Food Banks Are Part Of Capitalism's Success

I was interested to read this debate, which began with Labour MP Zarah Sultan bemoaning the fact that “There are more food banks in Britain than there are McDonald’s restaurants”, and the Tory MP Therese Coffey replying that “food banks are the perfect way to help the poor”.

 

Until today, I didn’t know that there are more food banks in Britain than there are McDonald’s restaurants, but it’s a very interesting fact, because if you laud McDonald’s as a capitalist success in providing thousands of jobs and thousands of hungry people with cheap fast food, then you should laud food banks as part of capitalism’s success in providing Brits with so much opportunity to voluntarily donate food to those in need of a helping hand.

It’s true we should lament the fact that there is so much reliance on foodbanks; but that is no more the fault of capitalism than headaches are the fault of paracetamol or wounds are the fault of bandages. Quite the reverse, capitalism is to poverty as paracetamol is to headaches - it generally makes the problem better, not worse.

If we all agree that hunger is bad, that no one should be hungry, and that if plenty of people are using food banks there must be plenty of hunger, then it’s absurd to identify the solution to a problem as the thing that’s wrong in the first place. Food banks are a triumph, they provide a way for volunteers to help others in ways that the government fails to help them. But they are mostly a way for humans to volunteer to help each other. They are one of the successes of the free market.