Clearly Classical

ALT How market design can feed the poor 22nd September 2025 America’s food banks had a broken distribution system. University of Chicago economists fixed it. For most of its history, Feeding America, the nation’s largest nonprofit, relied on a broken system to distribute its 220 million pounds of food per year. It ignored existing stocks and donations, flooding fully stocked food banks in Idaho with potatoes and warehouses in Alaska with five gallon buckets of pickles. To fix how America fed its hungry would require the economics of market design. The new system increased food supply by 100 million pounds annually, equivalent to feeding an additional 60,000 people every day. It is one of the clearest successes of market design so far.

ALT Item Mandatory minimum penalties of imprisonment Current law The Criminal Code contains approximately 60 offences punishable by mandatory minimum penalty (MMP) of imprisonment. Many mandatory minimum penalties have been struck down by courts on the basis that they violate section 12 of the Charter, which protects against cruel and unusual punishment. For example, in R v Senneville, the Supreme Court of Canada struck down one-year mandatory minimum penalties for possessing and accessing child sexual abuse and exploitation material. Proposed amendments Restore all mandatory minimum penalties of imprisonment that are currently inoperative because they have been found unconstitutional by the courts. Allow courts to order a sentence of imprisonment below a mandatory minimum penalty, but only where the MMP would result in grossly disproportionate punishment. This seeks to protect mandatory minimum penalties against being struck down in the future.