Crises show the resilience of capitalism, actually

You have to hand it to capitalism. It took—what?—two weeks of panic buying, and suddenly, again, the supermarket shelves are full of toilet rolls.

The Soviet Union never managed that in 70 years. Nor could it fill its empty shelves with eggs, meat, cereal or pasta. Except in the shops reserved for Party insiders and rich visitors, of course.

Even then, the choice was pretty lean.

On the hundredth anniversary of the Russian Revolution, an Adam Smith Institute report exposed how poorly Soviet citizens actually lived.

They ate a SIXTH as much meat and a THIRD as much fish as Americans—all of it much lower quality. They also ate a sixth of the fruit and vegetables. Much of the crop rotted by the side of the fields because the distribution system was chaotic. No wonder that disease was rife, with 30 times as many typhoid cases than the US. In the sixties and seventies, life expectancy actually fell.

It’s at a time of national crisis that you realise just how resilient the market economy really is. Far more so, indeed, than our state healthcare system, which struggles to provide its own workers with testing kits and protective equipment. Isn’t it time we welcomed a little free market ingenuity into that sector as well?