The US was the first country to eliminate the specter of famine around 1800. Thanks to free markets.
It's had the same outcome every time. Take a look at Lenin's collectivization of agriculture. Production collapsed, and famine resulted. He then instituted the New Economic Program, and production was restored. Collectivization was applied again, and it collapsed again. Finally, the Soviet Union allowed farmers to farm certain parcels and keep the profits, which staved off famine, supplemented with wheat shipped from Kansas (known as "the Breadbasket of the Soviet Union").
Pretty sad, as before 1917 Ukraine was known as the Breadbasket of Europe.
Did you know that the Pilgrims tried communism for their first year? They starved. Then they switched to private ownership, and fed themselves.
All? Nope. Only the ones that were more free market, and the more free market the more things "shot up".
Evidence? The millions of poor leaving everything behind and coming from Europe to the US.
If you can cite a collective farm system that didn't result in famine, feel free.
I'm genuinely puzzled why so many people believe in collectivism, despite no historical evidence of its success anywhere. And, on the flip side, the consistent success of free markets.
My favorite excuse for the prosperity of the US free market was the fact(!) that the millions of Europeans who migrated here were the wealthy(!) of Europe.
The topic wasn't collectivism. You keep trying to make it about that, I suppose because that's what you wanted to argue about.
Indoctrination.
> My favorite excuse for the prosperity of the US free market was the fact(!) that the millions of Europeans who migrated here were the wealthy(!) of Europe.
I hadn't heard that one.
Similar dynamics occur in bananna republics, the congo, etc... Free markets are great for wealthy countries with lots of functioning social and political institutions.
Free markets have been great at lifting many, many people out of poverty. However, unrestricted free markets can have horrible consequences. Just google for a few examples. Free markets work with functioning legal and social systems. I don't think it's fair to characterize the elimination of poverty as solely due to free markets.
I'm no expert on 19th century Ireland, but the economic system there appears to be a vestige of feudalism rather than a free market. There was no free market for land:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland)#Tenants...
> Just google for a few examples
Cite what you want.
They were used in cattle ranching and hog husbandry. They worked as butchers and meat processors. In places like the Chesapeake Bay region enslaved individuals were involved in oyster harvesting and processing.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albion's_Seed
[2] This is why the framers fabricated a notion of "White" identity, to create solidarity where none had really existed. To understand what they meant by race one must look at contemporary dictionaries. Needless to say the word meant something very different over 200 years ago than it does today.
Slavery didn't build the U.S. The mostly-slavery-free North built the U.S.
It may not have harboured slaves, but it was definitely profiting by them.
And early stages of industrialisation, most notably the cotton gin, extended the viability of slave-based plantation labour by several more decades, according to extensive accounts.
The Southerners had expected that they had a trump card with cotton exports to the North, but oops.
The South languished in part due to Reconstruction and being politically repressed by the North following the Civil War, but also for geographic and climatic reasons: it was hot and humid, and would remain hot and humid until electrification and air conditioning arrived ~1930--1950, the oil booms of Texas, Oklahoman, and Louisiana (~1900 -- 1940), and arrival of petrochemical industry (1950--).
Agreed that cotton was a ... weaker thread ... binding South and North than the South would have hoped for.
And whilst we're talking regional economic development, though an unrelated territory: I found it interesting a while back to find that Los Angeles in the mid-20th century was often the second-largest manufacuturing centre across a whole slew of industries: oil, automobiles, aircraft, tyres, among them. I've yet to find a good explanation of this, though my own hunch is that it was a combination of factors:
- Local petroleum sources, that is, a tremendous energy supply.
- Far enough from East Coast manufacturing that a local industry made sense.
- A sufficiently large local population to feed that demand.
This pattern emerged after the Great Earthquake and Fire of 1906 in San Francisco which greatly dampened development of Northern California, as well as the Bay Area's geographic limitations (a small peninsula, poor cross-bay transport until the creation of the Golden Gate and SF-Oakland Bay bridges in the 1930s), as well as a largely agricultural / timber orientation of Northern California's economy, with secondary strengths in transportation (ports, railroads) and finance.
The timing was such that it was too late for the South to be able to win independence -- the North was already too strong. But when the North was weaker the drive to secession was also weaker because the resentments were bred in part by the stark contrast in prosperity. The North had to get strong enough to win the war for the South to be willing to go or endure the war.
Sam Houston understood all of this, and for his troubles of advising Texas stay in the Union he was removed as governor by the legislature.
Then there's the evidence that the average height of Americans shot up from 1800 to WW2.
See Eugene Weber's "The Western Tradition".
Also just because arable land is there doesn't mean it's being farmed effectively. The Iroquois were a relatively sophisticated agrarian society, but the Lakota were essentially fire hunter gatherers by comparison. And of course the Navajo worked wonders feeding themselves in an extremely arid environment.
Don't get me wrong I'm a big fan of free markets. On the other hand all the successful farmers who are personally known to me either established their business on the back of generous government loans in the latter half of the 20th century, or inherited or otherwise acquired a concern that did. I'm a big fan of small government, but I'm an even bigger fan of food security, so not starving is definitely an area where I'm open to big government intervention. That's not to downplay the creation of perverse incentives that come out of those policies, but the fact of the matter is nothing is perfect and maybe it's worth accepting a little inefficiency to avoid famine.
