{"id":38929,"date":"2019-06-26T01:00:09","date_gmt":"2019-06-26T05:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=38929"},"modified":"2024-06-02T11:43:52","modified_gmt":"2024-06-02T15:43:52","slug":"qotd-right-wing-central-planning-is-as-foolish-as-left-wing-central-planning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2019\/06\/26\/qotd-right-wing-central-planning-is-as-foolish-as-left-wing-central-planning\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: &#8220;Right-wing central planning is as foolish as left-wing central planning&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><a href=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:left; padding: 0px 10px 0px 0px\" src=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"400\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-48672\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png 400w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-150x150.png 150w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-50x50.png 50w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a>It is the old familiar dream of the central planner, an orrery economic universe in which things move in predictable and comprehensible patterns. That model of the economy has no relationship to reality. A million different things might become of any given laid-off steelworker; predicting what would happen to an entire industry\u2019s work force (or even a small portion of it) in the absence of a certain protectionist policy is not economics \u2014 it is speculative fiction. For the most part, we do not have a very good record for predicting the effects of policies; trying to build a set of policies on an intellectual framework consisting of imagined counterfactuals will fail for the same reason that wage and price controls fail, agricultural-market management fails, and those highly targeted &#8220;investments&#8221; every president proposes in every State of the Union address fail: Human civilization is not an ant farm that can be viewed in cross-section and comprehended in total. <\/p>\n<p>The real world is populated by politicians and lobbyists rather than philosopher-kings, but a government of philosopher-kings that tried to micromanage the economy in the way Beattie suggests would fail, just as all similar attempts at putting the economy under political discipline have failed. Right-wing central planning is as foolish as left-wing central planning.<\/p>\n<p>Kevin D. Williamson, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/corner\/448541\/darren-beattie-economic-nationalism-argument-falls-short\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">&#8220;Right-wing central planning is as foolish as left-wing central planning&#8221;, <em>National Review<\/em><\/a>, 2017-06-12.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It is the old familiar dream of the central planner, an orrery economic universe in which things move in predictable and comprehensible patterns. That model of the economy has no relationship to reality. A million different things might become of any given laid-off steelworker; predicting what would happen to an entire industry\u2019s work force (or [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[25,41],"tags":[712,1026],"class_list":["post-38929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-quotations","tag-centralplanning","tag-microeconomics"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-a7T","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38929","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38929"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38929\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":89455,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38929\/revisions\/89455"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}