Well, when millions die from starvation then you can argue the economy here is worse. Until then I think this comparison is a bit silly. Stupid as this whole debacle is, it’s nowhere near as stupid as the Holodomor or Great Leap Forward.
Severe famines require more than just incompetence. They require active, violent repression of the people’s ability to solve their own problems—which they usually have. This is what makes these kinds of famines so horrific. Yes, they are partially natural, but they could have easily been solved if aid or freedom of movement had been permitted by the ruling tyrants.
And how many billions around the globe struggle to secure food/water/housing/medicine/electricity/etc despite the progress of technology? Right now we could produce enough for everyone on the planet; instead, hundreds of millions live in abject poverty, for generations, because our entire productive capacity is organized around profit instead of community need.
If we stop and tally the unnecessary deaths of those who succumbed to famine, homelessness, preventable disease, war, US imperialism, etc. we will see that the death toll of capitalism is immense.
That really has nothing to do with the comparison at hand between the refusal to pay snap benefits and the massive famines of the 20th centuries that the Stalinist governments created.
But sure, American imperialism bad. It’s a bit harder to measure all of these separate factors though, and it doesn’t make this campist meme any less dumb.
Well, when millions die from starvation then you can argue the economy here is worse. Until then I think this comparison is a bit silly. Stupid as this whole debacle is, it’s nowhere near as stupid as the Holodomor or Great Leap Forward.
Severe famines require more than just incompetence. They require active, violent repression of the people’s ability to solve their own problems—which they usually have. This is what makes these kinds of famines so horrific. Yes, they are partially natural, but they could have easily been solved if aid or freedom of movement had been permitted by the ruling tyrants.
And how many billions around the globe struggle to secure food/water/housing/medicine/electricity/etc despite the progress of technology? Right now we could produce enough for everyone on the planet; instead, hundreds of millions live in abject poverty, for generations, because our entire productive capacity is organized around profit instead of community need.
If we stop and tally the unnecessary deaths of those who succumbed to famine, homelessness, preventable disease, war, US imperialism, etc. we will see that the death toll of capitalism is immense.
That really has nothing to do with the comparison at hand between the refusal to pay snap benefits and the massive famines of the 20th centuries that the Stalinist governments created.
But sure, American imperialism bad. It’s a bit harder to measure all of these separate factors though, and it doesn’t make this campist meme any less dumb.