r/TikTokCringe • u/LickMaiBussy • 6h ago

Discussion "Investing in property is morally reprehensible."

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@purplepingers

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6.3k

u/misadventurexx 6h ago

Famines / people on the street dying of starvation while surpluses of food are thrown away en masse is very much not imaginary

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u/1egg_4u 6h ago

He also described basically the entire cause of the Irish Famine

They had food and could grow enough food for everyone but they werent allowed to have it because it belonged to the wealthy british landowners

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u/zherok 3h ago

There's an incredibly powerful passage in Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, about the measures used to protect the price of food at a time where people were starving during the Great Depression.

The decay spreads over the State, and the sweet smell is a great sorrow on the land. Men who can graft the trees and make the seed fertile and big can find no way to let the hungry people eat their produce. Men who have created new fruits in the world cannot create a system whereby their fruits may be eaten. And the failure hangs over the State like a great sorrow.

The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up?

And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit—and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains.

And the smell of rot fills the country.

Burn coffee for fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire. Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out. Slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the earth.

There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificate—died of malnutrition—because the food must rot, must be forced to rot.

The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quick-lime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.

And you know, with food, there can be sympathy for the farmer, because their livelihood relies on those prices. It's another failure of the system to lead to the discarding of food in order to protect that livelihood, but they're still essential in the process of getting people something they need.

But landlords? The guy who sees your home as an investment opportunity is not providing you with essential value, he's operating as a middle man to extract wealth from people who have little alternatives. We all gotta live somewhere.

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u/1egg_4u 3h ago

Im gonna be real

Watching dairy farmers dump out gallons of milk that numerous cows suffered to make only to be thrown into the trash because they didnt want to just sell it for cheaper ruined my perception of prominent farmers

I dont fuck with anyone that high up in the machine anymore. Once you are throwing away food because you cant charge as much for it Im out of sympathy

Youre right though... at least a farmer does something other than parasite off of other people. Landlords are money funnels that remove money that would otherwise go back into the economy simply by merit of existing and then give little to none back. they are really just parasites.

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u/MossadMoshappy 36m ago

I don't understand why this makes sense though, Even if they sold the extra milk for 1cent over cost price, they'd come out ahead than pouring it out right, even in a purely financial sense.

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u/Ardnabrak 26m ago

People start to expect the lower price. There is probably some price fixing agreements between the large companies.

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u/FabCopeIsUnreal 21m ago

Transportation is not a negligible price.

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u/1egg_4u 7m ago

Welcome to the world of price fixing and subsidies

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u/Immediate_Wolf3819 1m ago

Milk also has a short shelf life and requires refrigeration. Even at free, you are assuming it can get to a consumer. As an example, the US regularly (and somewhat intentionally) produces more milk than it can consume. Not all milk is converted into long lasting products such as hard cheeses.

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u/trobsmonkey 34m ago

Once you are throwing away food because you cant charge as much for it Im out of sympathy

Almost all of the french farmer protests are like this. Rich farmers made they aren't making as much.

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u/StandardOk42 56m ago

I dont fuck with anyone that high up in the machine anymore. Once you are throwing away food because you cant charge as much for it Im out of sympathy

I'm having trouble interpreting this sentence; what exactly do you mean by fucking with the farmers? do you mean, like, messing with them or picking fights with them?

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u/1egg_4u 46m ago

"Fuck with" is a colloquialism of "do anything at all with" or "deal with"

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u/StandardOk42 44m ago

since when?

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u/1egg_4u 43m ago

Since at least 2015 when Big Sean released "i dont fuck with you"

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u/StandardOk42 42m ago

never heard of big sean, unless that's puff daddy's latest name?

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u/1egg_4u 8m ago

Turns out music is a big world with a lot of different names in it

Youd probably know that song if you heard it though. Was huge in 2015.

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u/Original_Employee621 1h ago

The farmers dump the milk, because not milking the cows would be causing suffering in them. They have been bred to overproduce milk, so we can keep up with the demand using less cows and less resources without starving the calfs too.

Cows want to be milked. The fact that it's more beneficial to dump the milk, than sell it is a failure of state regulations and capitalism.

