Penn Jillette's counterintuitive commentary

[Meadmaker]

The landowners were the British and British appointed nobility.

Well, sort of. Following O'Neil's defeat in 1603, the plantation policy did exactly this, and this sort of policy continued will into the 18th century. So, the British, through government action, became holders of the land.

However, at some point, and I confess I do not know at what point that was, the landowners ceased to hold their land as a fief from the Crown. They became hereditary landowners with property rights. Their land was private property that was inherited from their distant ancestors. Had they wished to sell it, they could have done so. Had they wished to give it away, they could have done so. Had they wished to allow their tenants to live and/or farm for free, they could have done so.

Likewise with the produce of the land. Had they wished to use it feed starving Irish people, they could have done so. Had they wished to sell it to English people, they could have done so. Since English people tended to have money, that was, generally, their desire.

So, of course, when the stage was set in Elizabethan times, and the land was given to the English lords, that was government interference. However, in the 19th century, when that particular famine actually occurred, the system was dominated by commerce.

I did do a bit of reading on this last night. Of course, things weren't a total free market system. It was that evil, bastardized, free market system that was mentioned before, the one that inevitably develops. However, the rhetoric employed by British policymakers could have been written by Republican strategists. They said the starving people were starving through their own failings. They upheld property rights. They worried that any aid to Ireland would create dependency. When one person came to the British Prime Minister to plead the case, the PM actually picked up Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations", and read from it to support his position.

The rents were the result of the British confiscating all the land.

To emphasize, this is certainly true, but it was confiscated 100 years (or more) earlier. By the time 1847 rolled around, the confiscators were fertilizing the land, not stealing it.

 

[Beerina]

Seems to me like you are guilty of the fallacy of the excluded middle. Is there any choice somewhere in between laissez faire capitalism and socialism or fascism? (I am assuming that your use of i.e. was a deliberate attempt to equate massively regulated capitalism and socialism.)

Oh, I acknowledge the existence of "in-between". Modern elective politics is essentially the story of how much intrusive power the government can attain vs. getting kicked out of office for slowing down the economy too much. People do want to stay alive, after all, and will work to put food in their mouths, no matter how many they carry on their backs like a pack mule.


Of course, the real issue isn't a handful of regulations, good or otherwise, which "work" or otherwise. It's the way out of control spending and taxing that's the point here, which exceeds any "reasonable" regulation and taxation by several orders of magnitude.

 

[Beerina]

You might want to retake a look at that history.

We did. That's how we got to this position.

Allowing the ownership of slaves was an abrogation of government in doing its duty to secure inalienable rights for all. Yes, it derived from historical precedent, but had to take on an aura of dehumanization of the slaves as a "workaround" to the irritating Western philosophical development that owning your fellow man was wrong in and of itself. Since they were 2/3 a man or whatever, then it was OK again. Previously, if your city-state lost the war, you were killed or enslaved, and that was your new lot in life, end of story. No racism involved.


So, in that context, the powers that be who profited from slavery helped build up bigotry in the common yokel for the purpose of maintaining power via elections. Remember that after the US Civil War, the blacks in the south started electing people left and right, and it took 30 years for a whole new level of bigotry to be built up in the yokels so racist segregationist laws could be created and so on, to thwart this. Again, government abandoning its duty rather than upholding it.

Abandoning it, if you believe the purpose of government is to secure inalienable rights. But many around here believe in Vox Populi, Vox Dei, so rights exist only insofar as they don't stand in the way of The People and their demagogist leaders.

 

[GreyICE]

Well, sort of. Following O'Neil's defeat in 1603, the plantation policy did exactly this, and this sort of policy continued will into the 18th century. So, the British, through government action, became holders of the land.

However, at some point, and I confess I do not know at what point that was, the landowners ceased to hold their land as a fief from the Crown. They became hereditary landowners with property rights. Their land was private property that was inherited from their distant ancestors. Had they wished to sell it, they could have done so. Had they wished to give it away, they could have done so. Had they wished to allow their tenants to live and/or farm for free, they could have done so.

Likewise with the produce of the land. Had they wished to use it feed starving Irish people, they could have done so. Had they wished to sell it to English people, they could have done so. Since English people tended to have money, that was, generally, their desire.

