals, so that is an area for relatively easy reduction in an emergency. 67% of what is grown in the USA is animal food. But that proportion is dramatically lower in places like India. https://www.vox.com/2014/8/21/6053187/cropland-map-food-fuel-animal-feed https://www.vox.com/2014/8/21/6053187/cropland-map-food-fuel...
- kickout 3y agoNo we are not immune. At all
- thriftwy 3y agoWe can now buy grain in bulk and ship it anywhere through the world.
- cubefox 3y agoThere are theories which say that nuclear war, due to firestorms in cities transporting soot into the upper atmosphere, would lead to nuclear winter, which would lead to a global famine: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/pMsnCieusmYqGW26W/how-bad-would-nuclear-winter-caused-by-a-us-russia-nuclear https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/pMsnCieusmYqGW26W/... However, the papers which predict such scenarios have been criticized as being too pessimistic: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/jnDibtfvWNHLucf4D/actually-all-nuclear-famine-papers-are-bunk https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/jnDibtfvWNHLucf4D/actually-a...
- retrac 3y agoWe can move food around. Famines historically tended to be regional; bad climate, or natural or man-made disaster, devastating food production in an area. Before the 19th century moving enough food from another region, or even from another continent to address that local shortfall, was much more challenging. If the 1930s American dustbowl had happened to a densely populated non-industrial society, it would probably have been one of the worst famines in history. Agricultural yields fell by like 50% for several years in the affected region. But they just brought in food from California and Saskatchewan. It was still a disaster, of course. The Russian famine of 1921 was one of the first times industrial societies really mobilized in that way. At the peak grain grown in the USA and donated to the USSR was feeding about 1 in 10 Russians during the famine. One of the largest logistics operations in history up to that point. It's why Herbert Hoover was nominated for the Nobel peace prize five times.
- nradov 3y agoFamines are primarily a political problem, not a technological problem. Our technology has improved agricultural productivity and distribution efficiency, but that doesn't matter when men with guns are stealing food from starving people.
- fragmede 3y agois it even that blatant? it's in shipping containers that aren't going to be released to the starving because of this simple concept known as paying for things.
- nradov 3y agoIt often is that blatant. Even when international donors send free food it often ends up getting seized by government forces or militant groups.
- satysin 3y agoThis was the first thing that popped into my head too as I read Homo Deus a few months ago. A very accessible book for all. I recommend it. It’s not perfect but it’s a good, easy read compared to other books touching on the same subjects.
- retrac 3y agoIt was greatly worsened by Mao's policies. But a famine would have happened anyway. There's no alternate history where different government policy in China could have completely averted the famine of 1960. It was a very poor year agriculturally. There had been famine in China previously in 1942 (1 million dead), 1936 (5 million dead), 1929 (5 million dead), 1906 (25 million dead), 1877 (10 million dead), and millions dead from starvation during the Taiping rebellion of the 1860s. Arguably, quite a few of them were man-made, or at least man-aggravated from warfare. This is not intended as apologia for Mao. His policies likely resulted in several million more deaths than might have otherwise happened. I just want to show that famine was routine in preindustrial agricultural societies.
- oatmeal1 3y ago> His policies likely resulted in several million more deaths than might have otherwise happened. Perhaps more than several million when estimates are between 15 and 55 million dead.
- dmix 3y agoJust imagine all the coffins / mass burials during COVID and times that by thousands. Must have devastated whole communities and scared them for life.
- loeg 3y agoMass burials during Covid? I think you might be misremembering.
- jaynetics 3y agohttps://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52241221 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52241221
- Dylan16807 3y ago> which has been used for more than 150 years by city officials as a mass burial site for those with no next-of-kin, or families who cannot afford funerals. Interesting. Good to know and also not the impression I got from just "mass burials". > Normally, about 25 bodies a week are interred on the island, according to the Associated Press news agency. But burial operations have increased from one day a week to five days a week, with around 24 burials each day > It is not clear how many of the dead have no next-of-kin or could not afford a funeral. That's a pretty important question to answer. Any idea? And that was early enough in understanding COVID that it would make sense to do this kind of small mass burial with hazmat suits even if the death rate was unchanged.
