Okay somebody explain me this because in the absence of price caps there should be no such thing as a food shortage because as the supply of food goes down the price just goes up and reaches a new equilibrium which equates quantity supplied and quantity demanded and therefore there is no shortage, you just have fewer people buying food and then presumably dying of hunger.
Is there a word to describe the negative impact of this or something? Apparently shortage isn’t the correct word I guess.
What if 100 people want food and they each have $5.
There are 50 units of food, price of food steadily increases from $1 to $4 until units of food hits 0.
Now we’ve still got 50 people who want to buy food at a price up to $5 but no food.
Is it wrong to steal a loaf of bread to feed your starving family??
No. I think no judge would criminalise you for that in this century (reminds me of Les Miserables).
But you also have access to food pantries and other emergency food parcels from charities.
Its not perfect, but it should limit the need to steal to feed your family.
Food shortages don’t have to be defined by economic concepts to be called food shortages. There is a definite food shortage of chocolate chip cookies at my house right now. But saying the law of supply and demand moving prices to adjust demand is really thinking of demand in a transaction sense, not demand in a human longing or physical need sense.
That’s when the guy who buys future shares of food production will start to look good.
Well. suppose you got a large, starving family. Is it wrong to steal a truckload of bread?
What if your family don’t like bread? They like … cigarettes?
Maybe what you are thinking of is a collapse of markets. Conditions don’t allow a free market to operate/the necessary conditions for a economic market to operate don’t exist. Starving to death is a fairly strong compulsion to “transact”.
Well, what if instead of giving them away, we sold them at a price that was practically giving them away???
Some of the food banks in Ontario are really getting slammed from what I hear in the news. 
I am enjoying a brownie style cookie with my coffee even as I type!! 
I have a few left that I would sell you for a reasonable price!!!
Go ahead, mock a guy. 
Hang on did you find that cookie on a truck!?
No, I was in the supermarket and had a human longing and physical need, so I performed a transaction utitlizing my demand curve. 
And they had oatmeal chocolate chip toooooooooo!!! Not that dirty, nasty, vile, puppy-kicking, dumpster licking combo that dare not speak its name!!! 
To me Food Shortage / Food Scarcity (short term); Food Insecurity (never sure when your next meal might be on a regular basis) - are regional issues, not world issues
There is enough food in the world, getting food to where it is needed is another issue - and little more than an issue of money
5 years for what you did. The rest because you tried to run.
“Officer, it’s not indecent exposure. I’m just … utilizing my demand curve.”
If you criminalize food, then the only people with food will be criminals.
I wondered if he stole it from a mouse.