In the last century, the most basic battle was between government ownership of the means of production and private ownership of the means of production, that is, between Socialism and Capitalism. Capitalism won it with flying colors. However, the proponents of a centralized authority, or the ” I know it all” people, did not give up. They took a new and even more deceptive stance. “Yeah, capitalism is good. But laisez Faire is not good. A centralized economy is bad, but we still need interference from the bad actors to tell good winners what to do and what not to do. How to do and how not to do. As irrational and stupid as it may sound, that is all that politicians, bureaucrats, gurus, corporate media, academia, and so-called economists are telling us. Laissez-faire Capitalism, which always wins, must somehow and for some vague and unspecified reasons, and even with the lake of historical evidence, be subdued to a centralized authority, which always fails with zero exceptions.
Money, wealth, income, profits, revenue, and prosperity are actual and proven incentives. The free and open competitions keep all the actors in line. On the other hand, power corrupts and always leads to misuse, more or less in every case. Although proven otherwise by global history time and again, power brokers are still telling us that monopolistic authorities must control freedom and competition. What a ridiculous idea! So, now the same old losers are proposing interventionism instead of failed Socialism. They are saying that centralization of all power is bad, but some centralization is required. Some weird and deceptive terms are coined for this fraud: mixed economy, public-private partnership, etc., the new terms for the same old authority, control, power, centralization, cronyism, and corruption.
Excuses are made, as always, that deny common sense. Science is still picking up pebbles at the seashore of knowledge and is being presented as the ultimate and complete solution. Although very powerful, math mainly covers only this universe’s material aspects. Emotions, feelings, beliefs, and highly variable and multi-factorial phenomena like human choices, preferences, and likes cannot be measured with math. In this propaganda campaign, they completely ignore the most powerful instrument at hand, logic. They pretend it does not even exist, is useless, or is somehow inferior to science. However, science and all other subjects of analysis, like Philosophy, analysis, statistics, data analysis, experimentation, and inference, are built on the principles of logic. It is the most basic and the most powerful tool in our hands.
Science or any other subject of knowledge does not and can never even come close to the power and comprehension of logic. Science and Math do and can cover only a small part of the understanding of this universe. They always have and they always will. The rest lies on logic and to a great extent on Philosophy. Saying that science is complete, has a solution for everything, and has an answer for all questions is simply illogical and ideological propaganda. Nothing else. Science is still very young and has discovered just a tiny part of reality. Besides, economics is another subject in which science and math are completely toothless. You cannot quantify satisfaction, choices, likes, dislikes, preferences, or limits. People who believe this can be done with Math or Science live in Loo Loo Laa Laa land.
Like every other analytics subject, economics is purely based on logic. You cannot test or calculate most things in economics. You must use logic, empirical principles, historical evidence, trends, etc. Free and open markets are a spontaneous natural order. It results from everything outside the scope of Math and physical sciences. Markets arise from a fundamental individual desire. To make their family’s life better. That is why we produce, serve, and work. A miner, transporter, communicator, factory worker, distributor, and retailer only gets out to work hard for this selfish reason. Even the most pious and charitable acts can be traced back to this instinct in the deepest psychological analysis. Our superego makes us put charitable labels on selfish endeavors that are done for personal satisfaction, respect, fame, the afterlife, whatever.
I, Pencil is the legendary article by Leonard Edward Reed that ingeniously signifies and explains this fact. People come out and work for their interest and perform the most respectable service to others. Markets provide them with the reason for it. Markets will reward and benefit you only when you produce something that people want and would like to pay for. That is why you create, innovate, invent, and make or contribute to those processes. This is not quantifiable or testable. We have needs and wants that we want to fulfil. This fulfilment requires productivity, money, wealth, trade, and exchange, These incentives are not bound with any formula, calculations, testing. No physical science, no math can comprehend it. The only answers to these questions are logic, and historical evidence,
When you go to a grocery store, electronics shop, clothing store, real estate agent, doctor, or website, you are not following any equation or formula. You are not part of a calculation when you decide to buy or not buy anything. When choosing one brand over the other or one product over the other, one model over the other, one version over the other, no equation or formula can accurately predict it. What needs to be produced, in what quantity, with what material, in which location, with what kind of technology, and what design? Only price signals can determine what comes from free and open markets. Rising prices signal demand, and decreasing prices signal oversupply. Fulfilling an unsatisfied need, providing comfort, making life easy, solving a problem, increasing safety, and providing information are some things that improve the prospects of creation, innovation, and invention.
The whole global history of governments has shown that no I-know-it-all expert or central planner can plan it. There is simply not enough information to be even close to the sum of all individual desires, choices, and wants. Plus, central planning lacks price signals that every entrepreneur uses skillfully and instinctively, every moment.