Welcome to the deep dive. We are really thrilled
to have you with us today. Absolutely. Thanks
for joining us. Our mission on this show is always
the same. We take a stack of source material,
extract the most crucial nuggets of knowledge,
and give you the ultimate shortcut to being well
-informed. Right, skipping the boring parts.
Exactly. And today, we're pulling from a pretty
comprehensive overview on the concept and the
history of rationing. Which is a much bigger
topic than it sounds. It really is. I mean, I
know what you're probably thinking. When you
hear the word rationing, your mind instantly
jumps to dusty World War II ration books, right?
Yeah. Or Victory Gardens. Right. Victory Gardens.
Or maybe long lines for a bag of sugar. But we're
going to show you that rationing is actually
a hidden mechanic of everyday life. It's everywhere.
It dictates so much of the world around you,
from your summer trip to an amusement park to
the way global health care systems operate. You
want the deep knowledge without feeling overwhelmed
by an encyclopedia. And, well, that's exactly
what we're delivering today. Exactly. We're going
to approach this systematically. First, we explore
the underlying economic mechanisms of rationing,
you know, the invisible gears that actually make
it work. The economics of it. Right. And from
there, we'll trace its rather grim and starkly
unequal history through military sieges and the
world wars. Some of that history is pretty intense.
It is. Then we'll shift gears into some truly
surprising peacetime implementations, like...
historical alcohol rationing, for instance. Oh,
that part is wild. And finally, we'll examine
modern -day applications including carbon emissions
and health care. By the end of this conversation,
you're going to see your daily routines in a
completely different light. Okay, let's unpack
this. Let's start with the absolute basics. What
exactly are we talking about when we say something
is being rationed? At its core, rationing is
the controlled distribution of resources, goods,
or services, especially when they're scarce.
Economically speaking, authorities usually implement
it to keep the price of a good below the market
clearing rate. The market clearing rate. So normally,
the market just handles scarcity by pricing people
out. Precisely. The price shoots up until demand
drops to meet the limited supply. Rationing steps
in to artificially cap that. Right, which brings
up this massive economic dilemma. price rationing
versus non -price rationing. The classic trade
-off. Yeah. Because when things get scarce, high
prices technically do a great job of reducing
waste, and they incentivize companies to produce
more of whatever's missing. But there's a huge
catch. The glaring problem is that high prices
make basic necessities completely unaffordable
for the poorest people in a society. Exactly.
They just get priced out of survival. So governments
step in. But here is the part that will really
give you an aha moment. Rationing isn't just
governments handing out stamp books. We deal
with non -price rationing every single day. We
really do. Think about standing in a massive
queue at an amusement park. That is a perfect
example. You pay to get into the park, but you
don't pay for the individual rides. Exactly.
Because the roller coaster is technically free
at the point of access. The demand is huge. So
how is your access restricted? By time. By time.
Waiting in that two hour line in the hot sun
is a literal form of non -price rationing. Or
think about sitting in horrible rush hour traffic.
Oh man, the worst. Because the highway doesn't
have a toll, meaning access isn't rationed by
price. It's rationed by a first -come, first
-served queuing process. Traffic congestion is
literally rationing in action. Yeah, it makes
total sense. And whether we're talking about
a frustrating traffic jam or a wartime food shortage,
there's an inevitable backlash to these systems.
Whenever authorities introduce strict rationing,
they almost always have to battle a black market.
Because people try to bypass the restrictions.
Naturally, even though rationing systems are
often the absolute only viable option to ensure
a society survives a severe shortage, they're
deeply unpopular. Because nobody likes being
told what they can't have. By definition, they
enforce limits on individual consumption. People
resent it. That resentment makes a lot of sense,
especially when we look at the historical origins.
Going back to early military sieges, rationing
wasn't about ensuring everyone got a fair share.
Not at all. Or protecting the vulnerable. It
actually reflected brutal, stark social hierarchies.
It was incredibly inequitable. Take the 1857
Siege of Lucknow during the Indian Rebellion.
