Every country that tried having the government run food production produced starvation.
Those goalposts were just fine where they were, put them back and address the actual argument. Nobody was advocating for 'government run food production'.
Pleasing the customer is not always good for the customer. I'm sure nicotine addicts get a lot of pleasure from smoking a pack a day. In fact i think that is still Newport's slogan.
Plus your quip is a little bit dated honestly. The soviets had famines because they literally didn't support evolution for quite some time. They believed Lysenko and allowed him to execute his critics. Meanwhile today, look at China the past few decades when modern agricultural practices were finally well established around the world. Another 600 million people in 50 years. Huge population growth doesn't happen because of starvation.
> Pleasing the customer is not always good for the customer.
Ah, the arrogance of knowing what is best for others. (Of course, I know what's best for everyone else, too, but my arrogance stops at taking the next step of being entitled to force it on them.)
> The soviets
You can make excuses for the Soviets. But you gotta explain the starvation from every other communist country. The starvation in Jamestown when they tried communist agriculture. The starvation in the Pilgrims' first year when they tried communist food production. The failure of the Kibbutzen in Israel to feed themselves without government subsidy.
It goes on and on.
P.S. China stopped starving when the stopped collectivist agriculture.
Now for the flip side. Which was the first country to eliminate famine? The US, around 1800, with free market agriculture. Next, which free market agricultural system has suffered from a famine?
Every country that tried having the government run food production produced starvation.
Every one.
> The goal of the capitalist isn't to make their customer happy, its to extract as much of their available disposable income as possible.
True, but the way to get that money is to please the customer, because the company cannot force them to buy.