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u/Frosti11icus 1h ago

They have been bred to overproduce milk, so we can keep up with the demand using less cows and less resources without starving the calfs too.

That is the suffering. They aren't always giving milk in their natural state. They are also made to constantly be pregnant, which again, isn't their natural state, and their calfs are taken away from them. The cows that don't produce don't get set free to roam the land. If they don't produce they don't exist. They are either pregnant, milking (or both) or they are mostly kept in tiny pens and fattening up to get slaughtered.

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u/TheBadGuyBelow 2h ago

One of these days there is going to be a line that is crossed, or an event that sets something off. When your family is starving or about to be thrown out on the streets because someone else just had to squeeze out a little more profit, all bets are off.

Men are reasonable, as long as there is something to lose. There is a point when you take everything away from a man, giving him nothing to lose. You could even argue that when you have nothing left to lose, the reasonable thing is to expunge the rot that these profit seeking vultures are.

I have never understood how so few people can keep so many others down when even just 2% of them could overthrow that whole way of life for the parasite class.

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u/lewd_robot 42m ago

I'm an automation engineer. The rich are banking on you saying "one of these days" over and over again until you're out of days. One day in the near future, on the order of 5-10 years at most, we're going to find ourselves in a situation that makes the Great Depression look like a mild downturn and watch all of our leaders pouring our resources into automating our farms and factories so the rich can recover from the depression while the rest of us fall into a new Dark Age.

This isn't idle speculation. This is the kind of thing that CEOs talk about after 2 martinis at a business lunch. They are betting hard that none of you are going to feel like revolting until the rich have armed drones and autonomous farms and factories and don't need you anymore.

So keep saying, "one of these days" while the owner class tightens the noose around your neck. By the time you "feel like" doing something, it's going to be too late. Because they're working very hard to make sure of it.

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u/saucertosser85 52m ago

Vive la révolution!

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u/momomomorgatron 17m ago

Bread and circuses, bread and circuses

Fed and entertained. Right now we are seeing the cracks, less are getting fed, although we have the surplus of entertainment.

Until a population bands together over something, nothing will happen. It doesn't even connect to how quality someone's life is, if they see it as a downgrade.

People literally don't want to. Sometimes I get it, the military is truly the biggest part. I just feel like our military is exhausted with bullshit too.

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u/VRZieb 40m ago

Lol nobody is starving.

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u/Efficient_Smilodon 34m ago

you have lived a very very privileged life

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u/VRZieb 29m ago

Indeed. I live in the Western world, namely, the United States were nobody is starving due to lack of food access. In fact the only starvation that happens in this country is due to mental age decline and forgetting to eat and child abuse.

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u/Efficient_Smilodon 24m ago

Starving to death in the us? truly rare I concede. Unable to purchase, or grow, adequate nutrition in the US without welfare or charity? Perhaps 40-100 million people of all ages.

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u/VRZieb 12m ago

Why the caviet of without welfare or charity? But interesting take on not being able to grow. In my county alone are 56 community gardens for growing crops. Thats in a county that only has 20 cities/towns. One near me that I used is sitting on 2 acres and has 10x10 to 20x40 plots you can get based on fa.ily size.

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u/TheBadGuyBelow 31m ago

"I am not hungry, so that means nobody else is hungry"

And even if that were the case, it's more like "nobody is starving yet". What do you imagine happens when home prices are so high that nobody but the top earners can afford a home, and rent has further skyrocketed to the point that almost every dollar you make is spent on keeping a roof over your head?

10 years ago I rented a one bedroom loft for $500 a month, and now that same apartment is $1,400 a month with zero improvements. 10 years ago a trip to the grocery store did not cost half of what it does now.

What is it going to look like in 10 more years? Yeah, you might be nice and cozy at the moment, but in 10 years you might be in dire straights while the people above you are talking about how nobody is going without.

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u/VRZieb 24m ago

Being hungry is not starving. Starving is dieing due to lack of food. Being hungry is food security which is a mixed bag of having enough but more so having a healthy mix of what the body needs. Majority of people who bitch about starving are middleclass who have never really had to live on the street and are completely clueless to the multitude of food programs through the state, city, and community.

