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Government offices are closed today because of Thanksgiving, so what's the answer?

In the book "Tombstone" (the book by the author in the OP), the author reiterates the claim that no democracy has ever suffered from a major famine, but are you asserting an equivalency?

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/14/opinion/chinas-great-shame...

> The reason is political: a full exposure of the Great Famine could undermine the legitimacy of a ruling party that clings to the political legacy of Mao, even though that legacy, a totalitarian Communist system, was the root cause of the famine. As the economist Amartya Sen has observed, no major famine has ever occurred in a democracy.




If you read Amartya Sen's work on the Bengali famine, it is clear that imperialist democratic countries can cause famines in their colonies.


According to Wikipedia, it seems to be a perfect storm of incompetence, weather and (understandable) preoccupation with WW II.

Also, your reference doesn't fare to good there.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943


I believe the potato famine would count as a famine occurring in a democracy.


Ireland under UK rule was hardly a democracy.


Pretty much all famine are caused by government policies.




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