GBlog

Business Insider: When food prices hit a certain critical level, Marco Lagi, Karla Z. Bertrand, and Yaneer Bar-Yam show, people tend to turn to violence--because their desperation hits a level at which they have nothing left to lose.

As the chart below shows, the Arab Spring protests, along with earlier protests in the region, coincided with two huge peaks in global food prices.

Food prices have dropped modestly since the spring of 2011, but the long-term trend is up. Lagi, Bertrand, and Bar-Yam plot the long-term trend of rising food prices and conclude that we'll hit the flashpoint again by August of 2013.

Here's the key exhibit from the paper, which plots a measure of global food prices (the FAO Food Price Index) in black and the timing of various protests in red lines. The chart shows how many of the recent protests coincided with the breach of a specific level of food prices. The numbers in parentheses following each country are the number of deaths. (Click chart for larger).



But Lagi, Bertrand, and Bar-Yam also plot the long-term upward trend in food prices. They conclude that, on an inflation-adjusted basis, the critical level will be breached again in the summer of 2013.



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/food-prices-and-social-unrest-chart-2012-11#ixzz2Dz37ioEo
via tp: Die einen nennen es Freiheit

... Die Studie wurde i. Ü. im September 2011 veröffentlicht. Ein Update erschien im Februar 2012:

Food riots, revolutions, ethnic violence, urban health, fads and panics arise from collective actions. Complex systems science provides new opportunities to understand these collective behaviors by describing the patterns of behavior of individuals interacting through social networks. Predicting collective action is often easier than that of individuals because of the reduced role of individual choice. The role of individuals in the social context, as well as the role of organizational structures—governments, institutions, and corporations—can also be analyzed.
NEW ENGLAND COMPLEX SYSTEMS INSTITUTE - Social Systems / Economic Systems

P. S.
Ich habe nicht vernommen, dass die Ausrufer der Facebook-Revolutionen in den hiesigen Medien ihren mietmaulmäßigen Unsinn zurückgenommen hätten.
Wahrscheinlich war ihnen eine Deutung, die mit Armut, Hunger, Gewerkschaften und so altmodischem Zeug zu tun hat, einfach zu prollig (chav), zu wenig hip - oder einfach zu schwer zu begreifen ...