Thought experiment - WWII-ish rationing today

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

The thought experiment is something akin to WWII-era rationing happening today. I’m from the US, and thinking in those terms, but please chime in with how your own country (or any other country you choose) would handle rationing on that sort of scale today. The only requirement is that rationing has to pass into law – you can have as big a black market as you like after that. But there has to be enough popular/political will that it is accepted and goes into action, even if not everyone likes it.

Firstly, I must acknowledge ICBMs and how very much they change things …and then proceed to ignore it. The point is the rationing. Don’t have to have a war if you have a better reason. In the real world it would matter whether said conflict has the same combatants on the same sides as WWII or ones that fit the present political climate better. What products were available, what shipping lanes accessible, etc. That would be great for a really thought of analysis. My thoughts and questions are far less informed.

I was thinking about was how rationing would be handled today. Though the US is very prone to doing things at the state level, we have our precedent here, and I’m assuming management at the Federal level. Sometimes there were shortages in one area and not in another. While rations points could change based on the availability and demand in the area one lived or shopped in, I think they are more likely not to.

We’d probably issue a card instead of ration book. Easier to put persons on different expiration dates and even out demand, as I understand EBT works. Would barcodes be able to contain current ration points needed or would this cause a movement to QR codes (or some other alternative)? This also leads me to think of big stores v. small ones. In getting product, in wait times, in labor to update info and also in ability to surreptitiously sell above ceiling prices (if they exist). Expect phone apps so you can check items while shopping and also see your point total for your trip.

Chicken wasn’t rationed during WWII. It’s eaten far more now, and I believe it would be. What about restaurant meals – would they be handled the same way as back then, even though Americans eat out far more often now? Any chance portions will shrink or proportionally less fat or sugar be used?

Red points, red points, red points. The meat and the fat. Soybean oil didn’t become popular until right after the war, and we consume a lot of that now. Of course, we aren’t coming off a depression and people are used to more meat. Or would we use an entirely different structure for grouping when it came to rationing? Also, back then fats were used in explosives, too. I have no understanding of what goes into today’s explosives, and that does matter if our hypothetical rationing is brought about because of war.

What about sugar – we have HFCS now, and it’s widely used. How much would corn still be used for that, v. other purposes or crop land turned over to higher profit crops? Not real sure on fertilizer availability, either.

With all the technology, and associated jobs, we would see an even bigger work from home movement than COVID brought, to save on gas and tires and whatnot. However, I would think that delivery simply would not be able to go up as it did in COVID? This is, of course, presuming that there is still the need to ration gasoline (for its own self or knock-on effects like rubber in WWII).

Non-food items – there was fabric rationing (at the manufacturer level in the US), scrap metal and paper drives. Rationing of shoes/shoe leather. Some of these drives are mostly thought of as morale-building now. Which things might we expect actual shortage of – remembering the opportunity cost of manufacturing one product over another (like automobiles and alarm clocks not being produced). And, of course, we have to look at the difference in manufacturing in the country-of-choice then v. now.

So, what’s your contribution – what do you think would be most the same or most different than in the past?

2

In the US, if it was mandated by the federal government, the red states would revolt violently, no matter how badly rationing was needed or what it was for. The details are immaterial. Civil war would not be impossible.

3

This contributes nothing to the discussion.

I made it quite plain in my original post that this was about how rationing would be executed in a given situation. I even a deliberate comment, specifically to head off comments like these. No, I didn’t spell it out, letter by letter, but the entire of the experiment is it actually existing. I’ll make it bold now, if I can.

4

I’m sorry if I erred. Since I cannot believe it would happen, due to the reason I stated, I can’t be interested in the details, so I will bow out. Again, apologize.

5

Because it wouldn’t work.
At all.

6

This is the question you asked:

Obviously you were thinking more about logistical details, and it sounds like you don’t want to think about political details. But rationing is fundamentally a political undertaking (asking people to give up core essentials for the greater good). And given that today’s political climate is much more polarized and animated than in WW2, any realistic discussion must consider how the political climate is the same or different.

