- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

Besides, the ability to make and distribute consumer goods isn't in itself a particularly useful measure of the health or value of an economy.

We don't actually have a useful model of what a healthy economy does look like. Mid-century social democracy probably comes closest, but the - apparently - inevitable slide into economic dictatorship by the non-proletariat has to be considered a bit of a flaw.

Far as I can see lines are a sign of:
1) limitation in access (you don't line for something everyone has in abundance)
and 2) power allocated at the point people are lining to (in the reverse, you have people going door-to-door)
and 3) distribution by stubbornness

Distribution by market forces just changes the last point to distribution by market power. When it comes to capital and resources, distribution by market power can be argued on basis of efficiency. When it comes to consumer goods, unless you assume homo economicus, I see no reason that it is more efficient to distribute from market power then from stubbornness.

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