Lets start with the absolutely obvious - there are not enough resources for everyone. Oil, gas, water and food supply are national security interests of the highest order with zero or very small elasticity and long market response delays. A crunch in any of those leads to internal or external instability.

Free market in supply crunch is great for the people that have the money or the supply. The ones that only have demand can either go to war or get destroyed as a nation.

The arab spring was not caused by the sudden love for democracy. It was caused because of the massive spike in commodities and staples' prices across north of Africa and parts of the middle east.