In that siege, women were only given three quarters
of a man's food ration. And children received
a mere half. Half. It's just so... You see that
same stark inequality later during the 1900 Siege
of Ladysmith in the Boer War. White adults were
allocated the exact same food rations as the
soldiers defending the town. But... Indian and
black people trapped in that exact same siege
received significantly smaller portions. It's
a grim reality. The distribution of life -saving
calories was entirely dependent on your race
and your social standing. It was a very dark
period for how these systems were managed. It
wasn't until the First World War that we saw
the implementation of what we'd call modern rationing
systems. Germany was the first to introduce it
in 1914. Largely because they were suffering
severely from British naval blockades. Britain,
on the other hand, actually kept its sea lanes
open for food imports and didn't suffer those
same initial shortages. But late in the war,
panic buying set in. Human nature took over.
Yeah, the British public got scared, which forced
the government to introduce ration books in 1918
for basic staples. Meat. Butter. Sugar. What's
fascinating here is the counterintuitive result
of that British rationing program. You'd assume
that restricting food intake during a devastating
war would naturally damage public health. Right.
You'd think people would be starving. But it
actually benefited the overall health of the
country. Because it forced a leveling of consumption.
Right. Precisely. Because essential foodstuffs
were evenly distributed across the board, the
poorest members of society suddenly had guaranteed
access to basic nutrition, nutrition that they
couldn't afford in a normal free market. That's
incredible. The national average caloric intake
only dropped by 3 % and protein intake by 6%.
So it was a marginal sacrifice for the wealthy
elite. But a massive nutritional upgrade for
the working poor. And that realization fundamentally
changed how rationing was handled when World
War II broke out. This is where it gets highly
scientific. Two pioneers at the University of
Cambridge, Elsie Witteson and Robert McCance,
decided to put rationing on a strict mathematical
basis. They were brilliant. In 1939, to prove
that Britons could survive, if German U -boats
completely blockaded their food imports. These
two scientists essentially used themselves as
guinea pigs. They didn't just sit in a lab either.
They simulated the strenuous, grueling physical
labor that the public would have to perform during
wartime. Like what? cycling miles into the mountains
and actively working the land. And they did all
of this while eating a severely limited diet
based entirely on what could be produced domestically
within the UK. Mostly potatoes and cabbage, right?
Potatoes, cabbage, and domestic wheat. That was
pretty much it. And they proved it was survivable.
Their health and performance remained solid after
three months on this intense regime. It was a
groundbreaking experiment. Because of Witteson
and McCants, the government started mandating
the addition of vitamins and minerals to food.
They added calcium to bread, for example. And
just like in the First World War, the result
was staggering. Despite the trauma of World War
II, infant mortality in the UK actually declined.
And life expectancy rose. It's wild. But life
on the home front definitely had some strange
quirks. In the UK, while meat and sugar were
strictly restricted, fresh vegetables weren't.
Which sparked the famous Dig for Victory campaign.
Right, where everyone was encouraged to grow
their own gardens. Also, shockingly, bread wasn't
rationed during the war in the UK. Though they
did force bakeries to produce the national loaf.
Oh, the infamous gray mush. It was universally
hated. Yeah, it was a wholemeal bread that housewives
absolutely despised because it was soggy, gray,
and apparently caused all sorts of digestive
complaints. It's a great contrast to the American
experience on the home front. In the United States,
the system was rolled out through completely
different channels. Right, the U .S. handled
it uniquely. American civilians received their
first ration books, the so -called sugar book,
in May of 1942, but it wasn't distributed by
military personnel. Who handed it out? It was
handed out by over a hundred thousand school
teachers and parent -teacher associations. Wow.
And the restrictions hit American culture in
very specific ways. Gasoline rationing was implemented
and it was so incredibly strict that the government
banned all forms of auto racing entirely. Even
the big ones. Even the Indianapolis 500 was shut
down just to conserve fuel and rubber for the
war effort. As fascinating as those home front
adjustments are, we have to look at the tragic
extreme of World War II rationing as well. We
do. We need to look at the Soviet Union, specifically
the siege of Leningrad. The numbers are sobering.
As the siege tightened, daily bread rations for
workers dropped to just 250 grams. That's so
little. For everyone else in the city, the ration
was slashed to a mere 125 grams. To put that
in perspective for you, 125 grams is about four
and a half ounces of bread for an entire day.
It predictably resulted in mass starvation. We
have the diary of an 11 year old girl named Tanya
Savicheva who lived through the siege. Her diary
is heartbreaking. She kept a written record as
her sister, her grandmother, her brother, two
uncles, and finally her mother all died of starvation.
