“Sleepy, What I was inplying was that capitalism and democracy go hand in hand. India under British didn’t have either. Britian did, but only in rather primitive forms.”

lol. hardly. Great Britain had one of the highest developed forms of capitalism in the Imperial Age. What it lacked was the influence of socialism that the libertarians would say “tainted” social democracy and the free market economy of New Zealand since the Liberal government of the 1880s-90s.

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never been a famine in any country that’s been a democracy with a relatively free press. Assuming that’s true, that would indicate that democracies are more fleet-footed responding to crises than other forms of government?

or it could mean that such countries had constitutional protections against the sort of rash action which can lead to those problems in the first place?
more research would be required if we are to draw any conclusions.

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> If you define famine as large scale starvation through lack of accesable affordable food then Sri Lanka, a democracy, is there today!

If you define it that way, there is. It’s important to distinguish between famine, which is epidemic hunger, and endemic food shortages that lead to malnutrition but not mass starvation. The former does not happen in democracies (though it may happen in colonies of democracies), but the latter happens just as much in democracies as in dictatorships (once you adjust for wealth levels).

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so you haven’t read Grapes of Wrath? Not to mention the fact that under British (free-trade) colonialist rule, 20 million Indians starved to death. According to a British statistician, in the two millennia prior to 1800, there was one major famine a century in India. Under British rule there was one every four years. Not to mention the Irish potato famine where Ireland at the time was a net EXPORTER of food.

Both Ethiopa and Malawi were encouraged by international “development” agencies to remove supports and subsidies to their small farmers prior to their famines in a bid to “liberalise” their agricultural system. .

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I recall reading a study that compared India and China, and concluded that the free press in India had effectively prevented famines by embarrasing the government into acting. But it also concluded that China had succeeded in getting rid of endemic malnutrition, while this problem continued in India because the media ignored it because it wasn’t news (if it’s always the same people starving, it’s not news).

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The word missing is “yet”.

If the die-off doomers are right, there will be lots of democracies with relatively free press that will experience famine.

I think his observation is more along the lines that relatively rich countries have lots of food, and can afford to be democracies and can afford a relatively free press. When your main concern is where your next bowl of rice is coming from, which is typical of places that today experience famine, you are less inclined to worry about how democratic your government is, nor to you get to see the results of the press, be it free or otherwise.

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But now we’re well off track on this thread, sorry.

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Personally I think democracies tend to act with more urgency and concern for future generations than non-democratic monarchies, but that’s obviously just an impression, rather than something I could back up.

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what is a “democratic” political issue as compared with any other political issue?

if it is an issue in which a temporary majority might override the rights of all mankind for now & the future, is it a “democratic” issue, or one in which any constitutional means to delay change & promote further reflection before taking irrevocable steps, including monarchy, would be welcome?

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