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From: renner@uiucdcs.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: More Joy of Starvation - (nf)
Message-ID: <5182@uiucdcs.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 27-Jan-84 22:27:27 EST
Article-I.D.: uiucdcs.5182
Posted: Fri Jan 27 22:27:27 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 31-Jan-84 02:41:55 EST
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#R:ihuxl:-85800:uiucdcs:29200065:000:1575
uiucdcs!renner    Jan 27 10:46:00 1984

I just finished reading Phil Polli's latest "contribution" to the discussion
on the "joys of starvation."  He flames *me* for something that rabbit!jj
wrote!  Amazing.  I would like to bash his brains out.  Not in anger, for I
feel none.  Not in anger, but merely to *see*.  That is all. [1]

I have already responded to all of the points, such as they are, in Polli's
previous article.  This new one contains only one thing new, a reference to
Stalin, starvation, and the Ukraine.  Stalin *took* food from the farmers
and exported it.  (This is the only instance I have found of mass starvation
when there was sufficient food; it occured under a system where the
government decided who "needed" food.)[2]  Obviously, Polli's analogy doesn't
hold up.

On to a different topic.  Some people have written in favor of food shipments
to impoverished countries in times of disaster, not as a general, continuing
policy.  I think this is an excellent idea, but it is important to remember
that it will not *solve* anything.  Many places grow enough food on the
average, but don't know how to store extra food from the good years in order
to eat during the bad years.  To solve this problem, we need to teach them
ways to store food and to keep rats from eating it.  Sending food may be
emotionally satisfying, but if we do nothing else, we only perpetuate the
problem.

Scott Renner
{ihnp4,pur-ee}!uiucdcs!renner

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[1] Mark Twain wrote this, of course.  Wish I had thought of it myself.
[2] David Freedman, The Machinery of Freedom.