Just awful. Her final diary entries simply read,
Savychevs died. Everyone died. Only Tanya is
left. And she didn't survive either, did she?
No. She tragically passed away from intestinal
tuberculosis shortly after the siege ended. It's
a stark reminder that while rationing can be
an administrative tool or an inconvenience in
some contexts, in others, it's a brutal arithmetic
of survival. The Leningrad Diary really strips
away the economics and shows rationing as most
desperate, which makes it all the more jarring
when you realize that strict rationing isn't
always confined to active war zones. That's a
really important point. Here's where it gets
really interesting. Rationing often gets significantly
stricter after a war ends. It's a pattern that
catches a lot of people off guard. Right. Remember
that mushy national loaf of bread in the UK that
wasn't rationed during the fighting? Yep. Well,
bread and potatoes were actually rationed in
Britain after World War II. Fuel rationing didn't
end there until 1950. And food rationing wasn't
fully abolished until 1954. Almost 10 years later.
That's nearly a decade after the peace treaties
were signed. And it wasn't just the UK. Look
at Israel. From 1949 to 1959, the country operated
under a strict austerity regime. Citizens were
limited to a 2800 calorie daily diet. Utilizing
food coupons for basics like oil, sugar, and
margarine just to stabilize their newly formed
devastated economy. But peacetime rationing isn't
always about food and fuel shortages from a battered
economy. Sometimes it's about social engineering.
Oh, this is the Swedish alcohol thing. Exactly.
Take the highly bureaucratic system used in Sweden.
Sweden, Finland, and Estonia to ration alcohol.
The BRAT system. This is one of the strangest
historical footnotes. Citizens were issued these
specific little booklets in Sweden. It was called
a motbok. A stamp book for drinking. Every time
you bought alcohol, a stamp was added to your
book. Once you hit your monthly limit, you were
cut off until the next month. But the wild part
is how the rations were calculated. It wasn't
equal at all. No, it wasn't an equal share for
everyone. Your alcohol allowance was based on
your gender, your wealth, and your social status.
If you were unemployed or on welfare, you were
legally not allowed to buy any alcohol at all.
And the gender disparity was severe. Because
the Mottbach was distributed per household rather
than per individual, wives were forced to share
their husbands allowance. Which, in practice,
meant the wives effectively received no alcohol
ration of their own. It weaponized bureaucracy
to enforce moral codes. Naturally, people immediately
found loopholes. Because they couldn't just buy
more alcohol at the store, citizens who wanted
to drink more would actually take strangers out
to dinner. They'd pay for the stranger's meal.
On the condition that the stranger would order
alcohol, drink it, and take the stamp penalty
in their own Mottbach. It's a perfect example
of what you mentioned earlier. Wherever there's
a rationing system, humans will inevitably invent
a gray market to get around it. It's just human
nature. And while the brat system sounds like
quirky history, we have to recognize that peacetime
rationing is very much a modern reality. Many
of you might remember the 1973 oil crisis where
the United States introduced odd even rationing.
meaning you could only buy gas on certain days
depending on the last digit of your license plate.
And then there's Cuba. Their system is incredibly
complex and constantly shifting. They've had
rationing for a long time. They enacted basic
goods rationing in 1991 after the collapse of
the Soviet Union, which had been heavily subsidizing
their economy. By the early 2000s, they shifted
to a unique dual market system. A liberated system,
they call it. Exactly. Citizens used ration coupons
to buy a specific amount of goods at deeply subsidized
prices. But they could also buy more of those
same goods at regular, much higher market prices.
But economic realities forced their hand again.
In 2019, due to strict U .S. sanctions and the
collapse of oil shipments from Venezuela, Cuba
had to reintroduce a classical, strict, limiting
rationing system. In fact, as of 2024, peacetime
food rationing is still actively in effect in
both Cuba and North Korea. It's not just long
-term economic shifts either. Acute climate and
economic crises trigger rationing all the time
today. We see it constantly. In 2012, after Hurricane
Sandy, gas was rationed in New York and New Jersey.
