We used to avoid this problem by having special stores that distributed government food programs, but for a variety of reasons people didn’t like it (higher labor costs born directly by the government, stigma of going to the government food store, eating generic food (“government cheese”)), however this helps deal with the blackmarket problem if you, personally, have to show up to get the food you are owed, and then have literal food to barter with.
I’m not saying we can completely stop economic activity. What I am saying is that there’s a lot of benefit to providing tools to help people enforce rules on themselves that they would endorse in hindsight but have trouble enforcing on themselves in the short term due to issues like poor impulse control that are causally upstream of poverty for many.
We used to avoid this problem by having special stores that distributed government food programs, but for a variety of reasons people didn’t like it (higher labor costs born directly by the government, stigma of going to the government food store, eating generic food (“government cheese”)), however this helps deal with the blackmarket problem if you, personally, have to show up to get the food you are owed, and then have literal food to barter with.
I’m not saying we can completely stop economic activity. What I am saying is that there’s a lot of benefit to providing tools to help people enforce rules on themselves that they would endorse in hindsight but have trouble enforcing on themselves in the short term due to issues like poor impulse control that are causally upstream of poverty for many.