Depends. If it's the Aztecs we're talking about, I'm sure they'd prefer to die of starvation in at least some cases - Aztec deities were fairly inventive as far as their sacrifices went, and at least one of them required the victim to be flayed alive, for example.

point taken. if we keep at this long enough we can end up with some utilitarian equations to trade-off the relative costs of different forms of human misery.

Yes, active involvement in situation to make it worse and lack of involvement in situation to make it better are valued in a drastically different ways in most moral systems.

Oddly enough, the people who are actually dying of starvation always seem to be located in Marxist countries rather than the evil capitalist Western countries. Just bad luck, I guess.

It's useful to your argument that you excluded the famines in Ireland and India under the British. Let alone slavery, etc.

Marx was literally a part of western civilisation.

i totally agree that there have been avoidable and horrific famines in marxist countries due to inept attempts at central management of agriculture. these days, there's also a bit of ugly conflict popping up along ethnic lines in some countries where populations are under stress for access to enough farmland for subsistence agriculture vs grazing (environmental pressure will be part of this).

i dont think there's much distinction between marxist countries and capitalist western countries when it comes towards climate change, we all love nice cheap coal and oil now.

What? Care to give examples? And where is a place you would define as Marxist in 2018?

>Care to give examples?

Sure. Soviet Famine of 1921 (5 million). Soviet Famine of 1932-33 (7-10 million minimum, perhaps many more). Soviet Famine of 1947 (1 million or so). Chinese Famine of 1959-1961 (15-43 million). Cambodian Famine of 1974-79 (2 million). Ethiopian Famine of 1984-85 (400,000). North Korean Famine of 1996 (3.5 million).

Number of famines in the capitalist west over the same time period: zero.

Note that I'm not counting food shortages caused by active or recent warfare in either case, thus neither the German "Hunger Winter" of 1946-47 (several hundred thousand) nor the Siege of Leningrad Famine of 1941-44 (about a million) are included.

> And where is a place you would define as Marxist in 2018?

Venezuela will do until something closer comes along. And sure enough, they're on the brink of famine.

You forgot the Great Bengali famine of 1943 (3 million) under British rule in India.

The British had the habit of ducking responsibility for all the famines that killed millions in India under their rule by blaming it on overpopulation. That there were no major famines after Indian independence is conveniently ignored.

> Note that I'm not counting food shortages caused by active or recent warfare in either case,

Surely the Ethiopian famine and the Cambodian famine could be disregarded if you applied this rule consistently.

And the Bengal famine is arguably something caused by a Western democracy that wasn't directly a result of the wartime conditions.

Attributing starvation in Leningrad and Eastern Germany to Marxism is a little odd too.

The op said ‘dying’ and I was referring to the use of the current tense.