Community Pantries: The Triumph of the Spontaneous Order!

 

The most obvious examples of spontaneous order are the use of language and, among economic phenomena, the use of money—Roger Garrison 

Community Pantries: The Triumph of the Spontaneous Order! 

 

From ABS-CBN May 6, 2021: The number of community pantries built in various parts of the country has reached more than 6,000, according to the Department of the Interior and Local Government on Wednesday. It will be recalled that it just started in a pantry on Maginhawa Street in Quezon City started by Ana Patricia Non. According to DILG Sec. Eduardo Año, authorities continue to monitor community pantries to ensure compliance with health protocols “The most can be found here in the Calabarzon area, Region 3 area and NCR area with a total of 6,715 community pantries. We will make sure that all the minimum health standards are followed here and just like you and the LGUs, our LCEs, and our police, we will make sure that there is no violation of mass gathering, "Año suggested. 

 

This grassroots movement reminds me of the 2020 film "Pay It Forward" except that the local community pantry movie is non-fiction.  

 

Inspired and guided by his social studies teacher Eugene Simonet (Kevin Spacey) to change the world, seventh-grader Trevor McKinney (Haley Joel Osment) contrived a charitable project predicated on a chain of extending favors. The project starts with Trevor extending favors to three persons. The recipients reciprocated by relaying favors to their respective set of three people, and so forth. "Pay it Forward" snowballed as a movement, gradually.  But street bullies extinguished Trevor's life.   

 

Because "Pay it Forward" spread across the country, tens of hundreds of people lined up to vigil Trevor's passing. It was only then when mother Arlene (Helen Hunt) and teacher Eugene recognized Trevor's dream had come true. 

 

Again, unlike "Pay it Forward", community pantries are flesh and blood and real-time. 

 

The Wikipedia describes the Philippine community pantries movement: 

 

The sudden and rapid spread of community pantries in the Philippines during the country's COVID-19 community quarantine is generally accepted to have begun on April 14, 2021, when local entrepreneur Anna Patricia Non worked with farmers and local vegetable vendors to put up a small food bank for her community on Maginhawa Street in Quezon City, putting up a sign that invited people to "give according to your ability, take according to your need." Non's initiative caught the imagination of Filipinos on social media, creating a snowball effect, with citizens putting up their own pantries in their communities and even inspiring people from other countries do the same.  

 

The growth of the movement has been linked to the Filipino cultural traits of "bayanihan" and "diskarte", but also to dissatisfaction and frustration at the Duterte administration's response to the COVID-19 pandemic.  

 

Initiated without any government support, some of the community pantries and their organizers were initially red-tagged by National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) Spokesperson Lt. Gen. Antonio Parlade Jr. and Presidential Communications Undersecretary Lorraine Badoy. Philippine National Security adviser Hermogenes Esperon later issued a gag order instructing the two not to speak about the community pantries, but other officials including President Duterte himself later belittled the efforts of the organizers.  

 

By April 20, 2021, press reports noted that there were already more than a hundred citizen-organized community pantries throughout the Philippines. On April 22, the Philippine Daily Inquirer reported an account that said there were already at least 350 such pantries throughout the country. 

 

The latest article places the number of pantries at over 6,000 in less than a month! Despite tinges of political harassment and various attempts to politically besmirch, control, regulate and inhibit this movement, its expansion rate has even faster than COVID-19. If a pantry operates with 10 people, then over 60,000 are now involved. Multiplicative!   

  

From my end, this grassroots charity movement serves as a magnificent contemporary example of the great Austrian economist Friedrich von Hayek’s Spontaneous Order. 

 

A spontaneous order is a system which has developed not through the central direction or patronage of one or a few individuals but through the unintended consequences of the decisions of myriad individuals each pursuing their own interests through voluntary exchange, cooperation, and trial and error. 

 

 

 

Precisely. 

 

Whether founder organizer Ms. Ana Patricia Non has been guided by Lenin’s precepts or not is of no concern.  

 

Unlike Lenin, the community pantry movements are locally organized, decentralized, thrives on voluntary exchange and charity, cooperation, trial and error, respect for property rights, and peace.  

 

Neither force nor central direction is involved. 

 

Not only are they ideas, but community pantries are also examples of demonstrated/revealed preference or people’s value scales through actions. 

 

As per Murray N. Rothbard, “Demonstrated preference is the idea that we can only know anything about someone’s value scale by observing actual decisions they make, usually in a market exchange.” 

 

After the stunning defeat of the war on mining, then the emergence of spontaneous pantry movements. 

 

Sure, political hurdles against these will continue. After all, centralized structures, by nature, resist competition. Consequently, they will act against any potential threat to their power structures. 

 

But hear! Hear! The free market is gaining significant headway!