Re: [PEN-L:8291] Re: Bengali famine

["Anthony D'Costa" <dcosta@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Anthony P. D'Costa
Associate Professor
Comparative International Development
University of Washington
1900 Commerce Street
Tacoma, WA 98402, USA

Phone: (253) 692-4462
Fax :  (253) 692-5612

On Thu, 24 Jun 1999, DOUG ORR wrote:

> Sam Pawlett wrote:
>
> Brad De Long wrote:
> > Your fight is with Amartya Sen--not me.
> >
> > But my strong impression is that you have lost the argument already.
> >
> > Sen is not dumb, is careful, and rarely makes mistakes...
> >
>
> He uses the most amount of footnotes I've seen too. If I remember,
> didn't Sen point out that India  was actually  exporting food during
> its famines?
> _____________________________________
> I am not sure about India, but Ireland exported food throughout the
> potatoe famine.  So you see Louis, it really is the free market at work.
> The Irish and the Indians didn't have sufficient income to make their
> "preferences" (i.e. not starving) apparent in the market place, so they
> did not receive any food.  The market efficiently allocated it to those
> with sufficient income.  Now all that stuff about the colonialist military
> setting up the landholding property rights which denied the colonists of
> any access to income, THAT occurred prior to the current market period,
> and thus is irrelevant to the current market analysis.  If you want
> to discuss that, you should be discussing political science or history,
> but not economics.  ;).
>

But this is a naive discipline-based argument, not at all unlike what
nc economists profess: if it's not part of the discipline don't explain
it.  What sort of approach is this?  Do realities come packaged in
"disciplines"?

With regard to the famines, the changing class character in India (Bengal)
did introduce the commercialization of grain trade leading to shortages.
But we also know the British were ensuring supplies for the war effort
that added to the shortages.  Would not prices be lower and affordable had
the British not diverted food grains?  We have another relevant example:
Korean exports of rice to Japan was very high when the average
Korean was barely getting enough to eat.  Was this because of the market
or was it due Japanese policy of maintaining low industrial wages in
Japan?  This is a political issue and cannot be explained away by market
logic.


> Summer's memo is neoclassical economics at its best, not its worst.
>
> Doug Orr
> dorr@xxxxxxx
>
>