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… is from page 39 of Kristian Niemietz’s superb 2019 book, Socialism: The Failed Idea That Never Dies [2]:
A market economy is a testing ground, in which different business ideas, different management styles, different organisational models and different industry structures can be tried and tested in competition with one another. For example, integrated models, where companies perform a lot of functions in-house, can compete freely with specialised models, where companies outsource many functions to external contractors. In this way, we find out where specialisation is more appropriate, and where integration is more appropriate.
DBx: Yes.
Each proponent of industrial policy would replace this on-going testing, experimentation, competition, and market-revealed discoveries with the personal fancies and preconceived designs of his or her own puny mind.
I do not arrogantly criticize the minds of industrial-policy proponents by describing them as “puny.” Every human mind – including, of course, my own – is puny. No exceptions. The human mind is far too small even to begin to comprehend the amount of knowledge that is routinely discovered and used by competitive market processes.