This is highly contingent on the purpose for rationing, and what needs to be rationed.

Bearing that in mind, I think that if the US again went to war with a non-white country like China, then the country would commit like it did after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. The racial hostility exists now, exactly as it did back then. The country would commit, and rationing would be implemented. Red states would be at the front of the line for handouts, just as they currently are in peacetime.

On the other hand if the US entered into conflict with a “white” country, red states would be ambivalent (if not outright hostile) to mobilization, and their political rallying cry would be “I’m not rationing to fight that”.

We don’t have to guess how that would play out currently; just watch Republicans ignoring (if not outright enabling) Putin’s attempt at Ukranian genocide. It echoes the way that the majority of white America was more or less content to watch idly while Hitler steamrolled most of Europe, only joining the war when the “Yellow Peril” threatened.

Rationing is political. It’s meaningless to talk logistics without talking about the politics of it.

7

Then invent whatever politics you want and start talking about the logistical consequences of that. What materials are needed, where demands exceeds supply, and how that is addressed via rationing in the scenario you have created.

8

I think a bigger hurtle than politics would just be modern eating habits. Our diets are far more dictated by cravings and convenience than they were 80 years ago. In the US, rationing would be like putting hundreds of millions of addicts into rehab all at once. I think the government would have to completely eliminate (rather than just limit) some kinds of food (fast food, snacks, soft drinks, etc) to enforce a reduction in sugar and fat consumption. To work, it would have to be a far more draconian system than any one we have ever used against illegal drugs.

9

There was vast rampant rationing fraud in WW-II. Which of course led to the folks who were willing to fraud getting more of the truly scarce goods and other doing entirely without. So any expectation that folks would be more cooperative now is fantasy. Clearly to actually succeed a rationing system would need to be highly, highly tamper-resistant at both the supply end and the consumption end.

Speaking to mere logistics in isolation, some variation on EBT would be the way to execute the plan.

A problem with EBT though is that it’s based on money, not fine gradations of various categories of goods. Right now AIUI folks get EBT either for pure cash allowed to be spent however, or a separate EBT card that replaced “food stamps” where some combo of cashiers and POS systems know what can and can’t be bought with that card’s value.

If the OP’s scenario is that we’re rationing gasoline and tires and certain types of food but not others, and maybe certain types of clothing, well, there’s going to need to be a lot of programming of lots of POS systems, and / or everybody will be carrying a deck of EBT cards: one for gasoline, one for meat, one for dairy, etc. Chaos and even more rampant fraud / non-compliance will doubtless ensue.

Aside:
I have no doubt that somewhere in the bowels of the Federal government there are rather dusty plans for how this might be implemented. Which are periodically updated for changing tech, politics, projected commodity scarcities, etc., as whichever bureaucracy has time and interest. Some aggressive Googling might find a public version of a feasibility study report to Congress or some such.

10

Would we even need WWII type rationing? A big part of that was that there were huge overlaps between military needs and civilian needs, and so the civilians had to sacrifice so that the military would have what it needed to win.

But how much overlap is there today, and is the combined demand, even in a war, greater than the supply?

In WWII, the factories that built military vehicles were often the same ones that had been producing civilian vehicles. With the advent of high tech, specialized military vehicles, that’s no longer the case. Even in a war the size of the current Ukraine conflict, we’re not building tens of thousands of new tanks, APCs and Humvees. And the limiting factor on how many of those we build isn’t steel and rubber, it’s computer chips.

Food rationing? We make so much more food now, we have a major obesity problem. Even if the military was to double, triple, or more its food demand, that wouldn’t create a noticeable change in the amount of food available to civilians. Maybe prices go up a bit, but as we’ve seen the last few years, even such inflation doesn’t produce the levels of civilian hardship that was seen in WWII.

Same thing with fuel rationing. Fewer military vehicles means the demands for gas will be much less, and the supply is much greater. And modern military vehicles are often using different types of fuel. The M1A1 can run on many different types of fuel, so there’s less need to restrict civilian gasoline usage. Add in the increasing numbers of electric vehicles in civilian use, and this gradually becomes less of a problem in the future.

