Beyond air and water (and in some cases, medical care), food is the most urgent need for humans. In the United States, hunger remains a problem, despite the interventions of food banks and government assistance programs. Society’s development involves a constant debate about what needs and wants ought to be sated by the public and which must be privately gratified; hunger should move up that list. Managing risk to the assets one acquires (car insurance, etc.), buying entertainment, and the getting of most stuff falls into the latter category, while national defense, education (in part), and healthcare (even more in part) are collectively provided goods. Food, on the other hand, has come to live in an even-worse equivalent to school voucher-land, as anyone who has ever had to rely on SNAP might attest.
After reading Robert Putnam’s 2020 book The Upswing, I was reminded of that universal free high school was a momentous achievement that started with local, private funding, gained municipal support, and then became the national standard. Students do not have to pay to attend public school, nor does the government typically provide a means-tested currency that can be used to pay private companies for their educational services (as in food stamps), though again school vouchers can be a shadow of this mechanism. How has food not developed a government-run analogue to the public school?
In part, food stamps and other assistance greatly benefit and were partly initiated on behalf of the food economy. Large agricultural and retail businesses would be aghast at the prospect of a government initiative to directly provide food to people. It’s unlikely to start at the federal level. But imagine a free grocery “store”, available to anyone. Certainly some of the less-trusting people out there will complain that such a program might be manipulated and arbitraged against. Perhaps in small part, but the risk of people taking extra food seems a small one as compared to giving out food to everyone.
There are already projects underway by mutual aid organizations, which were spurred by COVID-19, many of which are continuing. And while mutual aid is an excellent mechanism to get innovative new ways of helping people off the ground, greater local and state involvement could help the free groceries movement stay rolling.
Who is to say the government should stay out of the grocery business? Lots of people, but food doesn’t have to be a business. These issues are complicated by tribal ideological alignments that cause every policy proposal to be examined through the a Randian, Marxist, centrist/Clintonian, or Trumpian lens; that’s why action is the first step, rather than agreement. Start feeding people, no questions asked, then figure out the politics way, way later. And for god’s sake, don’t ask an economist.