The politics of hunger

The Politics of Hunger:

If a few giant, state-subsidized and -protected farms, and wholesalers, and retailers can unilaterally command supply, they can demand in payment whatever capricious price they determine. This propensity — ever more cartelized industry with ever fewer “competitors” — is endemic to state capitalism, but it is not a feature of genuine free markets.

Free markets, on the contrary, divide and moderate market power by denying special protection and privilege and opening competition to a wide assortment of both entrants and methods. Only where potential threats to corporate monopolization are precluded by force of law — through, among other impediments, “safety” and “consumer protection” standards — can today’s “captains of industry” ascend to market dominance.

Rather than painting some utopian paradise, market anarchists argue that, without state-created scarcities for rich rent-seekers, people around the world be able to provide good food for their families with a fraction of their labor today. We can look to elite members of the political class to “fix” a problem that they created, or we can allow cooperation and genuine free trade on a human scale to fulfill people’s needs.

We’ve seen the way that political solutions work. Now it’s time for society to get out from under the stranglehold of the state.