11

In WWII the supply of whatever was limited by the central authorities. There simply were fewer new cars & tires, less gasoline, less butter, etc. The military skimmed that stuff off the top of the productive economy ahead of all other consumers.

Rationing wasn’t about limiting supply.

It was about limiting and equalizing demand so the top ~half of the economic ladder didn’t simply bid up the price of whatever & buy all of it while leaving nothing for the bottom ~half of the economic ladder to purchase or to be able to afford to purchase.

The limiting was about preventing price inflation.

The equalizing was about promoting fairness, a social sense of shared sacrifice that also served the overtly political purpose of enlisting everyone in the shared goal of ending the war on favorable terms, and finally, and most importantly preventing bread riots when half of America could not afford to eat.

So any modern rationing needs to accomplish limiting and equalizing. Otherwise we’d simply let The Market distribute the goods and the shortages according to the willingness and ability to pay, just as it mostly does today, and Devil take the hindmost.


For the OP’s scenario, why there’s a goods shortage is almost as important as that there is a goods shortage. IMO different whys will result in different hows.

12

There would be an enormous diesel shortage. Systems like M1A1 or aircraft don’t directly depend on diesel, but they depend on a massive logistical tail that definitely does require diesel-fueled ground, rail, and sea transport. This would drive up the cost of pretty much everything, so without rationing we’d be looking at a pretty stark divide between haves and have-nots.

As I mentioned upthread, things are much different than they were back then. In WW2 people were willing to sacrifice for the common good (although maybe not with entirely noble motivations). Nowadays I don’t think you could talk anyone into growing a “victory garden” to help the cause. You’d see wealthy people sucking up all the consumer goods they possibly could, and convincing the MAGA faction that the thing preventing them from the same luxury is (as always) immigrants and brown people. There would be widespread ration fraud, and widespread mutual accusations of rationing fraud.

Honestly, I think the politics of this would prevent it from ever getting off the ground unless things were dire enough to require martial law (implying widespread destruction of agricultural and industrial capacity). In that scenario, the color of the EBT card is the least urgent problem that needs solving.

13

I we can’t have a war without rationing, then we would decide not to have the war. In 1941, we didn’t think that was an option.

14

I’m still not sure what the premise is supposed to be… “If we ignore what would make it different, how would it be different?”?

15

No, the premise was the technological and cultural differences in consumption and how that would affect the mechanics of a similarly-motivated rationing plan. Where people feel generally the same about rationing as they did then (both for and against), but the products needed, wanted, and existing are today’s, and operate under today’s constraints for productions.

EDIT: That’s why it’s a “thought experiment” and not an actual plan or alt-present.

16

I’ve read that one of the reasons for continuing rationing in Britain after WWII was to prevent wealthy folks from buying up all the steaks.

17

Fast food would not be rationed, the things fast food is made of would be rationed, causing businesses to change their menus.

18

Then it would no longer be what we now consider fast food (quick, affordable, high fat and sugar meals).

19

There would be so many “Craig’s List” apps available that anybody with a phone would be able to buy/sell whatever on the Black Market easily. The Thought Experiment fails because the OP has given us zero guidance as to how in the blue blazes they are going to get contemporary America to feel the same way they did 80 years ago. That ship has sailed, was torpedoed, sank, then depth charged and all the life boats machine-gunned.

20

Modern eating habits are definitely very different. I think you are absolutely correct on changing menus.

I can’t see why the government would want to eliminate soft drinks and snacks. Heck, Coca-Cola got a morale exclusion on sugar-rationing last time. And having some availability of those tasty things is good for morale. Yes, we consume way more sugar now, but it’s not actually like a super-addictive drug where one cupcake a week is going to cause people to be in permanent withdrawal and ineffective and workplace, having medical emergencies, or going on violent rampages. Well, not many, anyway. Though I actually do wonder what the sugar/HFCS amount people would be allotted would be.

Because that wasn’t the point. The idea was transposing the mentality and general goals of the time and using modern technology and production and consumption habits. It was never meant to be about the actual real world. If you don’t to play, then don’t comment.