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Killing sparrows led to famines in China

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Re: Killing sparrows led to famines in China

#41

Post by throwawaymaths »

kevviiinn wrote: post #26
zabzonk wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

who else would you blame it on? communist, centralised states are reknown for causing these kinds of problems - look at the ussr in the 1920s and 30s.

So the ideas of communism is what cause people to kill off sparrows or was it just bad information and bad/incomplete research on what role sparrows played

It's communism (or more specifically, Marxism). This sort of outcome was predicted by Benjamin Tucker as an inevitable consequence of Marxist socialism in 1888, essay: "state socialism and anarchism", long before any implementation of Marxism came to being

Re: Killing sparrows led to famines in China

#42

Post by kelseyfrog »

alfor wrote: post #17

Another example of the peril of central planning and total authority. Make me think of the climate change orthodoxy were we focus solely on co2 and forget about all the other human problems.

On the other side of the coin is the anarchy of thought that exists around COVID. It's almost like humans societies are a complex series of trade offs irreducible to the simplicities of total authority or total anarchy.

Re: Killing sparrows led to famines in China

#43

Post by throwawaymaths »

abudabi123 wrote: post #8

How does the targetting of the sparrow species for annihilation in China compare to the post-Columbus ongoing deforestation in the Americas's? Xi does have the ecological health of the environment on his policy priority list which is a change from previous leadership driven by slavery to economic devop. There are documentaries on little birds by the sea. They have their place.

> Xi does have the ecological health of the environment on his policy priority list

And as a consequence of this policy, how many new coal power plants has china opened?

https://energyandcleanair.org/publication/china-permits-two-....

Re: Killing sparrows led to famines in China

#44

Post by nawgz »

hintymad wrote: post #21

And whoever publicly even doubted the decision of Mao was labeled as right-wing who spread misinformation, or counter-revolutionaries who sabotaged the great socialism movement. Maybe there is some truth in the question: who's the arbiter of information?

That sounds like an unfalsifiable claim. Do you have any evidence supporting it, or are you "just asking questions"?

Edit: I deserve to have been downvoted, I have misinterpreted the context of "right" in the parent post and they have educated me with articles in turn

Re: Killing sparrows led to famines in China

#45

Post by revelio »

kevviiinn wrote: post #26
zabzonk wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

who else would you blame it on? communist, centralised states are reknown for causing these kinds of problems - look at the ussr in the 1920s and 30s.

So the ideas of communism is what cause people to kill off sparrows or was it just bad information and bad/incomplete research on what role sparrows played

Killing off sparrows is only one example of crazy/random/destructive policies that are a regular occurrence under communism. Some others (not in any order):

- The USSR sometimes overproduced cigarettes, so ran ad campaigns to convince people to start smoking.

- The Holomodor, in which Ukraine was starved by exporting (stealing) all its grain, including the grain needed to plant next season's harvest, and when starving peasants tried to flee they were then banned from leaving.

- In modern China, ghost cities full of buildings nobody is living in.

- Stalin's mass execution of basically everyone who mattered in Soviet society, including virtually all of his military and intelligence leaders, which put the USSR into such a weakened state that Hitler is on record as saying now is the time to strike because the Soviets will never be so weak again.

- The single-minded obsession with steel production.

- In NK the government maintains a list of approved hair cuts. There are 28 approved styles and anyone with a haircut that's not on the list will be punished. Additionally, punishment for crimes are often levelled against the families of the criminals.

It's inevitable that these sorts of things happen because the goals of communism are deeply unnatural (e.g. banning markets, central planning) and can therefore only be implemented through totalitarian power, which lacks sufficient bandwidth and flexibility to incorporate feedback loops. So everything goes off the rails because the people making decisions are blinded to the outcomes.

Re: Killing sparrows led to famines in China

#46

Post by PicassoCTs »

This article has the causality inverted.

The sparrows were just a sideshow to distract from the famines cause.

Most famines were caused by the culture of face and the nature of the party. The party dictated a plan, and as failing the plan and making the great leader loose face, ment the local governments loosing face would get them Maos wrath, all the members of the party reported success when it came to harvests.

So Mao collected the surplus and sold it to the soviet union, who he with his inferiority complex wanted to impress. After that, starvation raged, and he knew. They all know, but feign to not know, to keep face. Instead, superficial measures are taken.

Like hunting scapegoats, spreading crude conspiracy theories inside the country, or hunting harmless sparrows. Busy work to detract from the actual cause. And nothing was learned from this, cultural change was avoided and now its time to go full circle.

