Planned Economy Quotes

“Communism is what happens when Socialists realize that they want complete control over every aspect of human life.”
― A.E. Samaan

“The desire to engineer humanity is a sign of a mind warped by megalomania and lust for power.”
― A.E. Samaan

“Seen from that future time, when every commodity the human mind could imagine would flow from the industrial horn of plenty in dizzy abundance, this would seem a scanty, shoddy, cramped moment indeed, choked with shadows, redeemed only by what it caused to be created.

Seen from plenty, now would be hard to imagine. It would seem not quite real, an absurd time when, for no apparent reason, human beings went without things easily within the power of humanity to supply and lives did not flower as it was obvious they could.”
― Francis Spufford, Red Plenty: Inside the Fifties’ Soviet Dream

“Finally, as 9/11 fell on December 7, 1941, America entered World War II, and wouldn’t you know it, the US actually recovered from the Depression. It turned out that with state control of production and jobs for all, a nation could spend its way out of misery. Of course, this proof of concept of planned economies was instead interpreted as a reason to constantly go to war.”
― Chapo Trap House, The Chapo Guide to Revolution: A Manifesto Against Logic, Facts, and Reason

“A "centrally planned economy" by definition discourages and despises participation by the masses. It's a bureaucratic oligarchy.”
― A.E. Samaan

“Centralization is an abomination! Decentralize everything! Leave nothing to the central planners.”
― A.E. Samaan

“The right to "liberty" and "pursuit" of happiness is incompatible with a government that makes choices for you.”
― A.E. Samaan

“Or, to express it differently, planning and competition can be combined only by planning for competition but not by planning against competition.
It is of the utmost importance to the argument of this book for the reader to keep in mind that the planning against which all our criticism is directed is solely the planning against competition — the planning which is to be substituted for competition. This is the more important, as we cannot, within the scope of this book, enter into a discussion of the very necessary planning which is required to make competition as effective and beneficial as possible. But as in current usage "planning" has become almost synonymous with the former kind of planning, it will sometimes be inevitable for the sake of brevity to refer to it simply as planning, even though this means leaving to our opponents a very good word meriting a better fate.”
― Friedrich A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom

“Every totalitarian Communist considered themselves as a Socialist first and foremost.”
― A.E. Samaan

“Neither Fascist Italy nor Spain adopted eugenics as an ideology central to their form of government the way the National Socialist did. However, socialist and progressive nations such as Canada, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, and Norway did adopt and implement eugenics. This is because eugenics is the safety valve of a centrally planned economy. Central planners like John Maynard Keynes fear a population that is not as meticulously planned as the economy. They fear the unproductive sectors out-breeding the productive sectors of the population. This is also why Keynes was a lobbyist for the British eugenics movement both before and after The Holocaust.”
― A.E. Samaan

“Not only is the system distorted by its bias towards investing in what
happens to be profitable, but even within that sphere there is no reason
to expect the profit motive to lead to a well-balanced pattern of
investment. This has always been a weak point in the neo-classical
system. The doctrine that, under conditions of free competition, given
resources are used to yield maximum satisfaction, applies essentially to
an equilibrium position. It can be demonstrated only by assuming that an
equilibrium exists and showing that a /departure /from it would be
harmful (it also has to assume, of course, that the distribution of
income is somehow what it ought to be). Walras had the ingenious idea of
making the inhabitants of his market “shout” their offers until the
equilibrium has been found, and then start actual trading at the
equilibrium prices. It is pure effrontery to extend this kind of
equilibrium conception to investment; an equilibrium pattern of
investment worked out on this system is possible only in a fully planned
economy (if there). [p. 125]”
― Joan Robinson, Economic Philosophy

“The characteristic feature of the ‘planned economy’ in the traditional model was that economic activity proceeded in accordance with instructions from above.”
― Michael Ellman, Socialist Planning

“In the present author’s opinion, the three fundamental factors which explain why the Marxist aspiration for a non-market planned national economy cannot be realised efficiently are partial ignorance, inadequate techniques for data processing and complexity.”
― Michael Ellman, Socialist Planning

“In experimental science, to say that one understands a process, or can explain it, means that one can control it.”
― James Fyfe, Lysenko Is Right