Starving for Nation Change A client passed along research from the New England Complex Systems Institute in which physicists, not economists, correlated historical large peaks in food scarcity or prices food riots and social instability. The correlation work is fine and unsurprising, but other parts of the study are severely flawed. For example, the authors blame speculation in part for food price spikes, a charge credibly refuted by multilateral institutions. They also cite global interdependence for food versus local subsistence farming as a negative factor, whereas local dependence has historically been far riskier (all eggs in one basket). After erroneously defining the problem, they imply that providing food assistance would ensure...

TAGS – North America