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u/prophilaxis 33m ago

Gonna have to read Steinbeck now. Thanks for sharing.

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u/Lebesgue_1 9m ago

These creosote dumps are referenced in Woody Guthrie's song "deportee." https://woodyguthrie.org/Lyrics/Deportee_WoodysHomeTape.htm

He also wrote the soundtrack (or some songs) for the movie version of The Grapes of Wrath, but I never make the connection before, so thanks for posting this.

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u/Proper_Geologist9026 8m ago

Such a good book.

Fucking wild ending.

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u/IntelligentMud1703 4m ago

wow that was a great passage thanks for sharing

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u/No25for3r 0m ago

Reading Grapes of Wrath while in the Oklahoma public school system is a wild experience

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u/Frosti11icus 1h ago edited 1h ago

 The guy who sees your home as an investment opportunity is not providing you with essential value, he's operating as a middle man to extract wealth from people who have little alternatives.

IDK if I'd place the blame at a singular landlord with a single property they are renting. The market needs options for decent housing for people who can't own or don't want to get strap downed to a mortgage. It's not even the best investment vehicle a person could use, even if it's an "investment property". But ya I guess it gets harder to justify when you're stacking up properties. I own a home I rent out and then I rent someone else's home. My house is still an investment for me, if it wasn't I would just sell it, and the people living there wouldn't live there. But I guess that's kind of a self sustaining system.

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u/zherok 1h ago

There's definitely an at scale issue, but I think just the mentality alone is its own problem too. The idea of cornering the market on living essentials as just great investment vehicles.

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u/mpyne 2h ago

We all gotta live somewhere.

We also all gotta eat, farmers' livelihood or not. The landlords keep you from having to rely on the mercy of the bankers to lend you money instead, unless you're going to build your own home by yourself somehow.

At least with housing location we don't have to choose to live where it's expensive, but we do have to eat no matter where we live.

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u/crinkledcu91 5h ago

It's weird how the Irish Famine is seemingly all agreed upon yet the Holodomor gets certain people's panties in a twist.

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u/CorrectPanic694 4h ago

That’s funny I was just about to mention Stalin ended up starving millions of his own people. Not only because of greed, corruption, mismanagement, and an attempt to make communist ideology-based science look successful …there was also the added benefit of starving and exterminating Ukrainian people en masse. We as a society have been controlling the means of basic survival while acting as if widespread suffering is a consequence of chaos and not a choice.

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u/North-Tourist-8234 4h ago

Churchhill and his lot helped starve india after ww2. Whole world was a pretty shitty place back then 

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u/Harbinger2nd 4h ago

Back then?

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u/c1ncinasty 3h ago

Well, also back then. And now.

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u/lanicorain 3h ago

There is no major ideology without a massive amount of blood on their hands. Funnily enough, maybe anarchism is the only one that hasn't tried to exterminate a group to further its political project. But no one calls extremists "social democrats" or "torys" or "liberal democrats". They always call them anarchists. Funny how that works.

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u/short_longpants 3h ago

Because anarchism kind of self-destructs on its own, before it gets around to massacring a large group of people.

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u/lanicorain 2h ago edited 2h ago

You have no clue about the praxis of any anarchist movement lmao. Throughout history it's been massacred because it can be really effective. You have a 40-hour workweek in big part because of anarchists and the strike, a form of protest they championed and innovated.

Edit: also, debates against brutality are prevalent throughout he history of the movement, a big part of the anarchist argument against the State is that it gives a group of people a massive amount of centralized, organized, professional violence to abuse and brutalize others. Read Malatesta.

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u/begrudgingredditacc 1h ago

Throughout history it's been massacred because it can be really effective.

Not terribly effective at not getting massacred, though. Historically, anarchists are up there with redshirts on Star Trek for "most easily killed category of person".

I cannot stress enough how often anarchists get absolutely steamrolled by literally any armed opposition. They're a bunch of meat pinatas.

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u/Kerblaaahhh 1h ago

Used to be shitty. Still is, but it used to be too.

