this post was submitted on 02 Jan 2024
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Multiply how many people die of starvation or malnutrition a year by 29 (the length of Stalin's reign) and you'll see that I'm right.
Just because the two Soviet famines were faster and got more press doesn't mean they killed more people over a 29 year period than the US "food is for profits and poor people are for exploiting" politics.
I find it very, very hard to believe that there could be two catastrophic famines in the SSSR, and yet that there were no deaths or food issues outside of those two periods (there absolutely were). I only used them as examples, not as a list of all food issues in the Union, while you're implying the latter.
I take it you mean in the US? Ok, let's see.
https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2023-04-13/deaths-from-malnutrition-have-more-than-doubled-in-the-u-s
Let's take the second, significantly bigger number, for the sake of the argument. If the number of malnutrition deaths is multiplied by Stalin's reign, it gets us 595k deaths. At the time, SSSR had (very roughly) half the population of current USA, so to keep the numbers proportional and meaningful to compare, we should halve the US deaths: 300k. Stalin did not actually rule during the first famine I linked, only the second one. The second famine killed at least 5.7 million people (again, taking the lower number, in favour of your position).
300k is clearly a smaller number than 5.7 mil. Since the numbers are only relative, we should judge by the ratio: the 1930-1933 famine was 19 times worse death-wise than the current food issues in the USA.
If you have some different, better numbers (though I tried to pick those that are in favour in your claim), or if I miscalculated something, let me know.
TIL Stalin was slightly worse than Biden
Forgive me for the rather mechanical, utilitarianist formulation, but do you honestly think killing 19 people is merely "slightly worse" than killing 1 person?