3.5 The Irish Potato Famine

You are a local official writing a letter to the capital city. You report that people in your village are dying. You ask the government to send emergency grain and to pass a law stopping local landlords from evicting starving tenants. The government writes back and says, "We believe in 'Laissez-Faire.' If we give out free food, it will make the people lazy and ruin the local economy. The market will eventually fix itself. Do not interfere." Meanwhile, you watch ships filled with oats sail out of the harbor headed for wealthy customers in London.

You are a small-scale farmer in the year 1845. You wake up and walk out to your fields. Instead of the healthy green leaves of your potato plants, you smell a strange, rotting odor. You dig into the soil and find that every single potato has turned into a mushy, black, inedible liquid. There is no "back-up" crop because the land you rent is too small to grow anything else.

You are a dockworker living in a city during a famine. You walk past the local market. The shelves are actually full of bread, meat, and imported grain. However, because the crops in the countryside failed, the price of one loaf of bread has increased by 500%. You haven't been paid in two weeks because the economy is crashing. You stand 5 feet away from a pile of food, but you haven't eaten in three days because you don't have a single coin.