So, of course, when the stage was set in Elizabethan times, and the land was given to the English lords, that was government interference. However, in the 19th century, when that particular famine actually occurred, the system was dominated by commerce.

I did do a bit of reading on this last night. Of course, things weren't a total free market system. It was that evil, bastardized, free market system that was mentioned before, the one that inevitably develops. However, the rhetoric employed by British policymakers could have been written by Republican strategists. They said the starving people were starving through their own failings. They upheld property rights. They worried that any aid to Ireland would create dependency. When one person came to the British Prime Minister to plead the case, the PM actually picked up Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations", and read from it to support his position.

To emphasize, this is certainly true, but it was confiscated 100 years (or more) earlier. By the time 1847 rolled around, the confiscators were fertilizing the land, not stealing it.

Oh certainly the rhetoric was pure Adam Smith - it's their own fault, it's their own failings. What we hear about people on welfare nowadays basically from the same morons, and they haven't gotten any smarter.

If you wanted to argue the rhetoric was the same, I'd agree. But look at the landowners locality - they were British. Most visited Ireland at best semi-frequently, and were part of British society. They were mixed with British nobility.

Sure they argued that the Irish were doing it to themselves. But when their ships were blockading Irish ports to prevent foreigners from offering food and assistance - that's not free markets.

 

[Meadmaker]

Oh certainly the rhetoric was pure Adam Smith - it's their own fault, it's their own failings. What we hear about people on welfare nowadays basically from the same morons, and they haven't gotten any smarter.

If you wanted to argue the rhetoric was the same, I'd agree. But look at the landowners locality - they were British. Most visited Ireland at best semi-frequently, and were part of British society. They were mixed with British nobility.

Sure they argued that the Irish were doing it to themselves. But when their ships were blockading Irish ports to prevent foreigners from offering food and assistance - that's not free markets.

I don't know anything about the blockade of Irish ports, and some quick googling didn't reveal anything, either, except passing comments in forums. I would like to know more about it. I'll bet that somehow the powers that be justified it using some sort of pro-business rhetoric, though.

And that was the point of this digression. If you count on the "free market" to make everyone prosperous, you won't get there. I noted that the market can't really be free if someone controls all the food. Someone else said that was an impossible example, and I noted that in fact, it has happened quite a bit. In the 19th century, English commercial interests dominated the Irish food supply, and were perfectly happy to let the Irish starve, and all the time they hailed the wisdom of the free market. Never mind that, in any real sense, the market was anything but free. However, it was free in the sense that the owners were free to do pretty much whatever they wanted with their property.

 

[GreyICE]

I don't know anything about the blockade of Irish ports, and some quick googling didn't reveal anything, either, except passing comments in forums. I would like to know more about it. I'll bet that somehow the powers that be justified it using some sort of pro-business rhetoric, though.

And that was the point of this digression. If you count on the "free market" to make everyone prosperous, you won't get there. I noted that the market can't really be free if someone controls all the food. Someone else said that was an impossible example, and I noted that in fact, it has happened quite a bit. In the 19th century, English commercial interests dominated the Irish food supply, and were perfectly happy to let the Irish starve, and all the time they hailed the wisdom of the free market. Never mind that, in any real sense, the market was anything but free. However, it was free in the sense that the owners were free to do pretty much whatever they wanted with their property.

The internet is such a very terrible source for this (most is in books) but here's a source that generally describes it.

http://www.khilafah.com/index.php/t...fah-aided-the-irish-during-the-famine-of-1845



It's missing a few details, but it's basically the story.

Note that the Internet still remains a terrible place for history, it's very much a creature of the now.

 

[mhaze]

Pretty gruesome, but here are some of the old newspapers.

http://adminstaff.vassar.edu/sttaylor/FAMINE/Examiner/

Excerpts.

Time will soon show that, whatever be their intentions, the conduct of Government officials will produce ruin and destruction in the country. There seems to be no concern about "deaths by starvation," at all.

An extensive agent here has gone to Liverpool, with the view of chartering ten large vessels to take out upwards of 1,300 families which are about leaving one estate in Ireland-- partly at the expense of their landlord,

SIR,-- I beg leave to call the attention of the local authorities to the fact that there is at present an immense quantity of Indian Corn stored in Cork, in such condition as must eventuate in total loss to the parties concerned. .... Is there no power vested in some responsible party to look into this matter and prevent this wholesale destruction?