7 March

Rationing went on for about a decade during WW2 and more than 5 years after it (nearly 10 years in the UK). It’s an interesting system in the era of toilet paper hysteria. For example, supermarkets limiting the number of items somebody can buy doesn’t really work, because it doesn’t stop the same person or their family making repeat trips to the same shop. Rationing knew that, it prevented it. Not saying we need rationing right now, only that we used to have a sophisticated understanding of how to coordinate things, and of the need to do it. Now we’re populists, after decades of free market individualism ideas that make us think stuff just happens by magic, with no coordination. People fighting over toilet paper in a shop and others laughing at them is where those ideas lead.