Ah, The Invisible Hand that knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
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Oh, yeah, better we have Harvard educated grads who know exactly what the price of everything should be and the value of everything whether anybody agrees with it or not.
Smugglers who play to the dissidents in such command economics would be out of business if not for market pressure from people with different valuations.
Here is one problem with the interference, found at the following link, but I have to insert a disclaimer: The web page offers a description of Adam Smith’s “invisible hand”, but then goes into some analysis that in one case, pretends to ignore one of Smith’s own prerequisites, (a generally moral people):
http://plus.maths.org/content/os/issue14/features/smith/index
It is clear why Smith says that moral norms are necessary for such a system to work – in order for exchange to proceed, contracts must be enforceable, people must have good access to information about the products and services available, and the rule of law must hold.
I have begun to lean toward that kind of idea, one shared by Dambisa Moyo and others whose origins are in poor countries, that in some cases, where the people’s culture do not hold to “moral norms”, it all breaks down because people lie, cheat, steal, and manipulate the rule of law making it meaningless to get theirs. But you can’t get everybody to agree to a plan. Everybody can relate to the joke Jews tell on themselves, get ten of them in a room and you have twenty different opinions. If they’re not moral they’ll get a benevolent heavy hand that fades away later (good luck with that, some would say), or mass subservience, or tyranny. The USA is coming up to that pretty soon. But they can’t get to tyranny unless there’s enough of them that just trust their leaders’ word for it that the tyranny’s commands is “fair”. Kim il Sung gives them everything they need.
Further down in the article is “one of his [Adam Smith’s] most famous quotes”:
Man has almost constant occasion for the help of his brethren, and it is in vain for him to expect it from their benevolence only. He will be more likely to prevail if he can interest their self-love in his favour, and show them that it is for their own advantage to do for him what he requires of them. Whoever offers to another a bargain of any kind, proposes to do this. Give me what I want, and you shall have this which you want, is the meaning of every such offer; and it is the manner that we obtain from one another the far greater part of those good offices which we stand in need of. It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love.
So Adam Smith agrees that the kingdom of the consumer of goods is the wisest “planner”, as opposed to some central command and authority. “You will buy this, and you will like it!”
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