LogFAQs > #924922014

averagejoel posted...

Balrog0 posted...

tennisdude818 posted...

I think a particular Thomas Sowell quote fits very well here:

Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it.

how are these people at different levels of intellectualism?

isn't Thomas Sowell the guy who can't think of a larger issue facing society than the allocation of beachfront homes

Sure, if you've missed the entire point.

Basic Economics, fifth edition (p. 14)

Many people see prices as simply obstacles to their getting the things they want. Those who would like to live in a beach-front home, for example, may abandon such plans when they discover how extremely expensive beach-front property can be. But high prices are not the reason we cannot all live in beach-front houses. On the contrary, the inherent reality is that there are not nearly enough beach-front homes to go around, and prices simply convey that underlying reality. When many people bid for a relatively few homes, those homes become very expensive because of supply and demand. But it is not the prices that cause the scarcity. There would be the same scarcity under feudalism or socialism or in a tribal society.

If the government today were to come up with a plan for universal access to beach-front homes and put caps on the prices that could be charged for such property, that would not change the underlying reality of the extremely high ratio of people to beach-front land. With a given population and a given amount of beach-front property, rationing without prices would have to take place by bureaucratic fiat, political favoritism or random chancebut the rationing would still have to take place. Even if the government were to decree that beach-front homes were a basic right of all members of society, that would still not change the underlying scarcity in the slightest.