So yeah I'd say it's more the US federal government's interventionist policies that have caused this country to make such effective use of its arable land and not the invisible hand at work.
From what I read, all of them that were investigated.
> so they were closer to a free market than any industrialized state.
The Indian economies were pretty basic, as far as I can tell. They did engage in trade, but also raiding and slavery. They did not appear to have much of a conception of inalienable rights, or of individuals owning plots of land, although there was certainly the concept of tribal land. Frankly, not a whole lot is known about pre-Columbian Indian societies. Even estimates of their numbers vary by over an order of magnitude.
Much of what we do know comes from random accounts and letters written by Europeans, such as how the Cheyenne lived and operated.
Farming in colonial times and in the US got its start with giving away land to settlers who promised to farm it.
> maybe it's worth accepting a little inefficiency to avoid famine
The famines ended in the US around 1800 and never reappeared. We're doing fine.
http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/daybyday/event/august-23-19...
The Grapes of Wrath is a novel.
Tge link you provided discusses raising crop prices and, at least the on the first page, doesn't refute the dust bowl.
The reason that prices needed to be raised was because the dust bowl had cause a famine and the collapse of food prices. Even where crops had been successful, the prices were too low for farmers to make a profit so they destroyed their crops rather than sending them to market. It was largely a failure of unrestricted free markets.
Again, all this is a fairly uncontroversial interpretation.
> The Grapes of Wrath is a novel.
Yes, a novel about the dust bowl and it's consequences.
Think about what low crop prices means. It means FOOD IS CHEAP. That's utterly inconsistent with famine. And Roosevelt destroying zillions of pigs and letting their carcasses rot in ditches is famine? It beggars belief.
> It was largely a failure of unrestricted free markets.
The dust bowl was caused by unsustainable farming practices, which were changed as a result. The Depression was caused by the Fed (read "Monetary History of the United States" by Milton Friedman. Not a novelist.)
> Yes, a novel about the dust bowl and it's consequences.
Novels are fictional, and historical proof of nothing at all. Steinbeck was not a historian, and was known to exaggerate for dramatic effect. There are plenty of history books on the Depression written by professional historians. Any credible claims have no reason to rely on fiction.
P.S. My dad went to public school in Long Beach in the Depression. He sat next to Oakies. They weren't starving. Times were hard, yes. But it wasn't famine.
During the great Depression, food was, in general, both cheap and largely unavailable. The prices that farmers could get for many of their crops had fallen to a level that the cost of getting their crops to market would result in them losing money. So they destroyed a lot of their crops. Again, this is some basic American history, easily found in text books for High School and college classes. Essentially, it was an economic problem. There was physical food and crops. However, the price farmers could get for food had fallen to below the level that they could profit from it. The government had decided to implement price supports. It might be hard to believe, but that's what happened.
People here at HN know what novels and history books -- there is no need to insult anyone by explaining it. The book, Grapes of Wrath, was clearly brought up to illustrate a point, not as a proof.
I'm willing to go along with characterizing The Dust Bowl as a time of famine in America, and one that happened after your claim, that free markets eliminated the specter of famine in the US.
I know what food insecurity is, hunger is, and famine. Characterizing the Dust Bowl as famine is hyperbole.
As for high school history books, sorry, but LOL. They're written by committees and mostly driven by popular politics.
A novel simply isn't good enough to be a cite. Here are some of the falsehoods from TGoW:
https://www.history.com/news/10-things-you-may-not-know-abou...
Here's a cite for you: "The Forgotten Man" by Amity Shlaes. A history of the Depression, it does not mention "famine".
If you've got a cite from a real history book there was famine in the US in the 1930's, feel free to post it.
P.S. I have a copy of "AP United States History" from the "Research & Education Association, 639 pages. It has no mention of famine during the Dust Bowl.
I've given a brief explanation twice already. If it doesn't even make sense to you then, honestly, don't know what to say further.
As to the famine point, lets try google... The first result is as follows, from Wikipedia: ”The abandonment of homesteads and financial ruin resulting from catastrophic topsoil loss led to widespread hunger and poverty". You clearly disagree that it qualifies as famine.
This isn't a formal historical discussion, and Im not a historian. The fact of widespread hunger and poverty isn't in dispute by any reputable historian and I'm honestly not interested in debating minutia.
> I've given a brief explanation twice already.
Sorry, it makes no sense. What makes food cheap is abundance, not scarcity. Do you really think that if the country was gripped by famine, that FDR would have gotten away with slaughtering millions of pigs and leaving the meat to rot?
WalterBright: "The US was the first country to eliminate the specter of famine around 1800. Thanks to free markets."
It's delusional to argue that The Dust Bowl was a time of cheap and abundant food. As far as I can tell, that's your claim, but I'm not interested in discussing this further with you.
I used it correctly, it comes from Eugene Weber's "The Western Tradition", cited earlier.
> It's delusional to argue that The Dust Bowl was a time of cheap and abundant food
I cited it. You've found no cites for famine.
First google search result for dust bowl famine. Government websites explicitly mention “famine”. Is the Library of Congress a good enough source for you?