From 2015 to 2019, California had mandatory water
use restrictions due to severe droughts. Venezuela
in 2019. Right, they had to implement a 30 -day
electricity rationing regime. And in 2021, Sri
Lanka faced an economic crisis so severe, they
literally had to bring in the military to ration
essential food supplies. Which brings us to a
critical part of our discussion. Rationing isn't
just about the past or distant countries. It's
actively shaving our present and our future on
a global scale. How so? Consider international
refugee aid. Agencies like the World Food Program
operate on a strict rationing basis. They have
a target allocation of 2 ,100 calories per person
per day for refugees. The grim reality of that
2 ,100 calorie target is that it's an absolute
bare minimum and in places like the camps in
Kenya. frequently can't even hit that. Exactly.
The logistics of supplying those calories in
crisis zones means that minimum standard is often
aspirational. That's enough to hear. It is. But
we should push even further out of our comfort
zone to look at how rationing affects us right
now in systems we might not even recognize as
rationing. Let's talk about health care. I think
a lot of people assume that if you live in a
wealthy, developed nation, you aren't dealing
with healthcare rationing. But that preconception
is entirely false. Healthcare is rationed absolutely
everywhere. Because the demand is basically infinite,
right? Precisely. As the British Royal Commission
on the National Health Service noted way back
in 1979, whatever a society spends on healthcare,
the demand will always rise to meet and exceed
it. So it's never enough. The difference is simply
in how it's rationed. In countries where the
government provides health care, the rationing
is explicit. There are wait lists or certain
experimental treatments are simply not covered
by the state. And in places like the United States,
it's still rationed, but the mechanism is completely
different. It's rationed by the market. It's
rationed by a lack of personal funds or by the
coverage decisions made by private insurance
companies. The U .S. Supreme Court actually approved
paying doctors with incentives to ration care.
They stated there must be some incentive connecting
physician reward with treatment rationing. And
then you have physical limits that no amount
of money or insurance can bypass. A shortage
of organs for donation naturally forces transplant
ration. That's a heart limit. It doesn't matter
how much funding a patient has. If the organ
isn't there, a board has to decide who gets it
based on medical viability and need. It's a profound
realization. And as we look to the future, we're
seeing proposals for completely new types of
rationing, specifically carbon rationing. Personal
carbon trading. Yes, there's a proposed system
called personal carbon trading. I remember reading
about this in the source material. How exactly
would that play out for the average person? Under
this proposed system, it would be mandatory.
Every adult individual in a nation would be allocated
an equal per capita allowance of emissions credits.
You'd have to surrender these credits every time
you purchase fuel or electricity. So if I commute
an hour to work every day in a gas car and use
up all my credits, but you work from home and
ride a bike, you'd have surplus credits left
over. Right. And that's where the trading aspect
comes in. If you want to emit above your initial
allocation, you have to buy additional credits
from someone else. From someone like you. Exactly.
If you emit below your allocation, you can sell
your surplus. It essentially turns every individual
citizen into a carbon broker within a national
carbon budget. If we connect this to the bigger
picture... If we connect this to the bigger picture,
whether we're talking about allocating transplant
organs, distributing electricity in Venezuela,
or proposing carbon credits, rationing algorithms
are essentially trying to solve complex societal
bankruptcy problems. There's just not enough
to go around. When there aren't enough resources
to honor everyone's claim, a society has to decide
mathematically and morally who gets what. So
essentially these algorithms are just modern
society's way of playing God. with a limited
budget. In a way, yes. We've covered a massive
amount of ground today. We've seen that rationing
is far more than a wartime memory. It's a fundamental
ongoing economic tool for dealing with scarcity.
It's a constant presence. And more than that,
it reveals the society's deepest priorities,
its inequalities, and its true values. So the
next time you find yourself sitting in standstill
highway traffic, getting frustrated, you can
take a deep breath and realize you are actively
participating in a non -price rationing queue.
I'd like to leave you with one final detail from
our sources to ponder on your own. Between 1976
and 1989, the Polish People's Republic operated
under a ration card system. But they had a catch.
They had a unique legal loophole. If a citizen
wanted to buy more food than their ration stamp
explicitly allowed, they were legally permitted
to do so. So they could just bypass it. The catch
was they simply had to pay two and a half times
the normal price for that extra food. I encourage
you to consider that mechanism. Does a system
like that actually enforce fairness and ensure
supply, or does it simply transform basic survival
into a luxury tax for the wealthy? That's a phenomenal
question to leave off on. Thank you so much for
joining us on this deep dive. Keep looking closely
at the world around you. Keep questioning the
hidden systems governing your daily life, and
we'll catch you next time.