No famines: The little-known side-effect of democracy

History proves conclusively that democracies almost never go to war with one another. It’s the natural result of open and accountable governments interacting with other open and accountable governments, and the phenomenon is a good reason to end all dictatorships forthwith.

Democracies also are much less likely than dictatorships to kill political dissidents and other innocent domestic outcasts. Totalitarian dictators are prone to murder by the hundreds of thousands or even the tens of millions. The bloody record of tyranny is yet another urgent reason to free the whole world.

R.J. Rummel at Democratic Peace has one more argument for a global democratic revolution:

No democratically free people have suffered from mass famine.

"It is extraordinary, how little known this is," says Rummel. "There are plenty of hunger projects and plans to increase food aid for the starving millions, all of which is good enough in the short run. A starving person will die before the people can kick out their rulers or make them reform their policies. Yet simply feeding the starving today is not enough. They also have to be fed tomorrow and every day thereafter. However, free these people from their rulers’ commands over their farming, and soon they will be able to feed themselves and others as well.

"There is an adage that applies to this: 'Give a starving person a fish to eat and you feed him only for one day; teach him how to fish, and he feeds himself forever.' Yet teaching is no good alone, if people are not free to apply their new knowledge—yes, teach them how to fish, but also promote the freedom they need to do so."

Freedom's imperative. Considering the evidence of tyranny’s pain, it’s surprising that anyone opposed the 2003 ouster of Saddam Hussein. That’s a failure of imagination. Many free people are too self-centered to imagine the pain of the oppressed.

Imagine an active liberal in Saddam's Iraq: No freedom, and soon no hand, no ear, no tongue, no food and no life.

Frank Warner

Comments

[jj mollo]

I think you have it backwards, Frank. Democracies can only form where there is a surplus, where votes cannot be bought for a piece of bread.

[Nicholas]

JJ, it's usually the local dictator who controls the supply of bread. Like in Ethiopia. As they said in Black Hawk Down, "hunger is their weapon". That's the trick with "installing" democracy, you have to deal with that sort of issue.

[Frank Warner]

JJ, democracy gives the public and private sectors strong incentives to prevent famines.

Almost every nation has a food surplus, or the means to a surplus. Only dictatorial rule allows famine.

[jj mollo]

Chicken and egg? How can you tell?

Certainly the dictators will steal whatever they can, but if you have a crippled economy like, for instance, Haiti, what are the chances that a dictator won't eventually take over simply because it's so easy to establish undue influence.

[Frank Warner]

I recall an Indian (of Asia) noting that, under British colonialism, India had famines. Since India's independence as a democracy, India has had none.

Note, too, that even during America's Great Depression, with its coincidental "Dust Bowl" agricultural disaster, there was no mass famine. There was hunger, but private business and government responded to prevent starvation on any major scale.

Ireland had famines imposed on it, despite its having enough food. Since the Republic won its freedom as an independent democracy, it has been relatively poor by Western European standards, but it has had no famine.

There is some chicken-egg argument, for certain. But when democracy is the chicken, famine is never the egg.

I particularly like Rummel's point that it is not enough to know how to fish. You must have the freedom to fish, and the freedom to adjust your techniques to various fishing holes.

Getting back to Haiti: I can't figure it out. Nations yearn for democratic freedom. For some reasons, including economics, some countries take time to become real nations.