Government guarantees toast, butter, eggs and coffee for every citizen, but Ministry of Breakfast admits production remains an unfortunate capitalist technicality
LONDON - Theoretical socialism has solved world hunger by declaring breakfast a fundamental human right, although government officials concede that the country's remaining farmers, bakers and chickens have not yet been told what their obligations are.
Under the new Universal Breakfast Guarantee, every citizen is entitled to two slices of toast, a boiled egg, butter, marmalade and coffee, irrespective of income, social standing or whether any of these products actually exist. The government hailed the scheme as a historic victory for breakfast equality.
The bread, however, is missing, the egg shortage is getting worse, and the Ministry of Agricultural Justice has advised citizens that coffee will become available once its investigation into colonial beverage inequality is complete. None of this has dented the enthusiasm of ministers, who are enjoying a government breakfast at a hotel where somebody remembered to employ a chef.
That is the central attraction of theoretical socialism. It can promise everything because promising costs a good deal less than producing. A government can declare bread a fundamental human right, but unless somebody grows wheat and runs a bakery, breakfast remains theoretical. London currently has a glut of theoretical breakfast.
Thinking About Breakfast
- A 347-page National Toast Strategy with no mention of wheat is the most thorough thing ever written about nothing.
- Declaring breakfast a human right is easy. Declaring it hot is where the trouble starts.
- Margaret the hen has more respect for targets than most government departments, which is to say she cheerfully ignores them but at least turns up.
- A certificate that guarantees your breakfast is the only meal that gets better the longer it's left on the plate.
- Bakers' "unhealthy attachment to remaining solvent" is also known, in other circles, as paying the electricity bill.
Is Bread a Human Right? Socialism Discovers Bread Is Not Made by Government Decree
The Ministry of Breakfast has produced an impressive 347-page National Toast Strategy explaining why every citizen deserves affordable bread. It contains long passages on equality, nutritional justice, food dignity and the importance of making sure wealthy people do not get disproportionately large slices. What it does not contain, anywhere, is a convincing account of how wheat becomes bread. Leonard Read's classic essay I, Pencil makes the point with a humble pencil: no single person knows how to make one, because the know-how is spread across millions of people. A loaf of bread has the same problem, plus butter.
The ministry's chief theoretical baker, Professor Nigel Crumbworthy, defended the omission. "Our job is to establish the moral framework for breakfast. The responsibility for actually producing breakfast belongs to the productive sector."
Asked whether the productive sector would be allowed to make a profit, Crumbworthy looked horrified. "Certainly not. That would commercialise breakfast."
He was then asked why anyone would invest in a bakery if bread sales couldn't cover flour, electricity, wages, equipment and rent. The professor said this was precisely the sort of divisive question that had historically stopped socialism from succeeding, and requested a cup of tea, which was brought by a private café.
A government investigation has since been launched to establish why bakers insist on recovering their costs. Its preliminary finding is that bakers show an unhealthy attachment to remaining solvent.
The ministry has since tried to close the gap by appointing a National Wheat Coordinator, whose first act was to ask where wheat is kept. Friedrich Hayek saw this coming in 1945. His essay The Use of Knowledge in Society argues that the facts needed to run an economy are scattered among millions of people and never land on one desk. The Coordinator's desk currently holds a stapler, a sandwich bought privately, and a map of Lincolnshire with a question mark on it.
Egg Production Under Central Planning: The Chickens Have Become Counter-Revolutionary
Eggs present an even thornier ideological problem. Under the Universal Breakfast Guarantee, chickens are expected to lay enough eggs to meet public demand, so the Ministry of Poultry Equality has announced an ambitious Five-Year Egg Plan to raise production by 40 percent.
When farmers pointed out that chickens need feed, housing, veterinary care and decent conditions, officials accused them of dragging unnecessary biological complications into a perfectly reasonable political programme. "These chickens have been provided with revolutionary leadership," the minister explained. "What more could they possibly require?"
A government poultry inspector then discovered that hens carry on laying eggs according to their own biological capacity rather than the targets set by parliamentary committees. This has prompted accusations of agricultural sabotage. One particularly uncooperative hen named Margaret has been summoned before the Select Committee on Avian Productivity after laying only five eggs in a week in which the minister had promised seven.
Margaret declined to comment. Her solicitor told journalists that his client had never voted for the government.
Price Controls and Shortages: The Official Price of Bread Is Now Zero, Including Bread That Doesn't Exist
The government has also claimed a historic cut in food prices. Bread that used to cost £2 now officially costs nothing. Citizens are delighted, apart from the ones who have tried to get hold of any. Supermarkets explain that they cannot indefinitely supply goods for less than it costs to make and distribute them, and officials have replied by accusing supermarkets of hoarding food to embarrass the administration.
