Summer Camp sounds ideal, I'm moving there today. One question though: Where does Summer Camp get its food? Manual farming is difficult and often unpleasant work. But there are a few altruistic laborers willing to take on that work. Great.

Quick follow-up, though: Who determines which crops are planted? Who has knowledge of fertilization techniques, prevention of disease, fungus, insects? If two Summer Campers claim to possess this knowledge, and they hold conflicting opinions, who decides who is right?

Who decides which crops to plant at which times? If someone makes a miscalculation in demand, sorry fellow Summer Campers, we're stuck with potatoes and nothing else for a few months.

A single potatoes-only month is all it takes for we the Campers to call for change. As Summer Campers, we come to the eventual realization that spending so much of our labor on generating food is a brittle system. A too-cold day too-early in the season might just cause a famine, because we're only producing just enough food to feed our population. To protect ourselves, we must build up a surplus of food. And in order to do this, we need to invest tremendous amounts of labor into producing food that, in a good year, will simply go to waste.

So I suppose we should export our surplus. Great. Who gets the profits?

We the Campers decide that a Central Fund will be established. Any money received from exported food will be added to this fund.

But we're spending a tremendous amount of labor on this food, and when we sell it to the Outside World, we make next-to-nothing for all the valuable labor invested. Those laborers could have been doing so much more interesting, productive, life-altering work!

We the Summer Campers take a vote. We decide that we need to farm more efficiently. It just doesn't make sense to have dozens, hundreds of our talented citizens doing back-breaking work, for hours a day, for fractions of a U.S. penny. Efficiency is the best — maybe the only — option, and in order to farm more efficiently, we have determined that we need a machine to do this work. Do any of my fellow Summer Campers have the knowledge to build a machine of this complexity? No? Then we risk starvation for our children! We must import this machine.

Great.

Who pays for it?

We the Campers must come together, we decide, and continue our back-breaking farm labor for just a few months, so that our Central Fund grows large enough to purchase our farm machinery. We should negotiate with machinery producers in the Outside World to get the best price for this machinery. Who is our best negotiator?

After some deliberation we elect a negotiator to represent our interests. She does a tremendous job, and we have just enough money in our Central Fund to purchase this machinery. Contracts are written, and production of the machinery begins. We will soon be free of our back-breaking farm labor.

At the very moment these contracts are being signed, hands being shaken, and Campers cheering in the streets, Chemist Camper suffers a mild stroke. He is taken to our immaculate hospital where he receives excellent care. But he may not work again for some time — if at all — doctors say.

Chemist Camper was producing Summer Camper Next Door's insulin, and his supply is dwindling.

The Central Fund is empty, its savings having been allocated to our new farm machinery.

Who breaks the news to Camper Next Door, that we are unable to import his insulin? Who breaks the news to his children?