> Economic signaling based on opinion of good/bad is the bane of the free market.
Sure, but "a third party intervening in prices is the antithesis of a price system where the producer sets their own price" is an empty tautology without any argument for why the world is better off for people being able to obtain soda more cheaply and balancing the budget with a non-distortionary poll tax instead.
Similarly,if you're going to make sub-Malthusian arguments that free food is "exactly how you end up with famines" it would help if you could name one example of a famine significantly influenced by prior availability of free food. In the interests of fairness, I'll name three that definitely weren't: the Irish potato famine, the Holodomor and the Bengal famine. Developed countries are a long way ahead of the era where free food is likely to have a statistically significant effect on the birth rate and all the data would suggest causality ran in the opposite direction with birthrates having fallen sharply against a backdrop of increasing access to better nutrition and increasing universal welfare access. It's developing countries, where people have to ensure enough surviving descendants to guarantee they continue to be fed in old age, that are the ones with the higher birthrates and rapidly growing populations...
Sure, but "a third party intervening in prices is the antithesis of a price system where the producer sets their own price" is an empty tautology without any argument for why the world is better off for people being able to obtain soda more cheaply and balancing the budget with a non-distortionary poll tax instead.
Similarly,if you're going to make sub-Malthusian arguments that free food is "exactly how you end up with famines" it would help if you could name one example of a famine significantly influenced by prior availability of free food. In the interests of fairness, I'll name three that definitely weren't: the Irish potato famine, the Holodomor and the Bengal famine. Developed countries are a long way ahead of the era where free food is likely to have a statistically significant effect on the birth rate and all the data would suggest causality ran in the opposite direction with birthrates having fallen sharply against a backdrop of increasing access to better nutrition and increasing universal welfare access. It's developing countries, where people have to ensure enough surviving descendants to guarantee they continue to be fed in old age, that are the ones with the higher birthrates and rapidly growing populations...