The government is more real than the economy. It's made of actual people doing actual things. In a total economic collapse but with a good food supply government ration stamps become the new form of pay. Again. This has happened before. They can't wave a magic wand but they can physically work together in their pre-existing hierarchy.
A good food supply means a working economy, for gods sake!
You need seeds, water for irrigation, fertilizers, tractors, various attachments to them, trucks, fuel, silos, for storin, dedicated plants and educated people to build and maintain everything.
And I haven't reached animal husbandry or food processing!
Or you would argue that we all do subsistence agriculture because then I have a very bad news for you. Where to many for ineficient low yield agriculture and even if this wasn't a problem,many, like you, don't know how to do it.
Well no because subsistence farming is the exact opposite of government distribution.
You are aware that none of that stuff magically disappears right? It might disappear from an accounts book but it still physically exists. I really don't know how else to put this to you but the labor, equipment, and human experience don't just poof when the economy crashes. It's all still there waiting to be used. If it wasn't then we'd have died out a long time ago. The economy is an ephemeral concept thought up by humans. The stock market doesn't make the grain grow.
Well kid, it's funny that your ideea it's not applicable only if it's sapping resources created beforehand. So is a net consumer not producer. In comunist terms it's a "parasite on the workers class".
There are some key concepts you're not grasping and you should educate yourself for your own good. Things like:
economy is much more than a stock market.
producing good and services that people require is the economy itself.
politics doesn't create anything (regardless of the ideology) it suppose to find the best way to manage what has been created by the economy and society.
the reliability of a system is inversely proportional with its complexity. In other words things break more complex things have bigger chances to break.
I didn't say politics. I said government. The people doing this kind of work will do it no matter which party is in office. And they are out there right now somewhere in the world doing it already. And if you want to cast the whole of production and distribution as "the economy" then it would take an asteroid, super volcano, or zombie plague to stop it. We aren't talking about everyone just doing nothing and you know it. People are still going to harvest food. Truck drivers are still going to drive their trucks. The method of pay just changes.
Saying the economy isn't just the stock market when the economy crashing is solely defined by the stock market going down is fucking hilarious.