Food distribution: Accounting isn’t economics

It may be true in an accounting sense that we produce enough calories today to meet total caloric needs. But accounting isn’t economics, and we need to consider the incentives of the system that produces the sufficient calories today relative to an alternative system that is either less productive or involves widespread redistribution. Massive redistribution of food can destroy the incentives of people to produce the food. One cannot disentangle the fantastic productivity of our current system with the market forces that led to it’s origin. Stated differently, there is no reason to imagine we’d produce the same number of calories if “the system” were changed to one with massive confiscation/redistribution. Brady Deaton altered me to this fascinating paper in the Journal of Political Economy showing that 75% of the increase in China’s agricultural productivity after 1978 was due to strengthening of individual incentives.

From http://jaysonlusk.com/blog/2017/11/7/do-we-produce-enough-food