What do you think about the police?

[The Grand Nudger]

Absolutely, but it's the kind of failure we see repeated under any economic system, which would suggest that it's not caused by a particular economic system.

There's some debate as to why the british government supplied food before, was it humanitarian, or to keep the price of food down? However, Russel shared the opinions common to his time and peers, notably Gray, who stated that ireland was not overpopulated, but underdeveloped, that it didn't lack capital, only the will to create wealth. A nation of shifty beggars, swiftly put. Russel also considered the blight to be an act of providence, meant to improve upon irelands moral failings and as a judgement from the almighty - not to be interfered with. The point of -all- of Russels schemes was emphatically not to let the free market do anything (notably, as above, cause price increases in england - for example), but to place the financial burden of the blight on the lazy irish who had been deemed unworthy by god.

That they leave and go on to be incredibly productive members of a notably prodigious country that eventually overshadows and politically colonizes the british, just underscores how wrong he was about, well...all of it. I think the fact that we've essentially allowed filthy murderous bigots to call their pet projects "capitalism" has alot to do with how people feel about capitlaism, and why "capitalism" isn't working for us. Similar to why communism hasn't ever worked for us - we've never really given it a genuine shot.

(...and, ofc, in fairness, the english government also had people who understood in their own time that no right thinking person from any future would buy a single line of the bullshit excuses they were selling to arrive at a predetermined goal - that it would come to be seen as a very intentional and particularly cynical attempt at genocide, whose failure served to underline, even more, the incompetence of the actors involved...)