What do you think about the police?

[Angrboda]

[Jehanne]

Early on in the United States, there was little regulation.  Antitrust laws are slightly over a century old now.

Really? I thought anti-trust laws were as old as the constitution. But let's say you are right.
What disasterous consequences did the unregulated capitalism in 19th century US have? It's only when the government started massively intervening in the economy (federal reserve...) that you get the Great Depression. And, even then, life in the semi-capitalist US during the Great Depression was way better than life in the Soviet Union at the time.

It's a myth of history that Karl Marx utterly despised capitalism; in fact, Marx had some admiration for capitalism, its innovation and creativity. As far as some of the 19th-century horrors of unregulated capitalism, just Google what happened to the child laborers in the Belgian Congo who did not meet their quotas.

[Ranjr]

Really? I thought anti-trust laws were as old as the constitution. But let's say you are right.
What disasterous consequences did the unregulated capitalism in 19th century US have? It's only when the government started massively intervening in the economy (federal reserve...) that you get the Great Depression. And, even then, life in the semi-capitalist US during the Great Depression was way better than life in the Soviet Union at the time.

Why ask when you could find such information for yourself?  You are ignorant, seriously lacking in knowledge.  Not only that, you offer misinformation as a distraction from your ignorance.  Unworthy of conversation.  Welcome to the 3rd spot on my ignore list.

[FlatAssembler]

China's flawed statistical system had nothing to do with communism

Of course, but the flawed statistical system would not have such disasterous results in a free market system. The flawed statistical system only had such disasterous results because the communist government tried to accomplish equal distribution of grain, by stealing grain from the people on villages who supposedly had a lot of grain. In a free market system, the people on villages would be allowed to keep some of the grain they had, so they would not have starved. How do you manage to miss the point completely like that?

Capitalism has caused plenty of famines

What mechanism are you proposing for capitalism to cause famines?

[FlatAssembler]

Well, it certainly didn't help that Stalin proclaimed Lysenkoism to be in concordance with Marxism. It also didn't help that China tried to implement equal distribution of food, which made the broken statistical system so disasterous. Had they had free market capitalism, the broken statistical system would not have such disasterous consequences. So, I would argue that communism is at least partly to blame for the famines.
What famines is capitalism to blame for?

Multiple famines in Ireland, Ethiopia, Bengal, Doji Bara, Chalisa, China (pre- Communist), Russia (ditto), England, and on and on.

Boru

What mechanism are you proposing for capitalism to cause famines? What exactly do you think happened in those famines? How did capitalism lead to them?

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

China's flawed statistical system had nothing to do with communism

Of course, but the flawed statistical system would not have such disasterous results in a free market system. The flawed statistical system only had such disasterous results because the communist government tried to accomplish equal distribution of grain, by stealing grain from the people on villages who supposedly had a lot of grain. In a free market system, the people on villages would be allowed to keep some of the grain they had, so they would not have starved. How do you manage to miss the point completely like that?

Capitalism has caused plenty of famines

What mechanism are you proposing for capitalism to cause famines?

I’ll do this one. When the Irish potato crop was destroyed by blight in 1845, the country was absolutely bursting with other foodstuffs. However, due to the absentee-landlord farming system, that extra food was shipped out of Ireland (often under arms), so the owners of the farms wouldn’t lose profits.

Capitalism - raw, naked, government-supported capitalism - caused more than a million deaths of Irish men, women and children due to starvation and disease. Couple with mass out-migration, the population of Ireland dropped by 25% in just five years.

Boru

[FlatAssembler]

Of course, but the flawed statistical system would not have such disasterous results in a free market system. The flawed statistical system only had such disasterous results because the communist government tried to accomplish equal distribution of grain, by stealing grain from the people on villages who supposedly had a lot of grain. In a free market system, the people on villages would be allowed to keep some of the grain they had, so they would not have starved. How do you manage to miss the point completely like that?
What mechanism are you proposing for capitalism to cause famines?

I’ll do this one. When the Irish potato crop was destroyed by blight in 1845, the country was absolutely bursting with other foodstuffs. However, due to the absentee-landlord farming system, that extra food was shipped out of Ireland (often under arms), so the owners of the farms wouldn’t lose profits.

Capitalism - raw, naked, government-supported capitalism - caused more than a million deaths of Irish men, women and children due to starvation and disease. Couple with mass out-migration, the population of Ireland dropped by 25% in just five years.

Boru

Just replace "capitalism" with its definition, "voluntary exchange of goods and services", you will realize how silly you sound. Forced exports of food is capitalism?!

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

I’ll do this one. When the Irish potato crop was destroyed by blight in 1845, the country was absolutely bursting with other foodstuffs. However, due to the absentee-landlord farming system, that extra food was shipped out of Ireland (often under arms), so the owners of the farms wouldn’t lose profits.

Capitalism - raw, naked, government-supported capitalism - caused more than a million deaths of Irish men, women and children due to starvation and disease. Couple with mass out-migration, the population of Ireland dropped by 25% in just five years.

Boru

Just replace "capitalism" with its definition, "voluntary exchange of goods and services", you will realize how silly you sound. Forced exports of food is capitalism?!

Yes, forced exports of food to profit absentee landowners while allowing a million workers to starve to death is classic capitalism. Had the UK been a socialist state (or even a social democracy), the food would have been purchased by the government and distributed in order to avert the famine.

And that is NOT the definition of capitalism. This is:

Capitalism (n): an economic and political system in which a country’s trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit.

Boru

Edit: and the ‘exchange’ in The Great Hunger was anything but ‘voluntary’.

[The Grand Nudger]

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?

[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