 HaRD as it might sometimes be to believe, the human race has never had it so good. Hideous exceptions aside, we are healthier, longer-lived, better-educated and better fed than at any time in the history of the species. We enjoy technological benefits that would have seemed astonishing even a generation ago. and some of us think we know the reason.  In the short version, markets work. Capitalism delivers, creating efficiencies where none would otherwise exist, and distributing resources to where they are needed, when they are needed.  Some people are so awe-struck by this miracle they believe it should never be questioned. Even when the system fails catastrophically (and repeatedly) they hold that everything will work out sooner or later, that the markets will correct  themselves..  They have a point, however. Oxfam can observe that a billion people are still going hungry each night, but look, say the evangelists, at the rest of us, with our  supermarkets and cars. Why quibble? We ll get around to the last billion in time.  Oxfam is less sanguine. Just after the commodities trading firm Glencore achieved a ?37 billion listing on the London Stock Exchange   making billionaires of six  executives and multi-millionaires of others   the charity has said, in effect, that human progress might be approaching its end.  Not for the fine folk at Glencore, of course. By dealing in the basic stuff of life, in natural resources generally and food above all, they face a rosy future. But that fact, says Oxfam, is one part of a vast, impending crisis.  Food prices have doubled in the past 20 years and the trend is continuing. By 2030, the average cost of staples could increase by between 120% and 180%. The world s population is predicted to reach nine billion by 2050, yet the growth in agricultural yields is  falling. already, the poorest are spending up to 80% of their incomes on food.  Oxfam s report, Growing a Better Future, is no blunderbuss. It does not indict commodities dealers alone, but it scarcely vindicates anyone s blind faith in salvation through market forces, or give much credence to the notion that markets work best when regulation is  light .  The charity points out, for  example, that biofuels, so recently championed by investors, have proved to be a particularly stupid idea, taking vast tracts of land out of the food chain. Oxfam argues, too, that half of the predicted rise in food prices will be caused by climate change, a phenomenon still to be addressed seriously for fear, supposedly, of  damage to the economy .  The report is not naive. The emergence of a wealthy class in India and China has affected the demand for meat, a product that is greedy for land. Western greed is meanwhile plain: we waste food in immense quantities   to the tune of at least ?10 per week per household   while agonising over our  obesity epidemic as one billion go hungry. as anyone who visits a supermarket knows, market mechanisms have a lot to do with that, but  individuals bear a responsibility.  Oxfam s main point, nevertheless, is that the global food system is  broken . It causes  hunger, along with obesity, obscene waste, and appalling environmental degradation . Why would that even count as rational? Because  power above all determines who eats and who does not . The system has been  constructed by and on behalf of a tiny minority   its primary purpose to deliver profit for them .  Which brings us back, neatly enough, to the billionaires at  Glencore. If Oxfam is even close to the truth, they are dealing not in commodities but in lives, hundreds of millions of lives. They are not just trading in maize, like merchants from centuries past,  but gambling on the futures of  societies. The price movements that make them very rich are in fact   and the statement is in no sense melodramatic   matters of life and death.  So Oxfam s report talks both of subsidies for international agri-business, and of investors  playing commodities markets like casinos . Predictably enough, the charity therefore calls on 