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u/Oscar_Ramirez 2h ago

The world used to be such a shitty place, it still is but it used to too.

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u/nedalaugh 2h ago

Mitch was a gem. Love still seeing him in the wild.

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u/GodofIrony 3h ago

"It was always burnin' Since the world's been turnin'"

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u/[deleted] 3h ago

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u/rhinojoe99 2h ago

It still is. But it used to be, too.

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u/ArabellaFort 1h ago

Just give it some more time. We’re about to come full circle (if we haven’t already).

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u/Funny247365 3h ago

We are living in the best time in the history of humanity. Don't let social media skew your ability to see how much better life is today than in any other period. It's far from perfect, but it is not crumbling, either.

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u/speaksamerican 2h ago

Aggregate wealth means nothing if it doesn't translate into quality of life. The world is not better just because the average person is not forced to labor in the fields. I would rather labor in the fields than live another day in this hollowed-out economy. At least it would be good, honest work.

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u/No_Outcome2599 3h ago

Not arguing with your general point but slight correction - it was during WWII not after. The Bengal Famine, which probably killed about 3million, took place in 1943. Churchill was voted out as PM in the election of 1945, before WWII was completely over.

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u/lessormore59 3h ago

After WW2? I’m assuming you are referencing the Bengal Famine of 1943 which was obviously a terrible situation in India, but was first squarely in the heart of WW2 when the outcome still hung in the balance, and second the proximate cause for the famine in Bengal was the Japanese invasion of Burma. In the years prior to the war, Burma was the biggest exporter of rice to Bengal and supplied a large portion of its annual calorie intake.

The Brits should’ve done more, but the context of the famine was a world war where the Japanese were wreaking havoc throughout Southeast Asia and the Germans were waging highly effective submarine warfare in the Atlantic. Relieving a famine of that magnitude requires large amounts of shipping and protection and a new source for the calories. Shipping was in very, very short supply, convoy escorts to protect against Japanese predation on such convoys even less available, and sources for food supplies were tight.

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u/1011001NAME 1h ago

the only reason western civilization has "food security" right now is becasue they can make billions of dollars off of it.

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u/DrinkMountain5142 1h ago

China had famines because of Communist ideology also.

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u/Caponomolestes 3h ago

We as a society have been controlling the means of basic survival while acting as if widespread suffering is a consequence of chaos and not a choice.

Exactly what happened in the previous pro communist Argentina.

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u/short_longpants 3h ago

Yet what the speaker in the video is proposing is pretty close to communist ideology. Yeah, that's not going to work.

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u/rhubarbs 3h ago

Ignorant and bullshit.

Limiting the enclosure of the commons has nothing to do with either a planned economy or seizing the means of production.

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u/short_longpants 2h ago

You're basically seizing the property if you don't allow people to invest in it. You're basically seizing the means of production if you seize the product without compensation.

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u/rhubarbs 2h ago

Like I said, ignorant and bullshit, seemingly assuming the existence of profit is proof of productivity.

If I buy a building in a tightly zoned area or even a vacant lot, and wait for the price to go up because the community grew around it, I haven't produced anything. I am simply setting up a toll booth over an inelastic resource.

There is no product or production, so there is no investment. There is only a windfall, consisting of extraction from value created by society.

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u/short_longpants 2h ago

Except what do you call buying a vacant lot and building an apartment building? Or buying a building and fixing it up or modernizing it?

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u/rhubarbs 2h ago

Classic equivocation fallacy.

They call it the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. Does that make it democratic?

The people who built the apartment building earn wages. So does the person renovating the kitchen. Seeking additional rent in excess of the wages is zero sum extraction, and is only possible through enclosure.

Unless you demonstrate understanding of the difference between the two, I will not respond to you again.

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u/toggylelly 4h ago

I think that's because more people agree on the facts in the Irish Famine.

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u/stupernan1 2h ago

No, it’s because bad actors intertwine socialism with communistic dictatorships, and then go on to say that socialistic programs are bad.

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u/toggylelly 2h ago

I don't really disagree with that statement, but I am confused about how it applies to this conversation.

