PAC your problems- Look through RBV Lenses

PAC = Partition and Conquer; RBV = Resource-Based View

Doc has made an intriguing comment on my last post, referencing a resourcer-resource mismatch and the efforts of the affected to reach the resource in a quicker, better and efficient manner. This broad topic can be explored in many ways.
An Operations Researcher like myself looks at the world through a 'Resource-Based View' lens- or RBV. To him, the world (or the individual) has finite (often scarce) resources that have to be allocated so as to maximize (or minimize) certain objective functions. Often there are constraints on these resources, so this view is also referred to as Constraint Based Optimization (CBO).
At an institutional level, taking this view and using the PAC (partition and conquer) approach to the bigger problems has resulted in solutions that may be locally optimal for certain groups or individuals but are far from being optimal in a broader social sense.
As an example, by a number of estimates the world food supply in the recent past has been more than sufficient to feed the entire world population, but clearly dire hunger exists in several parts of the U.S., not to mention other countries. This resource has been allocated 'optimally' or dismally, depending on who's asked. Currently the shift by farmers to planting corn for ethanol is 'optimal' for one constituency, painful for another. There are plenty of lung surfactant drugs available to treat babies born with small lungs, but still babies die because of lack of access or affordability. OTOH Bill Gates decided that the optimal way to 'consume' his resources is through not-for-profit socially benefiting activities.

For an individual to get access to a resource he/she needs another resource to exchange or substitute, and information about resource availability and costs. Information asymmetry can distort resource constraints and allocation and deployment, but at the end of the day, it is the objective function- what we want to maximize or minimize, that matters. To that end, universal access to information and the education to process that information is, IMHO, the only long-term solution. Part of the education is 'social justice.'

An enjoyable and interesting book: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life
by Barbara Kingsolver et al.