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Turns out humans are pretty evil regardless of where on this planet they were born and raised
Who knew
Few famines before british rule, dozens during, and none after.
Hmmm…
Must’ve been the climate!
Forced the Chinese into opium addiction.
Gave Palestine to the Zionists.
Destabilised multiple countries and regions around the world for spice and goods trade.
I think the “exported food during a famine” part deserves some examination. Because doing this in itself may or may not be justified.
For the Soviet Union, I have heard this as an anti-communist talking point for both the famine that occurred during the civil war in the 20s and the famine of the early 30s. In both cases the Soviet Union was totally justified in exporting food during a famine. Why? Because having food in itself doesn’t necessarily solve a famine. You need inputs (like fertilizer) and capital (like farming equipment). For the Soviet Union, agriculture was essentially still pre-modern. They were seriously lacking both in both famines. The decision to export was not “let’s make some side cash by starving our people”. Rather it was recognizing that selling X units of food today would yield X+Y units in the future by using the proceeds to improve your agricultural situation. Food was swapped for inputs and capital. It’s an incredibly difficult decision to make, but it’s the rational one and in the end saves more lives.
But the British in Ireland in the late 1848? That was just allowing the invisible hand of the free market to do its thing. Produce sold for more in England so they shipped it off, because England was significantly richer than Ireland. You can say the famine wasn’t the intentional result of the British government perhaps, but you can’t say it’s not the expected and natural outcome of free market capitalism.
And then the British in Bengal? I’m not quite as familiar I’ll admit but IIRC that was just the Brits needing more food for themselves so they took it from India, consequences for Indians be damned.
England was richer than Ireland? That implies Irish people had some level of choice… Ireland was a colony of the British empire and as such were responsible for it’s citizens and the Irish people had no say in where the crops were sold to. Irish people, by and large, couldn’t afford those crops anyway and so relied the potatoes they grew. When that failed for consecutive harvests, they starved because the landowners continued to sell the other food sources abroad rather than helping. The invisible hand of the market has little or nothing to do with it because they could never have bought the crops anyway, it was just greed and cruelty.
The invisible hand of the market has little or nothing to do with it […], it was just greed and cruelty.
To be fair, greed and cruelty is what the invisible hand of the market is when push comes to shove.
Pugjesus is a psyop
Put it this way: I don’t think PJ is a fed, but I think the fact that he’s the feds aren’t paying him is wage theft.
Boot connoisseur at the very least
Libs coping in the comments.
You put a picture of a Soviet Union flag there because all these things also apply to the Soviet Union, and you know it.
Almost like all empires are bad, no matter what color paint you slather them in.
^ when you’re a victim of western ‘education’ system
Always a lost little lib on these communities
Damn, I thought it was gonna be hexbear for sure
You know how these things work. Next year they’re going to get it for a performance that didn’t deserve it as much.
Well, at least it saves us a lot of time when you skip straight to the name-calling phase.
You would think so!
You guys are so boring and your faux-highmindedness falls flat when none of you ever stop calling communists “tankies”
I don’t call all communists tankies. Only the tankies. You’re allowed to be communist without having a boner for autocratic dictators and globe-spanning empires.
While not being entirely the same
I don’t call all communists tankies. Only the tankies.
This reeks of “I’m not calling all Black/Asian/Muslim people Slur/Pejorative just those who don’t fit what I think the good ones should look like” rightwing nonsense.
You don’t know what any of those words mean.
Meh, humans are pretty much the same no matter where they’re physically located. Some are decent enough — a small percentage are even quite good — but the large majority are varying degrees of shitty, with a small number (e.g. the “one percenters”) being irredeemably so.
China and Russia does something evil:
Unacceptable. Think of Human rights, Morals, Empathy, Kindness.
West does the same or worse:
Meh, it’s just human nature to be evil
Could you people be any more hypocrite?
Easy to put words in my mouth, huh? Shitty is shitty, regardless of who or where. Point out where I’ve EVER treated one side differently from the other in that regard.
Otherwise, maybe stop being shitty yourself with all the projectionist bullshit. You’re being no better than you claim I am.