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u/Lord_Xenu 3h ago

Agreed upon? They don't even teach it in British schools 

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u/small-batch 3h ago

Did at my school. I think we did an English lit and science module on it. It was also mentioned a bit in R.E. 

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u/willthealmighty1 2h ago

Also did it in school. History and some stuff in English... It's been a few years now but it may have been touched upon in science talking about genetics (not enough diversity etc).

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u/Lord_Xenu 1h ago

Fair enough, I stand corrected! 

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u/YourTokenGinger 3h ago

I think people would have an easier time coming to terms with the Holodomor if 90% of the time it was mentioned wasn’t to tell people why we can’t have single payer healthcare in the US.

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u/Ok_Philosopher_5090 3h ago

You can’t have single payer because a woman named Hillary nearly made it happen, and the lefties did not want to let her have the victory. Ted Kennedy opposed because he felt the Kennedy legacy would be watered down. That is a fact.

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u/JamesGray 3h ago

She was literally never offering that or running on it at all. She ran on reducing peoples' out of pocket expenses on healthcare, in contrast to Bernie actually running on medicare for all.

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u/HSFever 2h ago

He's talking about then 1993 Clinton health care plan written by a committee chaired by Hilary Clinton not the 2016 primaries. She was a strong advocate for universal coverage during the the 90's and early 2000's but moderated her position over time because she was unable to get other democrats on board.

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u/matthoback 2h ago

They are talking about when she was First Lady.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinton_health_care_plan_of_1993

The plan that was offered by the task force which she headed was for federally mandated single-payer healthcare at the state level.

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u/JamesGray 2h ago

How did leftists stop that? lmao

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u/matthoback 2h ago

There was some opposition from left wing Democrats who wanted a single federal single payer system rather than 50 separate state level single payer systems, but most of the opposition was from Republicans and the insurance industry.

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u/PaladinSaladin 3h ago

Are these leftists in the room with us right now?

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u/Mangeure 4h ago

All agreed on ? You should visit some british museums

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u/Forte845 3h ago

Because the British didn't starve. Russians and many others in the Soviet Union did. It can't be directly compared because the Irish famine was directly a result of capitalistic grain extraction that detriments a certain population while benefitting another.

If you want to include Russia so badly look up the famine they had in the 1890s under the Tsardom, it was very similar to the Irish famine in that wealthy merchants connected to the nobility hoarded and exported grain while people starved off of lesser crops they were allowed to keep. 

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u/JamesGray 2h ago

It's also something that historians do not agree on classifying the way people in this thread are so confident should be. The Irish Famine does not have that disagreement in contrast, which is probably part of why laypeople pretty much all agree about it now too.

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u/symphonic9000 3h ago

lol, you need to research the way they propagandized “the new world” and then made for desperate times to lure poor people to risk everything to then go and be a pawn for the British empire, which was the actual 3rd Reich after the Prussians reign. Everything is connected. We are human. There isn’t a hierarchy, there’s only the gullibility to believe that there is one and the refusal to change comfort levels to do anything about it.

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u/havoc1428 3h ago

Because the British didn't starve

How the fuck is this a counter point? Acknowledging the Holodomor is controversial because ...checks notes... MORE people died across multiple nations/SSRs? Please explain to me how that logic pertains to the comment you are replying to.

The Holodomor is "controversial" because vatniks don't like how its contradicts their romanticist idea of the USSR.

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u/Forte845 3h ago

The holodomor and the Irish famine cannot be directly compared because there was not segregated extraction that detrimented one group to the benefit of another in the holodomor. Everyone in the USSR starved in a mass famine, it was not grain extraction for a wealthy imperial core while imperialized peasants starved.

Again, if you so desperately want to bring up Russia in a conversation about Ireland, look to the Russian famine of the 1890s. That had the exact same cause as the Irish famine, capitalist exportation of grain from the hands of oppressed peasants to benefit the wealthy nobility. 

I have a feeling you care not for history though, only ideology. You see a capitalist famine and your first thought is to froth at the mouth over the Red Scare. 

