I am a regular reader of your blog, and also the Development Director for TEQs (Tradable Energy Quotas) – the tradable system advocated by Monbiot and many others.

I just wanted to thank you for your insightful discussion of this topic, and will certainly take many of your points on board.

Best wishes,
Shaun

It’s interesting that after WWI, Hoover was effective in leading the efforts to feed Europe, which, of course, is why Truman asked him to lead the effort after WWII. His failure in this second effort speaks to an interesting change in the American culture, or at least a change in the dynamics of consumerism. Hoover’s tragic belief that the people would do the right thing because it was the right thing to do made sense somehow during WWI, but failed miserably during the depression and onwards. While not conservative myself by any means, I can sympathize with a point of view suggesting good should not be mandated by a dubiously trustworthy government. It’s a very interesting point you made in your answering comment, of wondering what can be learned from the WWI model. Similarly, with government controlling a rationing effort, the temptation to use rationing as a political tool in our system would be simply irresistable to those seeking power. Self rationing, similar to your 90% effort, seems a more pure, wholesome approach.

I’ve blathered on quiet enough, I’m sure, but one item I do not see us address enough in the effort to curb consumerism is the need to attack free and easy credit. Easy credit, beginning with the Diner’s Club card in the ’50′s, has been the hand maiden for the Madison Avenue driven commerciality, becoming the substitute for the “company store” to keep people in servitude. Why self ration when we can have what we want when we want, as long as we can keep ourselves from thinking about the future hours labored to work off the debt. Preaching to the choir here, I know. Thanks for another thought provoking piece – I very much appreciate the scholarship behind this essay.

cheers,
Dave

I too have read the Bentley book and numerous documents on U.S. and U.K. during WWII. Your article is a very good summary, and makes very good points about how to proceed with fairness and equity. And I would like to see rationing happen sooner rather than later (especially with energy), before the shortages appear, and to have them equally distributed on a per-person basis to be fair to rich and poor alike. I’m still not sure how a tradeable enery rationing plan would work, but would prefer to see something in place so that those who do conserve can possible “trade” their savings for things they do need. And I agree that price controls only will not do it and unfair to the poor.

Keep up your quality writing.

Kevin in Iowa

One of the most important factors used by the OPA was that members of its board existed to represent business and consumers seperately – that is, the board was fairly evenly balanced between consumer advocates and business advocates, rather like having Ralph Nader and Lee Iacocca negotiating. And I ought to have said that I think *that* part is simply unlikely to happen again. So yes, you are right. Now the thing about the ODP, is that it might well sell to big oil once they start experiencing serious shortages. So I can imagine circumstances in which businesses can be persuaded, but it is worth noting that sheer corporate power we’re up against is a real problem.

Ares, that’s a really interesting analysis. I wonder if you could manage shortages – certainly, the sheer number of consumer goods we see influences our buying patterns.

Sharon

I have two interesting thoughts. First that “information is power”. If we had figures of “average per capita consumption”, by country, state, city, etc, people would know what a “fair share” might look like, even if categories were included: youth, singles, elderly, families, etc.

Second I consider a conversation I had with a coworker. Our accountant started buying kitchen snacks from Sam’s club a few years ago, cheaper prices, and as you might imagine, over the years of this I’m SURE consumption has gone way up, compared to the days when we had a little variety “snack pack”.

Anyway we questioned what would change behavior, reduce unhealthy overconsumption – like raising prices from $0.40 each to as high as $2.00 each perhaps, with “profits” going to a charity perhaps.

But an alternative approach we thought about was rationing through perception. Specifically, our accountant put out ALL the snacks, so we’d see all these boxes and THINK there’s abundance and consume more. In comparison after a while we’d go way down in visually supplies before her next refilling. I’m sure consumption SPIKED with visual surpluses and declined when visual supplies ran low.

So the obvious solution, our accountant should have kept supplies in a back room, and brought out just a fraction every week, perhaps based on how much she had and how often she wanted to restock, and let “demand” deal with supply like that.

Anyway, it would seem there’s interesting socialogical experiments possible, to see how people react to appearances of surplus and appearances of shortages, I mean independent of price. If you go to a party and see tons of food, you pig out, or at least it makes it easy. If you see just a little, you scale back your gluttonous appetite and leave something for someone else.

It would seem hard to imagine a PURE voluntary rationing could be done, allowing everyone to “take what they need, no more”.

It’s a tricky business, since the opposite human behavior of hoarding can as well come out in fear of shortages. If your local gas station was empty last week and fills up, and you get there first, do you “top it off” because you don’t know when you’ll get another chance or “take what you need” based on faith more will be available later? Obviously depends whether you can trust it’ll be available.

Anyway, to me this shows an “upside” to the U.S. gasoline refinery limits, even if the result is a higher price and profits. And its fun to think that conservation is what’s needed to bring prices down.

Previously I’d think “shortages” are bad (like caused in the 70′s when mandated gas prices caused stations to be sold out), but perhaps irregular shortages are good, because it keeps people aware of the value of conservation.

It’s most interesting compared to the REAL illusion, that the economy can run blindly into future shortages merely because of memory of past success to meet demand.

Shortages have another advantage -people have to think more seriously “What if I CAN’T fill my tank” next week, how will I get to work? Necessity is the mother of invention, and fear is sometimes beneficial, when there’s something to be done about the threat.

Highest rates of meat consumption in the US are listed by Bentley as in 1910, with a slow but steady drop through the war, and a (small) bump in 1917-18, then a decline into the depression, and a rise during the war years. I’ve also noted that while grain consumption did rise steadily, liquor production dropped like a stone – some of that grain was going into people’s mouths as bread. I like Levenstein’s book, but I think there’s additional evidence for marginal success – I don’t claim more than that.

Hoover’s strategy *absolutely did not* work after WWII – and it was a mistake to put him in charge. I don’t agree that a purely voluntary project is possible – but I do think that the WWI case represents an interestingly useful model. Barbara Grace argues that the failure of the WWI model was in large part due to organizational problems, in direct contrast to Levenstein.

I’m no fan of Hooverism in any sense – but I do think that if we could make voluntary rationing really work, it offers the possibility of engaging political conservatives in energy rationing – which would be worth a *lot*.

We could also pull out revolutionary and civil war examples to demonstrate that voluntary boycotts and self rationing have worked in the past – even the British model worked for 5 years after the war.

I’ll agree that WWII didn’t represent a serious test of our ability to handle *shortage* – as JK Galbraith said, never has so much credit been given for living without so little. Most of the real extremes of shortage were experienced by people who were already poor. On the other hand, even among them there was a willingness to participate in rationing and other war programs. Poor African Americans were both angry and disaffected during the War, for excellent reasons. On the other hand, 90% of poor black southern families victory gardened – up by almost 20% over the depression years. 67% purchased war bonds and more than 70% approved of rationing according to Bentley. So even among people who *were* experiencing real hardship – remember, malnutrition was a real phenomenon then – rationing was politically possible.

But ultimately, in the short term, what matters is whether rationing could be initiated successfully – sustaining it is an issue, but first we’ve got to get past *starting*.

There certainly were black markets, and eliminating them by making energy rationing tradable simply makes sense – no argument there.

Sharon