North Korean market prices suggest serious food shortages
The fact that countries like Venezuela struggle to feed their own people in the modern era, during the time of greatest abundance and production, while the bulk of the world figured out food production/trade a century ago really blows my mind. Not sure how people tolerate that sort of thing and still pretend the economic system is a good idea. Or hand wave it away that it's all some foreign conspiracy.<p>Iran is sanctioned, CIA works against them, etc too but they still managed to feed their people over the last decade plus (ignoring the recent global food crisis).<p>Edit: the Iran analogy might have been a poor choice, they recently enacted Venezuelan style price controls. Idk why governments think they can make things cheaper simply by just saying "this is now the new price and you can't change it".<p>> The Central Bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran began direct payments in the form of cash subsidies to Iran's public instead, with the government deploying an electronic coupon system as a form of price control to prevent price gouging in place of the import subsidies.<p>> Despite Raisi promising that "prices on wheat, medicine, and petrol will not increase in any circumstances", the price of some food products rose by over 300%.<p>Price controls always amplify existing supply issues and are used as short-term Bandaids to mask more fundamental issues.<p><a href="https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2019/01/iran-inflation-price-controls-economy-sanctions-rouhani.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2019/01/iran-inflation-...</a>