Government contracting is a grift with a long, long history. I bet if you travelled back in time to ancient Egypt, you’d find military leaders overcharging the pharaohs for security services.

Seconding Winboat, works great for the one piece of software I have that is stuck on Windows. At this point I am 100% not going back, I even wiped my Windows disk. That drive is for trying out other distros now.

The reality is that China was completely devastated after the war, and rebuilding was not an easy process.

Yeah, not buying that argument at all. Practically every country was devastated after the war, China’s hardly unique in that regard. Why would it take fifteen full years for China’s postwar woes to culminate in an acute famine? Makes no logical sense, and stinks of excuse-making.

The paper I linked shows that the policies proved to be correct on the whole, and life expectancy increased dramatically as a result.

Mao wanted to reform China, and tens of million of deaths was the price he was willing to pay. It’s a lot easier to make great strides when you don’t give a fuck about your own people. I’ll reserve my admiration for leaders who manage the feat without inflicting untold human misery on the their own citizens.

The graphs in the paper you linked show a big spike in mortality around 1960. The Great Chinese Famine was 1959 to 1961. How does Mao get credit for lower mortality in 1962 onward, but not receive blame for the famine years?