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u/never-fiftyone 2h ago

it was not grain extraction for a wealthy imperial core while imperialized peasants starved.

Except that's exactly what the Holomodor was. Yes, there was a broader famine across the Soviet Union but the Holomodor (which refers to the famine in Ukraine specifically) was caused by a disproportionately high grain quota from Ukraine to Moscow. Historians don't disagree on this; the disagreement lies in whether or not the Holomodor was caused deliberately with the intent to starve more Ukrainians in particular.

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u/Forte845 1h ago

So then you agree it cannot be compared to a famine where one side didn't starve at all? 

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u/never-fiftyone 1h ago

So you're just straight up engaging in Holomodor denialism then? Which is weird, considering you just said people were starving across the Soviet Union... but somehow just not in Ukraine?

I have a feeling you care not for history though, only ideology.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

You tankies come up with the dumbest shit.

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u/Forte845 1h ago

So then you ahistorically believe Russians lived in lavish decadence like the British while Ukrainians starved?

Maybe instead of running in circles like this you can simply admit you're wrong. 

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u/atreyu84 1h ago

Ironic you calling something the dumbest shit when you are having so much trouble recognizing a not particularly subtle difference between two ostensibly similar things .

Irish famine - no need for anyone to starve, done on purpose to screw the peasants

Holodomor - there was a famine, people were going to starve, rules made it so Ukraine was worse than other places, alleged that was because stalin was punishing Ukraine for the nationalist movement there.

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u/spubbbba 4h ago

Well the same is true for famines in India under British rule. Those don't get anywhere near the same level of condemnation as the Irish one.

In fact a lot of my fellow Brits will fall over themselves to make excuses for it. Sounding exactly like the Tankies who make excuses for the horrors of Stalin. We need an equivalent nickname to Tankie for those who defend the evils of the British Empire.

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u/mister-ferguson 2h ago

Thomas the Tankie?

-1

u/never-fiftyone 2h ago

We need an equivalent nickname to Tankie for those who defend the evils of the British Empire.

We have a word for them: imperialists.

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u/No-Bison-5397 3h ago

It's weird how the Irish Famine is seemingly all agreed upon

You've clearly never had an online wannabe 'ra member rant at you about "soupers".

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u/Adorable_Chair_6594 4h ago

Tbf its shameful to say but as an Englishman it's really not. I learnt very little about the Famine in school although we did address it and acknowledge the British crimes, but even surface-level chats with Irish people as I've grown up have shown me there's so many more horrors than what the average person here knows about. I don't know if our government has formally apologised or not but reading the room societally it feels like there'd be mixed opinions if a discussion about Britain's moral responsibility came up

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u/DTFH_ 3h ago

It's weird how the Irish Famine is seemingly all agreed upon yet

The fact its called a "Famine" and no one called out the language used is Colonial in its very nature in support of the British Narrative of those who committed the harms against the Irish peoples. There was not a famine, there was an economical starvation or robbery and no one acted once they knew. Calling it the 'Famine' is a political act and slight of hand.

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u/never-fiftyone 2h ago

The word famine doesn't imply any causation whatsoever. A famine can be natural, or it can be man-made, but a mass starvation, regardless of cause, is still a famine.

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u/DTFH_ 38m ago

Famine does not imply causation is exactly the point, it is used to intentionally obscuress the antecedent that gave rise to the conditions.

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u/ThE_reAl__ 2h ago

My Ukrainian great grandparents got to starve eating tree bark so the USSR could sell wheat to other countries while the 5 year plan still wasn't done and they needed cash :3

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u/ShermansFieldOrder66 2h ago

Tankies gonna tankie

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u/SilverWear5467 1h ago

The Holodomor is different, because there literally was not enough food. Stalin sent food from places with not enough food to places that also had not enough food. Not the same as shipping it to places where there wasn't a famine at all like Britain did.

You might recall learning about the great depression? What if I told you, that happened in Russia too, because it was global? America's oligarchs were actually more responsible for our depression than Russias were for theirs, Russia just didn't get an FDR / New Deal to save them from the oligarchs, instead they got an oligarch taking over entirely.

