Could be worse… It could be that people are starving because it’s politically convenient for them to starve. Back in 1959 China introduced the Four Pests campaign, which involved exterminating rats, flies, mosquitoes and sparrows because they kept eating crops.
…Turns out that was a bad idea, and those ‘pests’ were actually pretty important to ecological balance, leading to (in combination with other Maoist policies where central government was telling farmers how to farm, but also lacked the knowledge on how to farm correctly) the Great Chinese Famine, killing anywhere between 15-55 million people by starvation.
Not defending China, but I wouldn’t say that had anything to do with political convenience… the Irish potato famine, or the way world governments are currently letting Israel starve Gaza, are examples of mass starvation caused by political convenience… but Mao’s thing was due to criminal ignorance and stupidity, not political convenience.
…No, it was political convenience, both in the Chinese Famine and the Irish Potato Famine. The British were so convinced that laissez faire capitalism would resolve the issue that they actively got in the way when that turned out not to be true, because it was better to them that the system be seen as working than it actually working. The same applied to the Chinese when Mao was warned that exterminating the sparrows would cause famine, as would ‘deep plowing’ made up by some Soviet guy, but The Party can never be wrong, and if The Party tells you how to do something, you do it that way, even if millions of people die.
It was a situation in both cases where political ideology was put up against reality, and political ideology won, resulting in mass starvation.
When it comes to Israel… I don’t think it really compares because Israel knows Gazans are starving, and that’s actually the goal. They actively want the Palestinians to be gone as quickly as possible. The political convenience is more on the side of anyone who allies with Israel because it’s more convenient for them to have an ally in the middle east, rather than step in and deal with the problem. I guess it would be convenient for Netanyahu specifically, because so long as he keeps the war going, he’s staying in power and most importantly out of prison.
Yeah I know right, same as this period in the US called the ‘Dust Bowl’ where they fucked up the local environment so much it ruined the topsoil and lead to clouds of dust choking the lands because they had terrible agricultural, environmental, and land management practices.
Or the Soviets trying to be different for the sake of being different and choosing Lysenkoism over genetics.
Could be worse… It could be that people are starving because it’s politically convenient for them to starve. Back in 1959 China introduced the Four Pests campaign, which involved exterminating rats, flies, mosquitoes and sparrows because they kept eating crops.
…Turns out that was a bad idea, and those ‘pests’ were actually pretty important to ecological balance, leading to (in combination with other Maoist policies where central government was telling farmers how to farm, but also lacked the knowledge on how to farm correctly) the Great Chinese Famine, killing anywhere between 15-55 million people by starvation.
Not defending China, but I wouldn’t say that had anything to do with political convenience… the Irish potato famine, or the way world governments are currently letting Israel starve Gaza, are examples of mass starvation caused by political convenience… but Mao’s thing was due to criminal ignorance and stupidity, not political convenience.
…No, it was political convenience, both in the Chinese Famine and the Irish Potato Famine. The British were so convinced that laissez faire capitalism would resolve the issue that they actively got in the way when that turned out not to be true, because it was better to them that the system be seen as working than it actually working. The same applied to the Chinese when Mao was warned that exterminating the sparrows would cause famine, as would ‘deep plowing’ made up by some Soviet guy, but The Party can never be wrong, and if The Party tells you how to do something, you do it that way, even if millions of people die.
It was a situation in both cases where political ideology was put up against reality, and political ideology won, resulting in mass starvation.
When it comes to Israel… I don’t think it really compares because Israel knows Gazans are starving, and that’s actually the goal. They actively want the Palestinians to be gone as quickly as possible. The political convenience is more on the side of anyone who allies with Israel because it’s more convenient for them to have an ally in the middle east, rather than step in and deal with the problem. I guess it would be convenient for Netanyahu specifically, because so long as he keeps the war going, he’s staying in power and most importantly out of prison.
Yeah I know right, same as this period in the US called the ‘Dust Bowl’ where they fucked up the local environment so much it ruined the topsoil and lead to clouds of dust choking the lands because they had terrible agricultural, environmental, and land management practices.
Or the Soviets trying to be different for the sake of being different and choosing Lysenkoism over genetics.
Yup, they all suck.