How comes in the time of Irish famine (1840), while 1.5 milions Irish starved from hunger, Ireland exported ..

Question

food to Britain??

Is this how the free markets worked at that time?

Are the free markets dictates potentially harmfull even to the future, taking in consideration this event!?

Answer 1

Free markets aren't what caused the problem for the Irish. There was a net export of food from Ireland to England, and other parts of Europe so we know there was food.

The issue was caused by government. Catholics, 80% of the population, were not allowed to own land, along with other restrictions, which left most Irish poor until the Catholic emancipation. With so many poor when the disease hit the potato crop the cost of food the poor couldn't afford to eat.

If there had been LESS government, less restrictions, there free market could have work and so many would not have died.

Time and time again we find that government causes the problem, they don't solve them.

Answer 2

Interesting points. To answer your first question, the market at the time in Ireland wasn't particularly a "free market" as such. The majority of landowners in Ireland at the time were British, and the people working the land were poor Irish catholics, the indigenous population. The Irish paid tithes, or taxes, to the landowners, arguably keeping them in poverty and in service to the landowners. When the famine occured, many Irish didn't have the means to pay these tithes and therefore had to sell everything they owned in order to keep their home (and land) and survive, which also meant that many starved to death due to lack of nutrition as in many cases it wasn't possible to afford the rising cost of food AND the tithes. What little could be grown was sold at market and exported to the British mainland by the merchants (who were mainly British), as there was a diminishing market in Ireland (due to the failure of crops and subsistance level living).

As to the second point, it could be argued that the free market encourages competition in the marketplace, and recently in the UK supermarkets such as Lidl and Aldi have flooded the marketplace with cheaper (and sometimes better quality) food and produce from outside the UK. The market in the Irish famine was limited to the UK and Ireland, whereas the free market today involves food being stored and flown from many different parts of the world, bought and sold by many different companies.

Answer 3

Because the British controlled Ireland at the time, not the Irish

Answer 4

no protestants died in the famine either ethnic cleansing like in ulster they tried it in munster as well why did they hate us that much we have 2 choices europe or america

Answer 5

You know what they say about the Irish they well beat you up than take you home and nurse you back to heath

Maybe the same with food

Answer 6

Well, British people were given large estates by the British royalty who took it the Irish.

The estate owners didn't care for the Irish, just sell their cereals and they could get a better price in England.

Answer 7

it was a policy of eugenocide =eugenics+genocide

which is the policy of NWO now. i.e. to wipe out billions with famine and illness.

Answer 8

Because the government were fearful that interfering with the economy would make the situation in Ireland even worse.  The British government did not know how to deal with a large-scale famine.  Their attempts to provide relief were inadequate, but they really did not know what to do.  they thought that interfering with trade would only aggravate the situation.

Answer 9

Not only Ireland - exactly the same thing happened in India, and for the same reasons - a blind, quasi-religious belief in market forces, and a total indifference to suffering.

In fact, not so different from our neoliberal masters today.

Market systems benefit only the strong, and are the very worst social determinant possible.