… is from page 37 of the 2016 re-issue of my late colleague Don Lavoie’s soaring – and now more relevant than ever – 1985 volume National Economic Planning: What Is Left?:
The main procedure by which the Market achieves that degree of coordination of which it is capable is rivalrous competition in the pursuit of money profits. The contrary tugs and pulls of the various market participants bidding prices up or down constitute the driving force of mutual coordination.
DBx: Truly so. Also truly so is the reality that advocates of industrial policy wish to destroy, or at least to override or mute, this procedure for achieving productive coordination.
As for just what procedure industrial-policy proponents propose to use to tap into knowledge superior to that supplied by the market on how to productively allocate resources, we know nothing. We are simply supposed to believe that, by some miracle, government officials will know what to do.
