Tweet [1]
… is from page 39 of Kristian Niemietz’s superb 2019 book, Socialism: The Failed Idea That Never Dies [2] (reference deleted):
Another indispensable feature of market economies, which no socialist economy has yet been able to replace, is the fact that market competition is an ongoing trial-and-error process, coupled with extensive feedback mechanisms. We do not know, from the outset, how to organise a successful enterprise or industry (let alone an entire economy). We find out by trying lots of different things, with most of them failing, but some succeeding, and the latter ones getting more widely adopted.
DBx: Advocates of industrial policy, along with other protectionists, are blind to this reality. They mistakenly suppose that, because they can conjure in their imaginations a lovely state of the world, that government can create this lovely state if only it is given enough power to coercively override the peaceful choices of millions of ordinary men and women.