[bambataa]

I’m intrigued - how does that play out in your head? There’s a disaster causing social collapse but a free market for food remains. Demand outstrips supply so it becomes too expensive for many to buy. What do people do before they can go back to the land and sow their own food? What about areas with a lack of suitable available land (as referenced in a sister post by the potato famine)?

[steego]

I honestly didn't invest too much time playing out scenarios out in my head, rather I was mentally recalling events in modern history where we've simply allowed millions of people to starve. From a BBC article:

The scarcity, Mukherjee writes, was caused by large-scale exports of food from India for use in the war theatres and consumption in Britain - India exported more than 70,000 tonnes of rice between January and July 1943, even as the famine set in. This would have kept nearly 400,000 people alive for a full year. Mr Churchill turned down fervent pleas to export food to India citing a shortage of ships - this when shiploads of Australian wheat, for example, would pass by India to be stored for future consumption in Europe. As imports dropped, prices shot up and hoarders made a killing.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/soutikbiswas/2010/10...

I guess if I was to assume a scenario that could lead to the starvation of millions, I'd imagine a poorer country making the mistake of relying too much on some sort of electronic platform to trade and save their money. Let's say this country/region also relied too much on exporting some agricultural commodity that was being affect by a change in climate.

A catastrophic attack on their banking platform could theoretically destroy the local populations confidence in the trading currency as well as scare away foreign lenders. It may create incentives where it's more advantageous to hoard food and sell it on the international markets rather than distribute it to local customers who can't pay.

Free markets tend to create the most value in the long run. In some situations, hoarding can create incentives to distribute to underserved areas. In scenarios where the underserved areas do not have a means of payment (monetary, barter, indentured servitude, etc.), free markets and hoarding can simply be horrifyingly cruel.

What are your thoughts?

[bambataa]

Should there be some catastrophic collapse in society, I would far prefer that the government requisitioned food and rationed it out. While it’s definitely open to abuse, I think it would do a better job in the short term of keeping people alive. A free market response to a national emergency sounds dreadful to me

[steego]

I don't disagree. Most times, I would prefer the decisions of how people get the things they need are made by a network of people with incentives to provide and profit rather than central planning. However, if the situation is dire and the incentives create a deadlock, I think thought-out, extraordinary measures to help people are warranted.