What do you think about the police?

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Nothing prevents a capitalist state from subsidizing agriculture or providing humanitarian aid - and, in fact, the worlds most criticized capitalist state also happens to be the worlds most aggressive provider of humanitarian aid, and most comprehensive subsidizer of agriculture.  

I don't think it was the economic system, it was personal, though economic systems are just tools, so they can conceivably be used to any end.  The main difference between communism and capitalism, in this reagrd, is that one is bottom up and the other is top down.  It's believed that in a great many cases people closer to a problem and in aggregate will arrive at better solutions than a manager at hq far away - this isn't a law of the universe or a truism - it's just as credible to say that there are certainly problems that central planning by dedicated professionals are much better suited to.  The lines are blurred in mixed economies and crony capitalism (which I think are redundant terms in practice, if not in theory), ofc.

With respect to the potato blight, we might say there were multiple problems.  There was, obviously, a s. american pathogen that found itself a big pile of uneaten crop.  Both local operators and government officials failed at biosecurity, and then, on the back of ethnic tension, class distinction, and history... the government picked the winners and losers in a good example of a crony model.  I'd say it fucked the uk even more than ireland (as is so often the case with these schemes) - as the us has more people of irish descent than ireland does..and boy wouldn't it have been nice if all those boys stayed home and did for their country what they've done for the us?

The Whig prime minister in the second year of the famine (Lord Russell), specifically cited the laissez-faire policies of his government as the reason for not stopping the export of food AND refusing to continue the relief efforts (food and public works) of the previous government. He seemed to have believed that the invisible had of the market would magically cause food to appear.

It may indeed have been personal, but capitalist policies were used to justify it.

And I agree that there is nothing preventing a capitalist state from feeding starving people (England did both before and after An Gorta Mor), but it's undeniable that a capitalist economy and a capitalist government failed to do so.

Boru