Did laissez-faire worsen the Irish Famine?

[FreedomPhilosophy]

I'd be interested in responses to Robert Neilsens article on the Irish Great Famine, he thinks the free market worsened it.http://robertnielsen21.wordpress.com/2012/08/25/laissez-faire-and-the-irish-great-famine/

[Pepin]

Just to be slightly critical of your wording, he doesn't "think" the free market worsened it, but rather "claims" or argues that the free market worsened it. I bring this up because this is the sort of language Stefan often points out when people bring up rebuttals of his arguments, and I think most of us here on the board would agree that it is a bad use of rhetoric and will point it out when others do it to us, so I feel like we ought to strive to not use this sort of language with others.

 

For example say you could get a price of 3 by selling your good in Ireland but a price of 5 by selling your good in England. Obviously you will export it even if Ireland is starving and England isn’t. This was the case during the Famine because the starving peasants didn’t have money to buy food and therefore starved. As Amartya Sen described it, it is not lack of food that causes starvation but rather a lack of money to buy food.

 

As an argument goes, this is actually pretty good. If you take out the annoying rhetoric and just take the situation as follows, it would indicate that more food would get shipped to foreign lands if possible and that banning the exports would have resulted in an increase in supply and therefore a decrease in the price of food.

 

After reading the result of the article, I can confidently say that there is no way the author came up with that argument. The author can really only seem to put words together and pretend as if they mean something.

 

 The government was obsessed with fears of damaging local businesses and of creating dependency among the Irish.

 

It would be my guess that these businesses were influencing the government in a similar way that businesses and unions were influencing the US government during the great depression.

 

It was viewed as unethical for the government to help an individual so no money was invested in productive enterprises or in improving the land. They therefore built roads that lead nowhere and had no purpose. They also insisted on paying wages below the market rate. The workers were not provided with winter clothes and were so under paid that they died in huge numbers from under nourishment. These schemes were marked by corruption, late payment of wages and a massive death toll. The government based its actions on tight-fistedness, penny-pinching, excessive obedience to laissez faire ideology and faith in the market.

 

This is where the author starts to unknowingly contradict themselves by stating all the ways the government was not in favor a market. The one line I think says a lot and perhaps destroys the entire argument is the bolded line, which I am sure is indicating that the government was making quite a lot of money off of the export.

 

Though I am speculating, I am going to guess that Britain was also having a difficult time with food production as well, which is probably the reason why the price was so high in comparison to Ireland. It seems as though the British had a large incentive to secure the food granted by this line

 

This was a source of hatred for generations of nationalists, who remembered English soldiers protecting food as it was brought to ships for export as the people starved.

 

Perhaps I am looking a little to much into that, but I get the impression that England had a large part to play in all of this.

 

Like the argument that the Financial crash of 2008 and the resulting depression was caused by too much government interference, this is a position based on pre-conceived opinion rather than any evidence. Therefore there is little need or point in refuting it.

 

This really discredits the author because the opposition is providing solely evidence to the contrary. The author's claim is that there was no or too little government involvement, and the article he links to claims the complete opposite with plenty of supporting evidence.

 

After reading the article, I can see why you used the word "think", though I'd still suggest calling it an argument. Essentially it is the cliche anti-market pro-government speech with a few arguments the guy picked up to support the speech. I think it is clear that the author isn't a thinker, he is more comparable to a MSNBC news anchor giving a little history lesson.

 

I don't feel like my response here is very helpful in rebutting the argument, but I'm going to guess that the mises article linked is right on the money. There tends to be far less filler and far more argument in libertarian articles, especially in that a large portion of the articles are spent addressing rebuttals.

[BorisM]

"However most peasants paid their rent with part of their crop and survived on the remaining potatoes. This meant they did not use money and therefore could not buy food or access credit."

 

 

"If tenants are not paying the rent then they shouldn’t be allowed to keep the land."

 

Certainly concentrated land ownership/monopolization(a state protected priviledge) was a contributing factor to the poverty of the peasants.

 

See:http://board.freedomainradio.com/topic/37650-a-fatal-flaw-in-libertariananarcho-capitalist-thought/

[PatrickC]

Yes, its filled to brimming with the same old (dare I say, 'leftist') fallacies.. None of his objections had anything to do with a free (voluntary) market.

[ProfessionalTeabagger]

Jesus wept. The "prevailing conservative doctrine of laissez fair"? WTF? Fallacy pile-up. Why even bother with this shit?

I'll just say that as a life long resident of Northern Ireland I'd like to thank the British government for their wonderful contribution to my people.  Big Kiss!