(06-11-2020, 02:02 PM)flsprtsgod Wrote:

(06-11-2020, 02:01 PM)mikesez Wrote: Millions died under lots of different ideologies we could name. 

Millions starve pretty much any time a country tries to go to a free trade or purely capitalist system for cereal grains.  Most recently in Haiti and the Phillipines, but you'll find an early example in France as one of the causes of the first French Revolution.  

Does that mean that capitalism or free trade are always wrong? Of course not. Does that mean that any alternative economic arrangement can grow and allocate food without anyone ever starving? Of course not.

Riddle me this.  Suppose the USSR, in the early 1930s, prioritized feeding everyone higher than rapidly industrializing.  There would have been no famine in Ukraine.  But also no industrialization in the Volga nor in the transural region. Millions more Ukrainians survive to 1940.  Then what?

The Ukrainian Famine was intentional you daft twit.

I know that.
Before the famine, Ukraine and Russia both more or less fed themselves.
Then the Soviets decide that (a) a bunch of Russian farmers need to stop farming and start building steel mills, and (b) they will need to eat Ukrainian grain while they work. 
Intentional, yes.  But do you think there was another way to produce all those steel mills and get them running before 1940?
What happens if the mills aren't built?

---