This is an old problem in centrally planned economies. The Hungarian economist János Kornai studied how shortages persisted under socialist command systems, and how firms and consumers adapted to goods that stayed unavailable whatever the official price said. His work on shortage economies described queues, informal trading networks and the sheer difficulty of coordinating production. Michael Ellman's survey of Kornai's research in the Cambridge Journal of Economics is a good place to begin, including its account of how planners' own decisions helped keep shortages in place.
The uncomfortable lesson is that a government can lower an official price without increasing the quantity on the shelf. In fact, price controls that hold prices below what it costs to supply can cause shortages, because suppliers who cannot recover their costs eventually stop supplying. Theoretical socialism regards this as an ideological problem. Economics regards it as arithmetic. Consumers regard it as an empty shelf.
Anyone wishing to compare the official price of bread with the price of bread can consult the Office for National Statistics, which publishes inflation and price indices every month using the old-fashioned method of going to shops and writing down what things cost. The ministry regards this as cheating. Its own index samples only goods that are unavailable, and it has reported zero inflation for three quarters running, along with zero goods.
The Great Breakfast Equality Breakthrough: An Empty Plate and a Certificate
Government scientists have developed an innovative answer to unequal breakfast consumption. Nobody receives a full breakfast until everybody can receive one. In the meantime, everyone gets an empty plate and a certificate explaining that their breakfast has been guaranteed. Ministers call it the world's first fully equitable breakfast distribution system, and it is certainly the first to be washed up in under four seconds.
An imaginary opinion survey by the Institute for Culinary Progress found that 94 percent of respondents preferred actual eggs to theoretical eggs. The remaining six percent worked for the Ministry of Breakfast and enjoyed subsidised meals in the departmental cafeteria.
One London pensioner expressed his disappointment. "I worked forty years, paid my taxes, raised three children and fought off two burglars. Now the government says I'm entitled to breakfast, but I must wait until the chickens accept socialism."
Another citizen asked whether the government might consider letting ordinary farmers and bakers produce enough food and sell it at sustainable prices. The proposal was rejected as dangerously practical.
Tomorrow's Breakfast Will Be Magnificent: Why Promises Cost Less Than Production
At a final press conference, the minister assured citizens that the National Breakfast Programme remained on schedule. He unveiled artist's impressions of toast, computer-generated renderings of scrambled eggs and a beautifully designed advertisement showing a happy family enjoying food that did not yet exist.
Asked when breakfast would actually be served, the minister said more funding would be needed. Asked what had happened to the previous funding, he explained that the department had spent it demonstrating its commitment to breakfast. The government has now promised an even more ambitious programme for next year. Every citizen will receive free lunch.
Economists warned that the country has not yet solved breakfast. The minister waved them away. "You cannot hold back progress simply because yesterday's commitments haven't been delivered."
There, in one sentence, lies the irresistible political charm of theoretical socialism. It announces the benefits, and somebody else must produce the goods. If production fails, the state demands more authority, more funding and more public patience. The salesman never runs out of promises because he never has to carry the merchandise.
The bakery remains closed. The chickens remain unimpressed. The toast remains free. And breakfast remains theoretical.
Humorous Observations on Free Breakfast and Theoretical Socialism
- The ministers' hotel breakfast has a chef, a kitchen and an open supply chain. It is the only part of the policy that has been properly costed.
- The Ministry of Poultry Equality's greatest challenge is explaining to a chicken that the five-year plan applies to her.
- Ninety-four percent preferring real eggs to theoretical eggs is the clearest result an opinion poll has ever delivered.
- "Free lunch" is the government's way of promising a second meal to a nation still waiting for the first.
- If you can't feed the nation, you can at least rename the queue. This is why the queue is now called a Breakfast Participation Event.
- An artist's impression of toast has the same calorie content as an artist's impression of a minister keeping his word.
- Somewhere, a very small private café with nine employees is feeding more people than the entire Department of Breakfast. It has been reported to the Department of Breakfast.
- The National Wheat Coordinator has a title, a lanyard and a parking space. The wheat has none of these and is still more useful.
- A price index made up entirely of goods you cannot buy is the only one in history to make shoppers nostalgic for being overcharged.
- The stapler on the Coordinator's desk is the one item in the department that reliably joins two things together.
Satirical Disclaimer
This is political and economic satire about unrealistic guarantees and the problems of command economies, not an argument against helping hungry people. The officials, chickens, poll and conversations are comic illustrations. The article is entirely a human collaboration between two sentient beings: the world's oldest tenured professor and a philosophy major turned dairy farmer, who agree that a hungry cow cannot be fed with a parliamentary resolution.
SOURCE:https://academic.oup.com/cje/article/45/2/371/6067266
Auf Wiedersehen, amigo!
- prat.UK https://prat.uk/?p=51414
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