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… is from page 479 of the late, great Armen Alchian [2]‘s penetrating 1975 essay “An Introduction to Confusion,” as reprinted in The Collected Works of Armen A. Alchian (2006), Volume 1 [3] (“Choice and Cost Under Uncertainty”; Daniel K. Benjamin, ed.); this essay is Alchian’s insightful response to the Final Report of the Energy Policy Project of the Ford Foundation:
We have needs, requirements, demands – depending on the price. Anyone who ignores these facts of life is irresponsibly playing a dangerous and expensive game. He is increasing society‘s problems. The way he conceals these facts of life is to talk of a need or requirement as if it were a natural, unique, given quantity – independent of the cost or price of getting more.
DBx: Yes. And we have here yet further insight into why attempts to bring about greater prosperity by engineering an economy are doomed to fail.