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… is from page 104 of the 2016 Mercatus Center re-issue of my late colleague Don Lavoie’s excellent 1985 volume National Economic Planning: What Is Left? [2]:
With so little direct contact with the actual disaggregated data of the decision makers [in markets], it is little wonder that the injection of government policies into the market will bear more resemblance to the bludgeoning than the guidance of an intricate mechanism.
DBx: Precisely so. Yet, mysteriously, such bludgeoning is regarded by many today to be “progressive.” And making matters worse is the fact that whenever the predicable ill-consequences of this bludgeoning appear, blame for the calamity is placed on the bludgeonee (the market) rather than on the bludgeoner (the state).