Not sure if I follow you though. My point was that there was no scarcity- even though McMichael favorably quotes someone saying that we are in a 'post-surplus food era'. My main critique is that his model relys too much on supply and demand theories of price equilibrium. The price rise had almost nothing to do with lack of supply- due to biofuels or otherwise- but was simply a rise in exchange-value due to speculation. But if you mean that the price rise was socially produced and this created an inability for people to purchase food, then yes it was 'socially produced scarcity'. I just don't like to use the word scarcity when there is overproduction, but maldistribution.
Brad
Alan Rudy
>
> Brad, while I agree with the critique you make of Phil's work, I'm not sure
> I see the argument as neoMalthusian... I don't see natural scarcity
> limiting
> foodstocks, raising prices, causing hunger and subsequently generating
> ecological destruction and lifeboat ethics in his argument... I see,
> however
> flawed, an argument for institutional change in one locale generating
> institutional constraints in others, this is a model of socially-produced
> scarcity even if it doesn't take into account ratios, and other factors -
> like the rising price of oil, rising demand for corn for ethanol production
> and any number of brouhahas over GMO crops, perhaps most especially GMO
> corn
> and soy - it should.
>
>
>