Rationing And The Black Market

Rationing is a technique used to distribute food and goods for survival needs when normal distribution chains are broken; rationing cards are a classic of urban survival scenarios, as well as authoritarian and inept regimes.

In times of war or catastrophe, when normal commercial channels are often disrupted significantly or it is required to reassign production resources toward very focused efforts like maintaining troops in the battlefield, local governments and authorities usually use rationing to limit the amount of food and other essential goods so that every person among the population gets what is needed, not more, and if possible, not less. Under such - often understandable circumstances - authorities try to fight speculation using different control systems from which rationing cards stands as the most common.


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