Tim Worstall on planning

Worstall is often worth reading, but he misses the point in his latest ASI posting. Seeking to over-kill those who seem to have have blotted the 50s, 60s and 70s from their their minds, he ends with linked rhetorical questions:

. . . let me close with a little question to those who still think the UK economy should be "more planned" than it is at present. Just who do you actually trust to be able to do that planning among the current political crop?

And who in one of the political parties you don't currently support would you trust to do it when your favoured and anointed one loses office: as will surely happen in a democracy?

The answer is that such people hate competition because they are losers. Their ideal is an unchecked bureaucratic oligarchy staffed by people like themselves, which they came close to achieving under the Blair-Brown regime. They did not succeed in abolishing all civil liberties but they are still there, festering in the state sector and waiting for their time to come again - as it certainly will.

For them, the fact that their ideal of government has led to economic stagnation and brutal repression everywhere it has been tried is not proof of failure - those are the outcomes they wish to achieve. They hate freedom of any kind because only in a thoroughly "planned" society can resentful mediocrities such as they hope for power and wealth.