December 29, 2025
Auctions, pickles & pitchforks
Market design can feed the poor
Economists built a food auction and the comments exploded
TLDR: Economists helped Feeding America replace a clunky system with a share-based auction, adding 100 million pounds of food and feeding 60,000 more people daily. The comments erupted over whether that’s “markets” or “central planning,” with cash handouts and donor reality checks fueling the brawl.
America’s biggest food charity, Feeding America, used to ship potatoes to potato-rich Idaho and five-gallon pickle buckets to Alaska. Enter University of Chicago economists with a share-based auction that let food banks bid on what they actually need. The result: an extra 100 million pounds a year, feeding 60,000 more people daily. Sounds like a win… until the comments lit up like a supermarket aisle fight.
Top reaction: “Markets didn’t make the food.” Critics say donors create the food; auctions just move it around. Another camp argues it’s central planning in disguise, with one commenter deadpanning, “good thing they had central planning” while others call the article propaganda and demand: “Just give people $50 and skip the admin.” Meanwhile, policy nerds swing back: the real villain was ignorance—headquarters didn’t know local inventories, fridge space, or expiring donations, so pickles spoiled and chips ate storage. Cue memes about “auctioning off pickles vs peanut butter,” Idaho drowning in taters, and Alaska starting a pickle bucket league. Love it or hate it, the thread’s a food fight over whether smart design (shoutout to Al Roth’s “economist as engineer”) is genius… or just fancy labeling for common sense.
Key Points
- •Feeding America’s centralized allocation used a “goal factor” based on poverty and population, treating all food equally and ignoring local needs.
- •The old system lacked visibility into food banks’ local supplies and storage constraints, causing duplication and spoilage.
- •Refusing unsuitable loads reduced a food bank’s measured need, pressuring acceptance of unwanted items to maintain allocation priority.
- •In 2004, a task force led by economist Canice Prendergast implemented a market-driven choice system using shares and auctions.
- •The redesign increased annual food supply by 100 million pounds, equivalent to feeding an additional 60,000 people per day.