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Comment by ddxxdd | Hacker News Reader

Hmmm. If only there was a way to incentivize food producers to produce more food while disincentivizing consumers from buying too much food. Something like what economists refer to as a "price", that can be raised during shortages in order to bring the markets to equilibrium.

But enough about economic theory. Let's continue to wag our fingers at the hoarders and profiteers while continuing to prosecute price gougers.

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There is no need for such facetious argument.

Your post is strikingly similar to a modern “let them eat cake”.

What does your idea of economic theory suggest for the masses living paycheck to paycheck due to ever increasing wealth inequality as capital begets capital, facing loss of income due to the virus?

Should they be priced out of buying food so that the rich and privileged can continue to do as they please?

Some supermarkets in Scandinavia have come up with the perfect solution to this. They implemented "anti-sales" on their POS systems, where each additional item from the same line gets more expensive, disincentivizing hoarders.

Doesn’t this also mean people need to go to the grocery store more often? Surely this is not safe.

Not safe from what?

You're talking about the system as though it hasn't been providing people with cake for 150 years. Living paycheck to paycheck is not new. Using markets to distribute food prevents those people from starving by making it worthwhile to create more food.

If people can't afford food, give them more money and let prices rise. This lets them eat and makes the hoarders pay the true cost of their hoarding.

As long as people actually get more money, then I'm okay with prices rising.

I'm living on my savings, so no, I'm not ok with prices rising.

Inflation is just theft from savers.

Oh, you mean rationing. If it comes down to price I can starve 20 poor people around me with my income. Not a good solution.

You could have attempted to starve 20 poor people with your income at any time. It works only if your increased demand does not bring any additional food onto the market. This is why we need prices to rise -- we need people to notice "Someone is buying 20 people's worth of food, so demand is now 40 instead of 20, so we can finally make money by (selling our stockpile/reducing wasteful consumption/not producing ethanol/building a greenhouse)".

>You could have attempted to starve 20 poor people with your income at any time

We starve people on this planet all the time with more than enough available resources.

The problem now is unbalanced distribution that will take some amount of time to sort out no matter how much money is thrown at it. The US eats out a huge number of their meals. That has pretty much collapsed in the past week and now something like 30-40% of the food distribution market has been upset. The people in the restaurant food distribution market want to sell their food, the problem is without guidance from anybody it will take some time for this to occur.

Thinking that making more money fixes all problems is a definition of insanity.

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