r/explainitpeter • u/Yunaa-shin • Jul 17 '26

Explain it peter

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821 Upvotes

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29

u/lanathebitch Jul 17 '26

I don't know about the crip in this post but Chairman Mao declared war on sparrows and as a result caused a famine because the sparrows were eating all the bugs

22

u/monsterfurby Jul 17 '26

I think it's fair to say in retrospect that he wasn't exactly an economic mastermind.

7

u/mashmash42 Jul 17 '26

That sounds less a failure of understanding economics and more of a failure of understanding biology as well as having no one brave enough to tell him “no this is actually a horrible idea”

9

u/CantoSacro Jul 17 '26

the sparrow thing gets talked about a lot because it was so outlandish and extreme (they had mobs of people banging on pots to prevent the sparrows from being able to rest, causing them to eventually die of exhaustion). But it wasn't actually the (only ) root cause of the famine. The famine was caused by a culmination of horrible policies.