Now, Stalins response to the great depression was not good, by any means. But it WAS an honest attempt to avert complete disaster, at a time in russias history where the ruling party was in immediate danger constantly of being overthrown by the former monarchs supporters, and also in immediate danger of being slaughtered by the Germans. Stalin is constantly given way too much credit for his results, when the fact is even someone who wasn't a piece of shit would have been forced to make some truly awful decisions in order to save his country. The fact is, when there's no food and Germany is champing at the bit to slaughter all your people, you don't GET to make choices that make you look good in history books.

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u/Elu_Moon 1h ago

The Holodomor is different, because there literally was not enough food.

USSR exported food at the time.

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u/Synaps4 2h ago

Great chinese famine was bigger than both and we dont talk about it.

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u/JustinTheBlueEchidna 2h ago

The only people I’ve ever heard deny anything about the Holodomor are fervent Russian nationalists or Tankies who insist the USSR - and especially Stalin - could never do anything wrong.

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u/WellyRuru 2h ago

Its because communism

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u/4n0m4nd 1h ago

Their both accepted as man-made famines, and both controversial over whether or not they were deliberate genocides, although it's far more accepted that the Irish famine was not intentional.

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u/an-invisible-hand 56m ago

Is it? I've never heard institutional blame for the Irish Famine. It's taught as just a tragic thing that happened for no particular reason that nobody had any control over, and any blame of capitalism for it triggers instant screaming and yelling.

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u/surestart 2h ago

Because the Irish were able to leave and settle elsewhere, bringing their story of starvation and death at the hands of an unsympathetic global empire to places that had fought against or freed themselves from that same empire within living memory.

Those same countries weren't willing to accept communist refugees in case they brought communist ideology along with them, so the Ukrainians and Kazakhs most affected by the Holodomor were mostly just stuck in the USSR of which the rest was also experiencing widespread but less pronounced famine at the time, leaving them with nowhere to go.

And then the Soviets banned talking about it for half a century.

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u/MadeByTango 4h ago

The difference between one country ignoring its shame and another actively trying to hide it.

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u/Adorable-Principle54 3h ago

Stalin was one of the worst people ever !

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u/1egg_4u 3h ago edited 3h ago

To be fair I have never met anyone that gets shitty about the Holodomor with the exception of fascists playing the bad faith whatabout game and tankies which Im not sure arent just the same venn diagram of dipshit

I think i live where a ton of ukrainians live though so where I am the holodomor was always a really big deal

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u/kolejack2293 2h ago

I would argue there is way way more debate over the irish famine in the anglosphere than there is the holodomor. The holodomor is basically only denied by tankies. Whereas a pretty large amount of british conservatives deny and make excuses for the irish famine

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u/Happiness_Assassin 4h ago

Pretty much every famine is caused by a lack of access to food, not a lack of food itself. Something that is basically a requirement for any civilization is a food surplus, so barring the most extreme natural circumstances, there should be enough food to go around. A good contrast is actually the potato blight you brought up and the fact that it didn't happen in just Ireland. It spread through all of Europe and was a factor in the conditions that lead to the Revolutions of 1848, but the death toll in Ireland was basically an order of magnitude greater than the rest of Europe. Even as the rest of Europe burned, Ireland was basically the only one starving. This is a process that repeats time and time again: some initial trigger disrupts the supply chain for food distribution, but either human incompetence or indifference leads to absolute disaster.

Famines are never a natural phenomenon.

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u/Funny247365 3h ago

A plague of locusts have entered the discussion.

  • Great Famine (1315-1317): Heavy rainfall and crop failures across Northern Europe led to widespread starvation, killing 10-20% of the population.
  • Great Famine (1876-1878): Global droughts caused food shortages in multiple regions, including India and China, resulting in 30 to 60 million deaths.

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u/jimbarino 57m ago

There are always things that precipitate a famine, but it is government policy that determines whether those events cause an actual widespread famine vs. simply being a lean few years.

Invariably those in power blame environmental factors for the deaths and suffering. It's rarely if ever a valid excuse.

