The Hunger Games Economy

On the show Friday, John Tamny from RealClearMarkets.com joined us to make his case that the blockbuster new movie “The Hunger Games” contains a very strong message against big government and centrally-planned economies.

Stuart suggested that might have been stretching things a bit, and even John admitted it’s possible he was going too far.

But Stuart hasn’t read the Hunger Games books.

I have.

And there’s no denying there IS a strong message throughout against big government, communism, and the loss of individual freedoms.

As I don’t want to spoil the stories in the movie or the books even a little bit, let me just say that the key challenge facing most of the people in The Hunger Games world is the lack of food, and lack of any choice of vocation.

And just like in that imaginary world, hunger and the lack of economic freedom go hand-in-hand in the real world too.

In the real world, hunger is almost always the fault of governments, whether they are popularly elected or dictatorships. It’s a simple fact. And please, don’t be fooled by those who say weather, the environment, or geography is a bigger culprit. I mean, haven’t you ever wondered why we have no starvation even in the driest places in America, like Arizona or New Mexico? The answer is that with economic freedom, even the most barren places on Earth need not be without basic necessities or even luxuries.

Any government that decides what is fair and how the most important resources – food and water - are distributed will always fail in that mission. That is why the first real crisis in the USSR in the 1920’s was mass starvation, not looting or armed violence.

Government is the reason why millions of North Koreans have starved to death since its regime insisted on building a nuclear weapons program.

Government is why the Iranian people may face the same fate.

The hero of the Hunger Games story is a teenage girl named Katniss Everdeen, who takes personal responsibility for her whole family and thrives on a risky life of self-reliance that she somehow creates despite all the government-imposed barriers.

She is a hero for our time… a hero for all time.