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Cake day: June 24th, 2023

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  • ChonkyOwlbear@lemmy.worldtoCommunism@lemmy.mlProtestation
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    2 days ago

    That death toll also includes China who also used Lysenko’s fake farming techniques. Russia didn’t want to admit their plan wasn’t working and China didn’t want to admit they were failing using the method that supposedly worked so well in Russia. Farmers reporting low crop yields in both countries were blamed and accused of hiding food for themselves. The deaths definitely fall on a lot of shoulders, but at its heart was Lyselko convincing the government to use his plan with false data and continuing that lie even after he knew it wasn’t working.




  • ChonkyOwlbear@lemmy.worldtoCommunism@lemmy.mlProtestation
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    2 days ago

    I just got done listening to an old Behind the Bastards about Trofim Lysenko who was a Soviet scientist whose job it was to increase crop yield. He ignored Darwinian evolution in favor of a type of Lamarckian evolution that fit better with Stalin’s politics. This involved planting massive amounts of seeds per acre with the idea that the seeds would help each other grow better. He falsified his data to show that this worked and in the long run led to the starvation of 30 million people.

    I don’t mean to criticize communism by mentioning this. Certainly capitalism has shown the same adherence to ideology in spite of evidence with climate change. I just think it was an interesting bit of history in light of the post which is actually good agricultural science they also fits with collectivist thought.






  • You make a good point, but think of it this way. Someone Googles “tips on buying a new laptop”. Companies enrolled with the Google program bump up their prices for that user. But what about websites not enrolled in the program? Their prices stay lower, so if the person buying the laptop ships around even a little bit, they will likely buy from one of the non-affiliated sites.

    It only works if the whole marketplace is under the system. Amazon is a shopping experience tailored to keep people inside their system, so it works with them. You aren’t going to take the time to price match across multiple websites for a pair of socks. I think it is a lot harder to manipulate prices with big-ticket items, where people will put in the effort to shop around.