Just how absurd is central planning?
That鈥檚 the great beauty of a real economy! It rarely takes you where you want to go鈥specially if you鈥檙e an activist central planner or an interventionist finance minister. But no matter how much you struggle with it鈥o matter how badly you manipulate it鈥o matter how much you try to stitch it up with rules and regulations鈥�
鈥t ALWAYS takes you where you deserve to go.
Look at what happened back in 鈥�71. Nixon鈥檚 move to take the US entirely off the gold standard was hardly noticed. Because he announced something even stupider that day. He told the world that henceforth prices and wages would be controlled by the feds. No kidding. His wage-price controls were designed to put a brake on inflation.
Did they work?
Ha鈥a鈥o you have to ask? If you could control inflation by executive decree鈥ell, it would be a lot different world than the one we live in. You can鈥檛 do that. And when you try to do that, you don鈥檛 get a world of stable prices, growth and prosperity. What you get is what they got in the Soviet Union, when they controlled the price of everything. They got a lot of nothing鈥�
鈥othing on the shelves鈥nd nothing worth buying.
We remember visiting Poland in 1977. It was a delightful place for a driving holiday because there were no cars on the roads. People didn鈥檛 have cars. And the trucks were usually off the roads too. They were broken down鈥sually alongside the road with their hoods up.
There were no hotels either. And no restaurants worthy of the name. You just had to make do.
You鈥檇 go into a shop. It was drab. Empty. There were usually two or three dozy clerks鈥ut nothing to sell. Just a few cans. What was in the cans? It was hard to tell. But since that was all there was, you bought it and ate whatever dreadful thing was inside.
Later, in the 鈥�80s, we took a trip to the Soviet Union. On the plane with us, on a flight from Moscow to Minsk was a woman with a toilet seat in her lap. It turned out that she had been raised in Tennessee and had a twang to her English.
鈥淲hat are you doing with a toilet seat,鈥� we wanted to know.
鈥淥h鈥� I just bought it in Moscow,鈥� she explained. 鈥淭here aren鈥檛 any toilet seats for sale in Minsk.鈥�
鈥淏ut isn鈥檛 that an expensive way to get a toilet seat? I mean, this is a three-hour flight.鈥�
鈥淣o鈥� The flight is priced in rubles. And the ruble isn鈥檛 worth anything. It actually cost me more to buy the toilet seat than the roundtrip ticket.鈥�
See what central planning produces? Absurdities. Monstrosities. Imbecilities. Coming soon鈥o your neighborhood.
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