In 2003 the Portland Business Journal editorialized about how Portland needed a grand economic plan – soon. I responded, arguing that, no, what we needed was freedom – and soon.
Today, The Oregonian made a similar central planning case in its lead editorial, Greater Portland Inc. helps build economic teamwork. Here is my posted response, condensed from my 2007 Commentary, No Plan(ners) Required:
Central planning suffers from what logicians call the fallacy of composition: assuming that what is true of the parts is true of the whole. Planning is a good thing for individuals, families and firms. But there is no collective mind in a city, state or nation that can do for the whole what countless individuals and organizations can do better for themselves.
Business and government leaders have been creating overlapping and competing plans for Oregon’s economic future for years. Greater Portland Inc. may consolidate some of these plans, but planning is still the operating assumption; and it’s still wrong.
With all this planning, one would expect the Oregon economy to be booming, but it’s not. If we could all just agree on one direction for economic development, everything would be fine. Right?
There are good reasons why there cannot and should not be just one plan. In Portland, for example, some people want tax incentives to attract business, while others want more business taxes to fund our schools. Some want Major League Baseball, while others want to invest in engineering schools. Some want to cut our use of petroleum products in half, while others want more roads to help diesel-burning trucks get goods to market. To the planners such contrasting talk sounds like chaos, when in reality this is how free people get things done.
The smartest people in the room, be they business leaders or politicians, are not able to make collective decisions for everyone in our economy because they simply don’t have the needed information and wisdom. As individuals we all have our own interests and needs, and we satisfy those interests and meet those needs by voluntarily interacting with others in our society.
The best way to boost the collective fortunes of society is to remove the central planners so we can freely boost our own fortunes.
Oregon may love planners, but we need freedom more than central plans. And we need it soon.
Unfortunately, politicians, educators, and journalists too often presume or pretend that the choice is only amongst community-level plans. And it even has become difficult to convey the idea of replacing administration with market exchanges because the term has been willfully misapplied to a sort of planning that is ostensibly pro-business.
When community-level economic plans fail — which they do because they are plans — people too often react by seeking a different plan (the difference sometimes being primarily one of intensification) instead of by reconsidering the question of whether there should have been a plan in the first place.
This is what is wrong with every government body. They think that organizing to produce tangible plans will equal success. Each committee that is appointed views it the same way. I remember when “group-think” hit government. In addition, there must always be a measurement scale to determine success. Forget if the plan inhibits business. As long as it is measurable it must be progress. This is a mentality that is not easily penetrated.
Beautiful description of Oregon’s decade-plus long economic Malaise. The Malaise is compounded by a sugar daddy federal government sending billions in federal aid to Oregon governments to support Oregon’s obsession with top down central planning. So, for instance, the orgy like celebration Kitzahber and much of the press went into after Kitzhaber gets a greasy handshake from the Obama Administration to send a couple of billion dollars Oregon’s way to help prop up the ever expanding, failing centralized Oregon Health Plan. These monies, of course, are in large measure either borrowed or speciously printed by the federal government. Thanks to the federal government, U.S government at all levels is running bankrupt; having forgotten the idea resources are ultimately limited and must be prioritized and preferrably used most efficiently so as to provide citizens with a full material and service well being. The collective action of individuals and individual communities transacting with one another is both the most peaceful and efficient means to bring about full material and service well being. Government planning, which Kitzhaber is obviously very enamored with, is not effected through peaceful voluntary transactions but rather through coercion and the barrel of Government’s gun. Too much government intrusion in the economy causes arbitrary results and huge inefficiencies.
The problem is too much easy money coming from the Federal government, making it too easy for Oregon’s governments to just continue with their obession with planning and chasing after pipe dreams (with little payoff prospects) and shortchanging basic government services and weighing down the state economy.
No doubt these comments are moderated strictly in favor of the author. Otherwise I don’t see how such a historically immature viewpoint (“freedom” vs. planning) could be asserted uncontested. Present and past examples abound to refute your ideological mythology: our interstate highway system, man on the moon, the Internet (originated and funded by the evil government), the military, safe and clean air, water and food (something the private sector still fights against), etc. Give it up. Some tasks are best done by large scale, organized, PLANNED cooperative efforts, aka government. Geez, haven’t you guys read Silent Spring?
Yes, Gary, some tasks may best be done by large scale, planned efforts. They don’t necessarily require government to impose those plans. Especially on the level emphasized in my post, government imposed plans for economic development are bound to fail because planners cannot know how every individual and organization will react to its plans. Government cannot know which industries are the wave of the future in Portland, for example. How has that biotech revolution on South Waterfront worked out for us?
As for Silent Spring, haven’t you read about the terrible side effects that Ms. Carson’s fear tactics against DDT have imposed on African children?
I tend to agree with Mr. Buckstein regarding the evils of central planning and the
concomittant growth of govt to oversee the consequent results…usually unsuccessful.
However, while not viewing central planning and its overseers favorably, I think it is unrealistic to expect any reversal of this trend.
All we have to do is consider how diverse (tribal) nations are held together. We see everyday the results of taking them apart in the middle east. Such nations, (which we are quickly becoming) are kept together by force and strong centralized govt. Already, we see in the US the continuing growth of laws and agencies (DHS being a prime example) being created for the purpose of controlling the effects of tribalism. Read Mark Steyn’s latest article in the Nov 16, 2012, National review regarding this new political reality. These demographic changes will determine the nature of our govt and the manner in which it seeks to exert control over the forces its own disastrous policies have created.
States and cities will continue to lose autonomy and control over their own people and resources to the central govt. This is the only way by which Washington will be able to determine policies that will keep peace between the “tribes” and make certain each group gets their share and experiences a common outcome.