a price system for citizens to decide between trains and cars, there is no way of knowing what the optimal allocation is and no way of knowing where the steel would be most necessary. Asking citizens in surveys is a meaningless exercise, because people's choices are meaningless without a price to reflect the real opportunity cost involved in trade-offs between choices. A survey without prices would find that everyone would like their own Ferrari, but of course, when people have to pay, very few choose Ferraris. Central planners can never know the preferences of each individual nor allocate
...more