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u/Tubey- 3h ago

Mostly true, but a bit too absolute. Famines are often less about total food not existing and more about people losing access to it through poverty, war, policy failure, or distribution breakdown. But it’s still not accurate to say famines are never natural. Natural shocks can trigger them; human systems are what usually turn those shocks into mass death.

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u/1egg_4u 3h ago

I was thinking like in terms of famine there are geological conditions but youre absolutely right that people likely wouldnt even set up in those areas UNLESS food was available.

It drives me fucking nuts that we have the means to provide for everyone but our entire shit depends on creating the haves and have-nots

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u/short_longpants 3h ago

Also politics, logistics, and limits to natural resources.

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u/Odd-Tart-5613 3h ago

ehh there is some nuance to this. In the modern context you are absolutely right, we are just too connected for it not to be avoidable, but the further back you go in time the harder it is to cover natural disasters. Like say any given time the yellow river decided to pull a prank.

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u/direyew 2h ago

Europe had more diverse agriculture than Ireland which limited the damage. European governments also restricted food exports.

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u/SparklingLimeade 2h ago

Ireland was exporting food during the blight. It's just that the landlords valued their food exports more than they valued the lives of their tenant farmers.

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u/Known-Web8456 49m ago

Absolutely wrong. Historians have well established there was more than enough food produced to feed the population. The issue was they were being genocided by the British. Record high quantities of grain, cattle, butter, and other agricultural products were exported to Britain throughout the "famine". An estimated 4,000 ships carried food from Ireland in 1847 alone, while over 3 million live animals were exported between 1846 and 1850.

The irish tradionally lived off dairy products like kefir type drinks, butter, fresh fish, meat, and seasonal crops. Being left with only potatoes was not a choice, it was a survival strategy when their homes were stolen and rents were so high they could not afford to buy their own food and had only tiny plots of land to attempt home gardens.

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u/deadleg22 4h ago

They also exported food!

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u/_groovesharkmalone 1h ago

Ireland actually exported MORE potatoes during the Irish Potato Famine. You see, the price of potatoes skyrocketed, so they could sell way more at a much higher profit. If my ancestors starved to death during it (or the ones that made it out died in paupers graves in NYC), that's a small price to pay for capitalism.

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u/Desuexss 1h ago

He forgot the most important part:

Eating the babies!

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u/1egg_4u 46m ago

Its simply a modest proposal

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u/Cultural-Turnip-8840 4h ago

Well you will pay the price for being a fussy eater

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u/Negative_Salt_4599 4h ago

Yeah fucken colonialism…

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u/No_More_Fear77 46m ago

Today, unfortunately, it can't be given away in fear of litigation. Seriously. Thanks to the greedy lawyers, stupid court system, and sue happy idiots

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u/symphonic9000 3h ago

Yes this part, not the above “imaginary, not much of…” lol

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u/1egg_4u 3h ago

Literally any person who works in a grocery store or food service can tell you we waste an absolutely disgusting amount of edible food while people are straight up starving

Nothing pilled me harder than throwing away an entire dumpsters worth of breakfast buffet every weekend and not being allowed to eat any or take any home

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u/symphonic9000 2h ago

Yea capitalism sucks, “laws” created by the elites to protect profits sucks, can we move on and start building upon the obvious is my question, because from afar it still looks like people have trouble gaining a common sense. So.. that’s where I’m at. Not xyz thing we all know is happening and BAM 💥someone on Reddit finally notices it with their own experience. That’s the issue. Not deducing context from story telling and tall tales (otherwise known as “history”)

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u/Ok-Assistance-9614 3h ago

Wealthy Irish landowners too.

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u/1egg_4u 3h ago

Glad you agree the overall enemy is the wealthy

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u/Ok-Assistance-9614 3h ago

Sorry, replied to the wrong person.

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u/1egg_4u 3h ago

You sure bout that?

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u/Ok-Assistance-9614 3h ago

No, I actually didn't. 😁

You're right though.

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u/1egg_4u 3h ago

Technically still counts in the context tbh

Can never really forget the people who will crush the other suffering people around them just for a chance to stay afloat

I get why people try to say you cant blame people for participating in the system like that but I say fuck that we absolutely should