Bernie-Bro-Socialists continue to believe that a single person, or a cabal of such minded people, has the talent and wherewithal to control an entire nation’s economy. Easy – peasy, they say, with never a look back over their “History shoulder” to be abused of that notion.
Or they have this overriding urge to boss everyone around:
Profits signal the preferences of ordinary people massing about in markets, proving that a certain move, a certain technique, a certain innovation has been wisely put forward. Entrepreneurs are free to enter new lands, imagine useful goods and graceful services. Consumers are free to choose. Such a negative liberty has led in the past two centuries to an enormous increase, too, in the ill-named “positive liberty,” also known as “income.”
-Deirdre McCloskey’s and Alberto Mingardi (The Myth of the Entrepreneurial State)
Prof. Don Boudreaux adds:
Yes.
People who decry profits (and losses) decry accurate information.
Again, a single number on a price tag yields all of the information a supplier and purchaser needs. The supplier sees the aggregate of all of the necessary operations needed to create that widget from initial inception to final delivery with all of the unknown cooperation of hundreds, thousands, or millions of people in ending up with their product.
The purchaser sees a benchmark against which to gauge that product – do I want that widget enough to pay that price? Do I want to buy MORE than one? Or is the value proposition presented by the product/price, not enough for me to offer my money for that value.
And because of the spontaneous order summarized by that number, transactions are made (or not) – it doesn’t matter to the purchaser what all of the operations and materials used to create that widget before them. Is it economically worth it?
Versus the system that Bernie-Bro Bruce Currie and his ideological kin believe – here is what we “know” you want – that’s all you get.
Frankly, as for me, I prefer our voluntary system over Currie’s top-down command system.
Because I get accurate information – Bruce’s system makes up stuff. And in his comments, he shows that Socialists really don’t care what other people think and believe – there is no tolerance for “other thinking.” So imagine the economy he’d spawn.
Oh wait, we have! Just look over “History’s shoulder” and see what Socialism / Communism has wrought. The State can’t keep up with ordinary people. All one has to do is review our own US history this past year to see the damage that elected representatives and bureaucrats wrought on our economies.
(H/T: Cafe Hayek)
