Socialism or Barbarism

Lord Cameron of Dillington’s assertion that we are “nine meals away from anarchy” is more than a soundbite. Lord Cameron, the first head of the Countryside Agency, the quango set up by Tony Blair, coined that phrase to describe just how perilous food supply actually is.

"He estimated that it would take just nine meals – three full days without food on supermarket shelves – before law and order started to break down, and British streets descended into chaos. Is his warning far-fetched? Probably not. In the United States, people looted to feed themselves and their families after Hurricane Katrina. "

The scenario goes like this. Imagine a sudden shutdown of oil supplies; a sudden collapse in the petrol that streams steadily through the pumps and so into the engines of the lorries which deliver our food around the country, stocking up the supermarket shelves as soon as any item runs out.
If the trucks stopped moving, we'd start to worry and we'd head out to the shops, cking up our larders. By the end of Day One, if there was still no petrol, the shelves would be looking pretty thin. Imagine, then, Day Two: your fourth, fifth and sixth meal. We'd be in a panic. Day three: still no petrol.
What then? With hunger pangs kicking in, and no notion of how long it might take for the supermarkets to restock, how long before those who hadn't stocked up began stealing from their neighbours? Or looting what they could get their hands on?
It was Lord Cameron's estimation that it would take just nine meals - three full days without food on supermarket shelves - before law and order started to break down, and British streets descended into chaos.

How SOYMB detests the use of the word "looted" in regard to the self-help efforts of survivors of a natural catastrophe . But , of course, in capitalist society the absentee owners of a supermarket still retains property rights to its food and that makes helping yourself into a crime .

Many studies indicate that widespread looting rarely occurs during a disaster yet the media frequently reports on looting during these events.An Amtrak police office , who was stationed at the Union Passenger Terminal in downtown New Orleans, which had been converted into a temporary jail for looters in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina , commented that the majority of the looting involved the taking of need-based items rather than luxury items. He estimated that 75 percent of the cases involved individuals taking items necessary to stay alive.The majority in Katrina took care of each other, went to great lengths to rescue each other and were generally humane and resourceful.
(The Haiti earthquake resulted in the same dissemination of mis-information . Tales of “machete wielding gangs” looting Haiti’s rubble were widespread, from all the news outlets.)

Truth, the first casualty of war, is pretty imperilled in disasters, too.