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The New Miracle of the Loaves

2019-05-28 1 Comment

Say there are 10 loaves of bread, and 20 hungry people. What is a fair way to distribute the loaves?

Answer however you want, and it will be the wrong answer. Wrong, because the question is wrong. Distribute how you will, but then ask yourself, what happens the next day, after the loaves are eaten and gone?

Distribution is not really the interesting problem. Any idiot can distribute loaves of bread (In Venezuela an idiot essentially did). The harder part is encouraging a system where loaves of bread are created, today, tomorrow and the next day.

Teach a society how to redistribute loaves and we’ll all eat for a day. Teach them about exchange and trade for mutual benefit, investment, employment, division of labor and comparative advantage—in other words free market capitalism—and they will eat all the days of their lives.

Filed Under: Economics

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Comments

  1. Bob says

    2019-11-30 at 4:33 pm

    So much disagreement, so much infighting, simply because we ask the wrong questions.

    Found this on Quora, and sniffed out the wrong question before the hint! Thank you for what you do!

    Reply

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