2 thoughts on “Apples and oranges

  1. Bruce Rheinstein says:

    This model assumes intentional market-distorting behavior by a government actor, but in a command economy there is no market, and hence even with the best of intentions no efficient means of allocating resources. Every market signal is distorted or suppressed.
    Let’s say the official exchange rate is set accurately at 3-1, but a new recipe for apple pie makes apples even more desirable in comparison to oranges. (Or conversely there is an apple blight) In a two-commodity economy, the government might be able to figure out the appropriate apples-to-oranges exchange rate.
    In an economy of millions of goods and services, there is no way all of the adjustments can efficiently occur without use of a market. Demand for sugar and cinnamon might go up, but for orange pickers might go down., etc. And how does a government planner determine the secondary and tertiary implications, especially in a constantly changing dynamic system?

  2. David says:

    A Boy’s Own version of “Free Enterprise”, brought to you by, not an Entrepreneur, an independent artisan or self employed craftsman or even by a run-of-the-mill shopkeeper, indeed, not by a Free Enterpriser of any sort, but by a LAWYER, A LAWYER, boys and girls, an apparatchik, a grant jobber on the regulatory coat-tails of the coercive State, a pimple on the pompous arse of the Body Politic.

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