Laisser-Faire; Laisser-Passer; Laissez-Aller; Laissez-Mourir

…. we succeed in curbing scarcity by a sort of “laisser-faire,” a certain “freedom of movement (laisser-passer)” a sort “[laisser]-aller,” in the sense of “letting things take their course.” It means allowing prices to rise where their tendency is to rise. We allow the phenomenon of dearness-scarcity to be produced and develop on such and such a market, on a whole series of markets, and this phenomenon, this reality which we have allowed to develop, will itself entail precisely its own self-curbing and self-regulation. So there will no longer be any scarcity in general, on condition that for a whole series of people, in a whole series of markets, there was some scarcity, some dearness, some difficulty in buying wheat, and consequently some hunger, and it may well be that some people die of hunger after all. But by letting these people die of hunger one will be able to make scarcity a chimera and prevent it occurring in this massive form of the scourge typical of the previous systems. Thus, the scarcity-event is split. The scarcity-scourge disappears, but scarcity that causes the death of individuals not only does not disappear, it must not disappear.

Foucault, Michel. Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1977-78. Springer, 2007. 42.