I’m saying that because government uses violence to enforce propertly rights and picks winners and losers, props up large corporations and instead its job should be to consistently impose costs on them for negative externalities. Which it does to some extent, but not nearly enough.

As far as the potato famine, and bengal famines, they were exacerbated exactly by state policies favoring corporations and landlords. People have handled natural blights before, without such disastrous results as 15% of the country dying.

Practically everything in this wikipedia article discusses it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland)#Landlor...

The ability of middlemen was measured by the rent income they could contrive to extract from tenants.[34] They were described in evidence before the commission as "land sharks", "bloodsuckers", and "the most oppressive species of tyrant that ever lent assistance to the destruction of a country".[34] The middlemen leased large tracts of land from the landlords on long leases with fixed rents, which they sublet as they saw fit. They would split a holding into smaller and smaller parcels so as to increase the amount of rent they could obtain. Tenants could be evicted for reasons such as non-payment of rents (which were high), or a landlord's decision to raise sheep instead of grain crops. A cottier paid his rent by working for the landlord while the spalpeen, an itinerant labourer, paid his short-term lease through temporary day work.[39][40]

As any improvement made on a holding by a tenant became the property of the landlord when the lease expired or was terminated, the incentive to make improvements was limited. Most tenants had no security of tenure on the land; as tenants "at will", they could be turned out whenever the landlord chose. The only exception to this arrangement was in Ulster where, under a practice known as "tenant right", a tenant was compensated for any improvement they made to their holding. According to Woodham-Smith, the commission stated that "the superior prosperity and tranquillity of Ulster, compared with the rest of Ireland, were due to tenant right".[34]

Landlords in Ireland often used their powers without compunction, and tenants lived in dread of them. Woodham-Smith writes that, in these circumstances, "industry and enterprise were extinguished and a peasantry created which was one of the most destitute in Europe".[36]

When the famine happened, the Irish government and the British crown chose to enforce and double down on protections for this class of landowner. And there is more too, in other sections. All the actions of the government that exacerbated this famine were as explicitly in favor of landlords and corporations and private property, as to be as much Capitalist as holodomor’s collectivization actions were Socialist.

Each government reacted in a tone deaf way to the plight of the actual peasants and farmers, one with doubling down on capitalism, the other on collectivism.

Also see the role of the British in protecting their East India company in 1700s, and in requisitioning grain for England amid a famine in 1990s…

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943

* The Company provided little meaningful mitigation — there was no reduction in taxation or any significant relief effort.[33][38]

In October 1769, the Company requested that storehouses be constructed in Patna and Murshidabad; city officials were instructed to prevent monopoly of trade and have farmers raise "every sort" of dry grain, that was possible. The orders were largely unsuccessful; many Company officials along with their Indian assistants (Gomasthas) would exploit the famine to create grain-monopolies.[33]*

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943

Once again, you can see the elements here (people selling off their lands to survive, enforcing the private property system) to have exacerbated the crisis by a lot. Many people consider it a man-made famine but certainly NOTHING about the way it happened was due to collectivism. Quite the opposite, in fact, it was every man for himself, and the British also taking their food in the meantime. Churchill’s role:

https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/29/winston-church...