- thriftwy 3y agoEurope had a world war ending in 1945. It was quite prosperous in a few decades; in part, it never ceased to be. If you ask me, world war is on the same level of personal danger.
- syntaxing 3y agoI think Germany is probably the most impressive one. Lost both World wars, had to deal with the East West unification and is now the biggest economy in Europe which is crazy to think about.
- kneebonian 3y agoEh almost none of WW1 was fought in German soil so they came out of WW1 with most of their economic capacity intact minus several million young men.
- kaesar14 3y agoAnd World War 2 saw a complete leveling of most of the country…
- ericd 3y agoBut then massive investment by the US.
- kaesar14 3y agoSure but parent comment is blowing off a lot of factors working against Germany’s spectacular recovery lol. “Several million young dead men” is a bit of an understatement too
- fragmede 3y agobut, owing to cultural changes, it turns out that women can also perform the work necessary for an economy to function.
- 908B64B197 3y agoThat's what modern Chinese politics expert call "the mandate from the heavens". As long as the average (Han) Chinese gets richer, they won't mind the oppressive regime and the collectivist nature of the CCP (welding doors shut for COVID, workers as replaceable cogs). But should the prosperity slow or stop, the CCP knows it'll lose the "mandate". That's why the Evergrande collapse was such a big deal [0], and the reason the Yuan will never replace the US dollar as the world's reserve currency. The Chinese regime has to "save face" and show progress at all costs. All while having a negative brain drain, gender imbalance and worsening demography. [0] https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/24/investing/china-evergrande-group-debt-explainer-intl-hnk/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/24/investing/china-evergrande-gr...
- LorenPechtel 3y agoYup, the real estate market is absolutely insane. If you rent out a place you should be approximately covering the mortgage with it--but over there in many places that's off by an order of magnitude. Despite that the government is still encouraging real estate.
- hgsgm 3y ago"mandate from heavens" is the oriental version of "consented of the governed" in the West.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- fatfingerd 3y agoThat's a strange way to frame a lack of post war progress. In most countries the experience of anyone born before the war who was starting their own family in 1960 was at a speed that is hard to imagine. China is remarkable for its continuity.
- RobotToaster 3y agoChina went into WWII as a pre-industrial barely post-feudal society in the middle of a civil war.
- ipqk 3y agoMy grandfather died of smallpox and I'm in my 30s. A lot of things we think of as history were really not that long ago.
- IanCal 3y agoOn the other side of things too, predictions out to 2100 felt like weird sci-fi until I realised my kids could be alive and in their 80s.
- MikeTheRocker 3y agoI think this is a significant reason why authoritarian figures like Xi and Putin have strong support from the populace.
- mynonameaccount 3y ago"strong support from the populous" How do you know when the populous can't even say what is on their mind without their families getting slaughter?
- yibg 3y agoThe typical person in china don’t fear that, at least in private conversation. The problems only really appear when you have a broad audience.
- lostlogin 3y ago> The last famine they had ended around 1961. That was a manufactured crisis too. Stupid rules and practices were imposed and they cause carnage.
- LorenPechtel 3y agoDisagree--the deaths were not remotely evenly distributed. My wife lived through that--to her it was lean times, not starvation. That's because she's from Shanghai, not the countryside.
- droopyEyelids 3y agoWhat are you disagreeing about?
- hgsgm 3y agoDisagreeing that everyone knew someone who starved.
- LorenPechtel 3y agoThe very uneven distribution of the deaths means that many of the survivors don't know anyone who died from it. My wife knows it as a time of hunger, not a time of death.
- userabchn 3y agoI think the change in circumstances in some Middle Eastern countries has been even more dramatic. Places like Abu Dhabi were small towns with houses made of mud/palm fronds in the 1960s.
- paxys 3y agoNow think of people in so many other countries who have seen the exact opposite in their lifetimes.