The privilege you(we) experience in the west is a direct result of exploitation of the global south. While you sit there allowed to have free will, post shit in your home with electricity, your government is not only forcing other countries not to export their own goods for the benefit of the people in the country (Cuba, etc) but also make it ILLEGAL for any other country to sell them crucial commodities or buy anything from them. So it’s not about individual experience and more about the entire geopolitical history of the exploitation domestically (slave trade) and abroad and YOU personally benefit from it. All of our lives could be so much better if we operated more like China, Cuba, Vietnam or the USSR, economically, legally, etc.
You are treating one side differently from the rest because one side is in a dramatically different situation to the other side and you are acting as if they are the same. Slaves and masters, oppressed and oppressor, treated with the “same” moral and ethical rigour despite one side actively trying to exploit the other.
If you don’t think the same is happening on your preferred side (or any side, really), then you have blinders on. Human nature is universal.
I still don’t see any actual evidence of my supposed unequal treatment.
If you think that China or Russia have ever done anything near the scale of the British Empire you are delusional. They operated the East India company for 300 fucking years. They literally starved over a hundred million people by their policies and 10 million at one time. Just between 1880 and 1920 the Raj claimed more lives than all the famines in the Soviet Union, PRC and North Korea combined. They operated the slave trade. They created zionism. They forced opiates into the Chinese then bombed them into submission when they tried to resist. They had a part in the full scale extermination of indigenous North Americans. They overthrew the democracy Iran for oil profits. They built global capitalism.
To say all things are equally bad ignores the part where one of these things is not like the others - The British are by far the most brutal and evil people to ever exist by a wide margin. The USAmericans are just the latest phase in the 500 years of anglo global domination and exploitation.
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2022/12/2/how-british-colonial-policy-killed-100-million-indians
Honestly I think the biggest predictor of a country doing harm is just the amount of geopolitical power they wield.
Those who can harm others to get ahead, and have that opportunity, do. The British did. And they sure as fuck did an incredible amount of harm
For a hot minute the US has been in a position to do a great deal of harm, and thats exactly what we’ve done :(
Those who can harm others to get ahead, and have that opportunity, do.
This isn’t true on an individual level, and individuals make decisions for countries. Why would it be true on a state level?
Not taking advantage of others (either other individuals or other states) isn’t even some idealistic pursuit, either. There are costs and risks to doing so, and there are benefits (e.g., peace and cooperation) to dealing with others honestly.
“Hot minute,” my ass. We’ve done some good, but a fuck-ton more evil - albeit a lot of it in more subtle ways than of late.
Power corrupts. It’s true for individuals and for organizations and states.
Power is not a supernatural corruptive force, this narrative is spread to prevent people from organizing.
Or we could try to organize while taking this fact into account. Bootlicking is not necessary to organization.
Haha, I remember being 15 and just throwing Matrix Thoughts around with no structure to cohere them
Nobody is talking about bootlicking. Power is not a supernatural corruptive force. Administration does not turn people evil. What’s important is class analysis, as people do act in their class interests generally.
Class is not supernatural either. But as i said in another message, the corrupting effect of power is well-studied by psychology.
Yeah that’s why train drivers derail on purpose all the time, the raw power they hold over peoples lives just corrodes their immortal soul. They’re just like cops when you think about it.
Class isn’t supernatural, correct. It’s a material relation. Capitalists are interested as a class in retaining private ownership, workers are materially interested in collectivizing production. This isn’t a corruptive force, but pure class interest. As for power supernaturally corrupting, no, it is not well-studied by psychology.
Power is not the one ring, it’s not magical.
It’s true. But my sentence was true too.
No it isn’t, for either. Unexamined thought terminating cliches are worthless.
It’s not an unexamined thought. It’s a scientifically analyzed phenomenon.
Living up to both the name AND the instance’s rep - a twofer! I’m impressed.
Go back to reddit you insufferable dork
Thoughts: terminated
Yeah, seems to be an extremely common occurrence here.
Exactly. Idealists know, that when they engage with material evidence that doesn’t fit their narrative, their worldview will get weakened in their own brain. So they have to terminate their thoughts.
And the more material evidence is on an instance, the more thought-termination per idealist there will be. An approximate formula would be:
amount of thought termination on a particular instance = amount of facts on that instance that idealists disagree with * amount of idealists (including federated ones browsing on all-sort)which I’d assume makes lemmy the number one.
Shut up nerd, you all sound the same
Projection
Curious what you think the biggest predictor would be, then?
The mode of production and distribution.