Re: Killing sparrows led to famines in China

#47

Post by azemetre »

nawgz wrote: post #44
hintymad wrote: post #21

And whoever publicly even doubted the decision of Mao was labeled as right-wing who spread misinformation, or counter-revolutionaries who sabotaged the great socialism movement. Maybe there is some truth in the question: who's the arbiter of information?

That sounds like an unfalsifiable claim. Do you have any evidence supporting it, or are you "just asking questions"? Edit: I deserve to have been downvoted, I have misinterpreted the context of "right" in the parent post and they have educated me with articles in turn

I mean struggle sessions were a real thing. [1] Suppose it's hard to say that any particular person was forced into a struggle session for saying that killing sparrows was wrong, but they were absolutely a thing and mostly used to quell dissent and spread Maoism.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struggle_session

Re: Killing sparrows led to famines in China

#48

Post by revelio »

nawgz wrote: post #44
hintymad wrote: post #21

And whoever publicly even doubted the decision of Mao was labeled as right-wing who spread misinformation, or counter-revolutionaries who sabotaged the great socialism movement. Maybe there is some truth in the question: who's the arbiter of information?

That sounds like an unfalsifiable claim. Do you have any evidence supporting it, or are you "just asking questions"? Edit: I deserve to have been downvoted, I have misinterpreted the context of "right" in the parent post and they have educated me with articles in turn

History books? The evidence is abundant, it's weird that this is even in dispute. Not sure what the Chinese term was but the Soviets used the word "bourgeoisie" or sometimes "kulaks" where today we would say right wing/capitalists, and they used пропаганда (propaganda) for what today we would call misinformation. And counter-revolutionaries were just counter-revolutionaries, no change there.

The only bit about hintymad's claim that's false is that the people who publicly doubted Mao weren't labelled as things. They were just executed.

Re: Killing sparrows led to famines in China

#49

Post by ashwagary »

kevviiinn wrote: post #26
zabzonk wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

who else would you blame it on? communist, centralised states are reknown for causing these kinds of problems - look at the ussr in the 1920s and 30s.

So the ideas of communism is what cause people to kill off sparrows or was it just bad information and bad/incomplete research on what role sparrows played

>So the ideas of communism is what cause people to kill off sparrows or was it just bad information and bad/incomplete research on what role sparrows played

We can try this framing in another 100 yr drought scenario and see what gets blamed.

"So the ideas of capitalism is what caused the Dust Bowl or was it just bad information and bad/incomplete research on what role grass/trees played when creating vast plots of dry overplowed land"

Re: Killing sparrows led to famines in China

#50

Post by fdye »

zabzonk wrote: post #16
kevviiinn wrote: post #6

I find it rather strange that people tend to blame the famine on communism and central planning

who else would you blame it on? communist, centralised states are reknown for causing these kinds of problems - look at the ussr in the 1920s and 30s.

So I think its fair to say the USSR, China, Cuba, North Kora were a form of communism that had the following characteristics. 1. Authoritarian 2. Central planning (perhaps the same thing) 3. Slow to change These are all valid criticisms based on what we know from history, etc. I think there is a bit of nuance here though based on a glance of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_famines and some basic history. 1. China did experience some horrible famines, particularly the '59-'61. However, they had experienced these, ~20years+/- 10 years, since at least the 1800s, perhaps 1700. That is well into royal rule prior to the revolution. Particularly the 1810, 1811, 1846, and 1849 (Four famines, ~45Mil dead). Just saying, objectively, not sure the average peasant was more or less likely to experience a famine under the royal rule or communism. 2. Russia and the surrounding neighbors that were consumed by the USSR, seem to have a similar story. The Tsar's in particular were not very good at economics, logistics, or resource management. 3. Post WWII cold war meant virtually every communist country was isolated and sort of by definition a centralized state. They were locked out of the emerging reserve currency (Dollar). They could not freely go to market with their goods. As well as they were all sort of frenemies of each other (see relationship between Korea, China, and USSR for examples).

Look I'm no great lover of communism, I sat through the same U.S. history classes in the 80's-90's, saw the wall fall on TV, etc. That said I think the one thing no one acknowledges is that people don't start revolutions and try out radical types of government because their lives are going just swell! Shit maybe its to much Civ as a kid, but I think its important to be honest about the pluses and minuses of government and the specifics of the people, region, and time period that these changes occur.

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