The Irish famine was more of a result of imperial policy. It’s about genocidal states, not capitalism. I mean, yes, most of Ireland was owned by landlords residing elsewhere, and “protection” of their rights was one of the reasons, but there were also things quite obviously showing the intent, like widespread destruction of church records and local history.
It can both be about profit and genocide. They can exist at the same time. IOW, genocide can be profitable.
There really was a motive, if you wish, to use the land freed by expelled (or dead) tenants for something else.
I just don’t like blaming things on markets and profit motives and capitalism in general, because “tit for tat” in human interactions is not something you can just replace ideologically. It’s in our nature. The sane approach is to make it work in less catastrophic ways, like with sports and video games and martial arts and adult entertainment.
I think profit and power, or the lack thereof, can be the root of a lot of these awful human traits. It can just be straight up greed driven by a few looking to gain power and/or money that push an agenda of [insert tried and true bogeymen here like xenophobia, religion, racism, etc.] to create motives and instabity to trigger the wars. It could be genuine problems like economic issues or severe agricultural deficiency, via real misfortune or more likely due to greed, corruption, and mismanagement by the country’s leadership. Even religion can be the rationalization, a tit-for-tat, but nonetheless the end result is to take what the enemy has. It doesn’t have to be formalized markets or capitalism.
